The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

    Mysterious forces often drive human behaviour. I’m not clear what compelled me to, after so thoroughly hating The Turn of the Screw, to pick up such a lengthy Henry James novel: The Portrait of a Lady. While both works exemplify James’ drawn out, multiple-claused sentences, the slow burn of James’ courtship-driven novel was a surprisingly pleasurable experience. Don’t get me wrong—I still wouldn’t skyrocket James to the top of my must-read novelists, but the novel took some surprising turns that gave me pause to contemplate the nature of the craft.

    Before delving further, an outline of the plot would be helpful. The novel’s focus is Isabel Archer, an American woman visiting London, and her particular affectations (and affections) in navigating the world. Miss Archer is a deeply independent free-thinker, which (some might argue) problematizes the trajectory of her life. For instance, she continually turns down marriage proposals because she does not want to give up her life to others. While The Portrait of a Lady is largely a run-of-the-mill courtship and marriage novel in that respect, it’s the inversion of tropes that sets James’ novel apart.

    The first surprising inversion is just how early and consistently marriage proposals are offered to Isabel and then when Isabel ultimately decides to marry Gilbert Osmond, who for all my money was the least likely candidate, James glosses over the courtship and rationale. For a book so committed to exploring the interiority of its characters, Isabel’s love of Osmond is given remarkably little attention. The most intimate and romantic moments in the book all occur with her other suitors—Caspar Goodwood, Lord Warburton, and, even her cousin Ralph Touchett, with whom she has debatably romantic moments. For someone so adamantly opposed to marriage to finally accept from the most banal candidate with no fanfare is a shocking turn in the book and it’s a perfect commentary on the mysterious internal forces that govern us. Not disclosing the love is one of James’ most radical moves in the book and my preference would actually be to remove the part a hundred pages later that retroactively justifies the marriage.

    The next turn comes with the narrative focus of the novel. Following Isabel’s marriage, roughly halfway through the book, the focus moves away from her and shifts towards her step-daughter Pansy’s own courtship woes. The novel is much more about her suitors and her father’s response to them. Again, James pulls the rug from under us; unlike the marriage plots propounded roughly thirty years earlier through figures like the Brontёs, which were like Bildungsromans centered on a key figure’s life, James absconds with the plot of the book and hands it over to Pansy. 

    These moments of deviation from standard Victorian plots, in mind, speak to an early modernist ethic and hint at something more in James’ ambitions for the book. A moment ago, I suggested that James absconded with the plot and I use that phrase to attribute him a strange omnipresent quality on purpose. One of the other strange approaches of the book is that it is, for the most part, narrated from a third person omniscient perspective, sometimes excessively exploited to explore the interiority of characters. Yet, a few hundred pages in I started to notice more first person commentary cropping up. The narrator is ambiguous: sometimes a character’s innermost thoughts are revealed while later the narrator says something like “I cannot say” or “we cannot see” over a character’s shoulder while they read a letter. There is a blur of authorial construction, audience complicity, godlike powers, and so on. Imagine italics and all caps for the question “who is narrating this thing?!” I don’t know how significant these fast and loose narratological strategies James meant this to be, but it feels like a strangely subversive move.

    Incidentally, the novel becomes more predictable as it wears on. Most chapters are pages of (overlong) interiority, analyzing all aspects of a character’s thought process followed by a few pages of dialogue. James then rinses and repeats. The pattern wears a little thin, but ultimately I think the book follows Brian Cox’s advice as Robert McKee in Charlie Kaufmann’s 2002 film Adaptation: “You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit.”

    Surprising to me is that, especially early in the novel, the dialogue has a pseudo-philosophical quippy-ness that is the prototypical British register. I was going to suggest that James was drawing from the Wilde popularity of his contemporary Oscar, but it appears to me that most of Wilde’s works were staged after the publication of The Portrait of a Lady. What makes that even more peculiar and exciting to me is that Wilde is famously an aesthete who cares only for the finer things in life, which is the case for Isabel Archer’s husband Osmond, who is just the worst. In Wilde, the cleverness is an extension of his aestheticism. Here, the aesthete character is misaligned with cleverness, so it’s an odd disconnect that warrants further academic exploration in the many lives I don’t live.

