Skip to main content

Pygmalion’s correct pronunciations


Liza: You are sheer humbug, Professor Higgins. You think you’re great because you have a lot of knowledge. And because you belong to the wealthy class. But I know what you are. Sheer Humbug. And I also know how to deal with you.

Dear Reader, I’m writing this post for a blog hop on Rewriting the ending of a book. The character who speaks the above dialogue belongs to George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion which Hollywood converted into an eminently successful movie, My Fair Lady. The movie did give a different ending to the play doing some injustice to Shaw.

Shaw was not alive when Hollywood made the movie. He wouldn’t have liked the movie’s alternative ending simply because he was against sentimental romance. Even love was a philosophy for Shaw. He would have condemned the movie quoting Walter Savage Landor that “to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair.”

Let me offer a different ending. For Blogchatter blog hop.


Liza is ordered by Prof Higgins to bring his chappals before she will be asked to get out of the house since the Prof’s job with her is over. Liza brings the chappals but throws them on to the Prof’s face.

Well, if you’re not familiar with Shaw’s play… here’s a summary copied from the internet:

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is a witty and socially critical play that follows the transformation of Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower girl with a strong Cockney accent, into a polished lady capable of passing as a duchess. This transformation is orchestrated by Henry Higgins, a linguistics professor, who takes on the challenge as part of a bet with Colonel Pickering. As Eliza masters the art of speech and manners, the play explores themes of class, identity, and self-worth, questioning societal norms and the true nature of independence. Ultimately, Eliza asserts her autonomy, refusing to be treated as Higgins' creation or subordinate, leaving their relationship unresolved but deeply thought-provoking.

Now, back to my alternative ending:

Higgins: [shocked at his chappals falling right on his face] Eliza Doolittle, what the hell are you doing?

Liza: Showing you where you belong. To the hypocritical, shallow middle class. Col Pickering once told me about the caste system in India wherein the highest caste called Brahmins decide what all others should do. But who are they to decide all that? They make a religion, they create gods in the name of that religion, they enact rules in the name of those gods. And thus they, the Brahmins become the greatest, and others become what the Brahmins decide. You are just that sort of a Pygmalion, Professor Higgins. You sculpt people’s destinies. And you think you are the greatest. What is your greatness except the fortune you inherited from a class that the so-called Great Britain created with the same villainy that the Indian Brahmins possessed. When you tell me to get out from your house now because you’ve proved what you wanted to by using me as a mere tool, you think you are becoming a great Brahmin. Am I right, Col Pickering?

Col Pickering smiles benignly.

Liza gives him a thumbs-up. The director of the play will have to make all this dramatic enough. Liza has the spirit of the elite but she was unfortunate to have been born in a poor class. It is not the class that matters, director. The spirit. The spirit that can throw chappals on to the faces of those who make the rules and swindle us.

Liza continues her dialogue since Prof Higgins is rendered silent by the chappals thrown on to his face by a Dalit whom he picked up from what he called the gutters and made a Duchess. Not just a Dalit, but a woman too! Double disqualification in India. Even today. In spite of India becoming an economic superpower!

Well, director, how do you show all that? Your house will be raided tomorrow by the superpower’s police. Your office will be raped. Your bank accounts will be blocked.

Prof Higgins will deliver his lecture then to the whole nation. On the importance of correct pronunciation.

PS. This post is written for the blog hop run by Blogchatter – as you understood obviously.

 

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Adaptation to the events of the times - I think Shaw might approve! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. We read Pygmalion in my 12th grade English class. As a class. My fellow students did not like the ending. Then the teacher showed us the movie, and my fellow students were relieved. (I had seen the movie prior to this, so none of this was a surprise.) The older I get, the more I think the play's ending was actually better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too went through similar feelings about the play and movie. Higgins is not a hero for me now as he was when I was an undergrad studying this play.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...

Emergency - then and now

  When Indira Gandhi imposed a draconian Emergency on India 50 years ago on this day (25 June), I had just completed the first train journey of my life and started an entirely different kind of life. I had just joined a seminary as what they call an ‘aspirant’. One of the notice boards of the seminary always displayed the front page of an English newspaper – The Indian Express , if I recall correctly. I was only beginning to read English publications and so the headlines about Emergency didn’t really catch my attention. Since no one discussed politics in the seminary, it took me all of six months to understand the severity of the situation in the country. When I was travelling back home for Christmas vacation, the posters on the roadsides caught my attention. That’s how I began to take note of what was happening in the name of Emergency. A 15-year-old schoolboy doesn’t really understand the demise of democracy. It took me a few years and a lot of hindsight to realise the gravit...

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...