Posted: 3/16/18 at 12:35pm
To be fair to Shaw and the ending of this production, we don't know if Eliza actually marries Freddy. I think Shaw only wrote that epilogue after being so incensed that production after production of his play kept ignoring the actual ending and stage directions and made new endings where Higgins and Eliza end up together with the actor playing Higgins doing grand romantic gestures (like giving Eliza flowers at the end) because the audience ate it up and even critics at the time thinking that was the only proper ending. So he figured if people wanted a romantic ending for Eliza and if she HAD to marry anybody, it would be Freddy and not Higgins. He wanted the audience to see that the experiment was over and Eliza was given the utmost freedom to do with her life as she wished outside her creator's control and in a way was freer than Higgins as she sort of was in this in-between or outside the social class now that she transcended the idea that she belonged to a class through her proper language and skills. It seems Shaw wanted the audience to think and come up with their own conclusions about Eliza's future and hated that what most people came up with or wanted was Eliza going back to Higgins because she was now equal to marry Higgins...which is not the message Shaw wanted the audience to receive. In Shaw's mind there's no way the statue should go back to Pygmalion.
Updated On: 3/16/18 at 12:35 PM