    On the topic of unlived lives, it’s painful to watch Isabel Archer’s life play out for the worse when so many other possibilities existed for her. In particular, her bond with her cousin Ralph is the most beautiful connection in the book. Ralph admires her spirit and when his father dies, he convinces him to leave her a significant amount of his wealth. In Ralph’s mind, it liberates Isabel. If she marries, he wants her to marry without a financial incentive, but he also doesn’t want her to know that he has made these arrangements for her because her independence will reject his support. The tenderness of Ralph’s care is beautiful, albeit ill-fated: having money is precisely one of the draws of Isabel for Osmond, who can expend her wealth adding to his collections. In my notes for the book, I wrote that I would have liked to have seen the fake inheritance storyline developed more fully. I wanted to see that confrontation, but the thread was unaddressed—like the rationale for marrying Osmond, like Isabel’s miscarriage. Ironically, the thread was picked up hundreds of pages later and it does form a central turn in the book when Isabel learns that Ralph had manipulated her fate.

    Despite Ralph’s loving gesture backfiring, and despite him not really being a suitor to Isabel, their love was the most wonderful part of the book to me. To return to the idea of “wow[ing] them in the end,” the last act of the book is a tour de force. Ralph is dying back home in London (Isabel is living in Italy by this point) and she is determined to go see him before his death. Osmond forbids it, intimating that the split will be everlasting. Isabel thus steals away secretly and her goodbyes to the nunnery-ified Pansy are beautifully done. Before, she learns some other secrets that I won’t spoil, and while the particular revelations are a little lacklustre by today’s standards, the ending nonetheless feels powerful. Her reunion with Ralph and his death are a tragic, but fitting, end. Ultimately, the book ends with a sense of irresolution, but that seems completely consistent with the point of view James has demonstrated towards life throughout the rest of the book.

    Let me focus for a moment, though, on Ralph. The sickly figure perseveres for the sake of Isabel. The devotion to her feels so sincere and pure: “He wanted to see what she would make of her husband—or what her husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and he was determined to sit out this performance. His determination had held good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange, unremunerative—and unremunerated—son of hers that she had ever been before, had, as we have learned, not sculpted to embark for a distant land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal of the same emotion—the excitement of wondering what state she would find him—that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome” (392). First, see what I mean by the many-claused sentences? Second, I love that Ralph sees the position as one of suspense. 

    The ultimate moment is when Ralph is returning to London to die. The most romantic passage in the book, and the most beautifully tender passages I’ve read in some time is not even one of Isabel’s suitors:

    “They stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his.

    ‘You’ve been my best friend,’ she said.

   'It was for you that I wanted – that I wanted to live. But I’m of no use to you.'

    Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again. She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. ‘If you should send for me I’d come,’ she said at last.

    'Your husband won’t consent to that.’

    'Oh yes, I can arrange it.’

    'I shall keep that for my last pleasure!’ said Ralph.

   In answer to which she simply kissed him.” (497).

The intimacy in their friendship is so loving and Ralph expressing his devotion to her is Cyrano-level sweetness. The fact that he reserves his last living pleasure as their reunion is just the most heartbreaking-slash-heartwarming moment that feels contemporary despite being from a dry 19th century novel. 

    Aside from the romance, there are a number of ethical dimensions to the work. In my Philosophy of Literature course during my undergraduate, I remember an essay (title and author pending—sorry, folks) that was discussing what made art good. The author examines the ethical dimension of art and elevates Henry James’ The Golden Bowl as a moral work from which we can learn, beauty not necessarily withstanding. In The Portrait of a Lady, we are presented with some models of ethical behaviour and their consequences, sometimes for better and sometimes for the worse. For instance, Pansy has a devotion to her father’s wishes and when she shows the least sign of disobedience she is shipped back to the nunnery.

    There are two central ethical dilemmas that were most compelling. The first revolves around Lord Warburton, one of Isabel Archer’s former suitors. Long after being rejected, he visits Italy and meets Isabel’s step daughter Pansy. He falls in love with her and wants to pursue her marriage. Meanwhile, Isabel has to navigate the intricacies and contingencies of the situation. James writes, “If he was in love with Pansy he was not in love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother he was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she possessed in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would do so for her sake and not for the small creature’s own—was this the service her husband had asked of her? [...] She asked herself with dismay wether Lord Warburton were pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another satisfaction and what might be called other chances” (419). There’s a peculiar dynamic here where Isabel has to decide whether Lord Warburton is not pursuing Pansy duplicitously. Isabel must decide whether to use Pansy as a pawn and essentially sacrifice her to marriage with Lord Warburton to ensure that his advances are not directed her way. It’s the sort of Kantian ethical impulse to decide whether we use people as means to ends or as ends in themselves.

    James approaches a similar question from a different angle in the marriage between Isabel and Osmond. When James ultimately expounds on Isabel’s rationale for marrying Osmond, he describes his “indefinable beauty” (422) but that at the same time he was “helpless and ineffectual.” She then experiences contradictory sensations towards him, feeling “a tenderness which was the very flower of respect.” James embellishes the description, calling him “a sceptical voyager strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward and yet not putting to sea” (422). She then takes a “maternal strain” towards him. She reflects that the money bequeathed to her was at the core of her care for him, but in her generosity there’s also a self interest: “At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her conscience more effectually than to make it over the man with the best taste in the world?” (422). There’s a contradictory impulse within her: she wants to provide for Osmond, but at the same time in doing so she relieves her own burden. In moments like that, it’s curious whether they are treating each other as ends or means. (Subtitle for another boring essay I’ll never write: “Kantian Ethics at Work in the Work of Henry James”). 

    Truth be told, I hadn’t intended to write such a lengthy review of a book that is, in many ways, a straightforward and simple story. Perhaps it’s just because the book is so long and I was forced to spend so much time with it, but I think the more charitable approach is to give Henry James credit where it’s due. The Portrait of a Lady has a number of subtle, nuanced components that make for a ‘classic’ novel. While James seems to be falling from favour in the academy (correct me if I’m wrong), there are still some quiet innovations in his work that are worthwhile for book enthusiasts to explore.

    Happy reading and happy exploration!

Green Shadows, White Whale by Ray Bradbury

    Ray Bradbury is known primarily as a writer of dystopian science fiction stories, so the cover of Green Shadows, White Whale may strike you as a surprising departure, conceptually and geographically. Unlike some of Bradbury’s other works, this book is more grounded in realism and the cover offers the subtitle A Novel of Ray Bradbury’s Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland. If you’re uninformed like me, you had no idea that Bradbury worked on the film for Moby Dick. What a multifaceted fellow!

    Green Shadows, White Whale abandons the bite of Bradbury’s satire while retaining his humour for what becomes, ultimately, a more light-hearted project. His biggest joke, though, may be on his audience.

    One might expect that the book is more of a memoir, but it’s unclear how much is real and how much is fictitious. Branding the book as a novel is also dubious. There’s very little through line, other than some repeated characters and a common setting. A more honest assessment of the text is that it’s a collection of short stories masquerading as a novel. Even the idea that it’s a novelization of making Moby Dick is laughable, because only a few of the chapters even mention Moby Dick; hunting the white whale becomes completely tangential, Bradbury’s attempt at a script splashing through the surface once in a while. To be fair, as the book progresses there are a few more references and arguably the climax of the book is Bradbury finishing the script.

    In Green Shadows, White Whale, Bradbury once again presents himself as a conceptual writer, despite it not being a science fiction book. The premises of many of the stories are their point. The characters populating the stories are essentially flat placeholders for the comic moments at the expense of the realism. The key characters are a group of regulars at a local pub, many of whom tell stories Canterbury Tales style, which Bradbury records—and not to make accusations, but this would be an excellent framing device for presenting complete fabrications and getting away with it.

    Some stories land beautifully. One of them deals with a toxic couple living in sin trying to get married. There’s some entertaining dialogue with the priest, but the real highlight is that the wedding needs to be delayed and, trying to save on costs, they keep the wedding cake around for another week or two. The story culminates with the cutting of the cake and Bradbury’s account is wonderfully unbridled. The cake completely shatters apart and the hyperbolic comedy is fantastic.

    By far my favourite story, though, is a farce of Irish rebellion. One of the pub-goers gives an account of going to an Irish Lord’s home with the intention of burning it down. The mob arrives to find Lord Kilgotten is home. They inform him of their intention to burn his house down. Lord Kilgotten says that they have a soiree planned with friends and kindly requests that they burn his house down later. So, they go about scheduling an appropriate time—but wait! There is so much priceless art in the home; they wouldn’t want to burn the art with the home, too, would they? So, Lord Kilgotten leads the mob through the home, offering them pieces of artwork to take home. A particularly funny moment is when they arrive at a portrait of Lord Kilgotten done by his wife and he doesn’t offer it to anyone. Its understatedness is what makes it such a funny moment.

    The downside, in my mind, is that Bradbury sometimes goes too far in solidifying the joke. Rather than trusting his audience, there are moments where it feels like Bojack Horseman doing stand up and asking if the audience gets the joke. Towards the end of the story mentioned above, it’s revealed that the mob, stealing the heavy artworks, start to sink in the swamp and so they ditch the artwork. Lord Kilgotten ushers them back, but then takes his wife’s portrait of him and throws it out into the swamp. It takes the joke a step further than necessary.

    Subtlety is key. Yet, a few other stories deliver the punchline too directly. In one story, a notoriously careful driver starts driving like a maniac following Lent. It’s obvious that giving up alcohol has led to this comic inversion. The basis of the joke is obvious, but Bradbury takes it too far: “Tonight, for the first time in all the nights I had driven with him, Mike was sober” (139). Obviously. Another chapter is so outlandish where there’s basically an eternally youthful man in the body of a baby who is used as a prop across generations of women beggars in Ireland. It’s moments like this that make the “novel” so impossible as a memoir and a bit too extreme to be my brand of comedy.

    Peppered in between the sillier moments Bradbury is in full force with one chapter so compelling and psychologically riveting that it’s a complete shock in such a collection of tales. Bradbury remembers his time with Nora, a woman with whom he has a (would-be?) affair. She owns a large home in Ireland and the two visit it. What emerges is a story compelling in its darkness: the home burned down and Nora painstakingly recreated it. She spends years commissioning replicas and rebuilding the home. Essentially, it’s the story of a haunted house, but in much more psychological terms. The unstated central question is essentially: ‘if we rebuild the Ship of Theseus piece by piece, do its ghosts still linger?’. Throughout the story, it’s beautifully ambiguous how much Nora is projecting onto the home and how much is the story of a genuine haunting. There’s even some question, in my mind, whether the house actually even burned down. Nora is the most compelling character in the text, longing for an impossible past but also trying to usher Bradbury into a dreamed-of future, gallivanting around the world and disappearing before morning (as if she were the ghost all along). The chapter is completely engrossing.

    That story also exemplifies Bradbury’s style of clean prose with moments of flourishing style. One page of Bradbury’s prose stands out as the most beautiful, elegant, and energetic section. In describing his relationship with Nora, Bradbury writes, “Or it was as if at high noon midsummer every year or so we ran off up the vital strand, never dreaming we might come back and collide in mutual need. And then somehow another summer ended,a  sun went down, and there came Nora dragging her empty sand pail and here I came with scabs on my knees, and the beach empty and a strange season gone, and just us left to say hello Nora, hello William, as the wind rose and the sea darkened as if a great herd of octopi suddenly swam by with their inks” (97). Gorgeous, understated tenderness with that undercurrent of tragedy. Excellent. It then continues: “Somewhere back in time there had been one moment, balanced like a feather trembled by our breaths from either side, that held our love warmly and perfectly in poise” (97). That image of the fragility of their relationship is simply excellent. The wistfulness of the following passage culminates the description: “Somehow our mouths had been too busy with each other to ask permanence. Next day, healing our lips, puffed from mutual assaults, we had not the strength to say forever-as-of-now, more tomorrows this way, an apartment, a house anywhere!” (97). The optimism runs so counter to the haunted nature of the story that it forms a perfect tension, a feather in balance.

    Towards the ending of the book, Bradbury delves into his writing career a bit more. In one chapter, his work receives a review that John Huston reads aloud, inventing criticisms that wound Bradbury deeply. In another, Bradbury receives an award and takes it to the bar, only to be shamed and leave feeling lousy. In yet another, Huston challenges Bradbury on his progress on Moby Dick and then Bradbury writes a story about him and Huston. The effect is fractal-like: this fake novel includes a story wherein Bradbury writes a story, which is included in its entirety. The story itself is neat; it’s a creepy little tale of a banshee trying to seek revenge on a John Huston-like lover. The novel eventually ends with Bradbury having a breakthrough and there’s a frenetic section wherein he completes the script for Moby Dick. 

    Since the book leaves Moby Dick in the background most of the time, the ending ultimately feels a little unearned. There’s very little build-up, so the ending doesn’t really deliver to my satisfaction. It’s another vignette. I guess that’s more true-to-life life, really, but maybe not as well-suited for a novel, or even a “novel.”

    Ultimately, Green Shadows, White Whale is an acceptable collection of short stories with a loose thread in the undercurrent. I’d suggest that Irish literature tends towards absurdity in its humour, and Bradbury seems either well-aligned in his style for his Irish-set book or perhaps he absorbed their style by osmosis and authentically replicates it here. Depending on your humour, you may find a great deal of value in these stories. If nothing else, read chapter 15 as a standalone—it’s well-worth reading the haunted house story Bradbury snuck into this collection.

    Happy reading and have fun!

Pygmalion and My Fair Lady by George Bernard Shaw

    Even after all my years of reading, I have yet to decipher what exactly is the special kind of magic that makes a story ‘timeless.’ Philosophically, we could probably challenge the idea of ‘timelessness’ as a concept, but there’s still something about the premise of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion that feels universal. It’s influence has clearly permeated into pop culture, but if you aren’t familiar with it via osmosis, I’ll outline the central story below.

    Eliza Doolittle is a low-class girl who sells flowers, sometimes with a penchant for scammish behaviour. Henry Higgins is a phonetics professor who has studied, essentially, linguistics, and can decipher all ranges of accent. After a chance encounter on a rainy night where he places Eliza’s accent (and makes her think he’s reporting her to the authorities), Eliza arrives at Higgins’ home seeking a tutor so that she can speak in a more proper fashion. Higgins and Pickering take her on as a project (or in their words: an ‘experiment’) and bet that they can trick people into believing that Eliza is an upper-class lady within six months. If this seems familiar and you were alive in the 90s, Pygmalion is She’s all That with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachel Leigh Cook.

    Of course, Pygmalion is also the basis for My Fair Lady. but doing a compare / contrast of the play and its film seems less fruitful than examining some of the other literary connections I picked up on throughout the play. I suspect that, at least in some respects, Pygmalion is an extension of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, especially when we catch a glimpse of Higgins’ lessons with Eliza. Higgins and Petruchio share a cruelty that makes it hard to find your allegiance with them. Incidentally, and probably because of my interest in education, I would have liked to have seen more of Higgins’ lessons with Eliza. I think there could have been some fruitful scenes of thematic and character development that would enrich the play and provide fuel for academic fires. In the script for My Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner expands on that a bit, but not quite enough to be satisfying in a pedagogical regard.

    While the play does not fully emphasize its pedagogical concerns, there’s enough there to draw an interesting connection to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In Frankenstein, the creature is created only to be immediately abandoned by his creator. The creature later spies on a family where the father reads the children John Milton’s Paradise Lost, among other things. Their education then inspires in the creature a sense of morality and a legalistic mindset that he leverages against his creator. Twice in Pygmalion, Higgins references Milton: once in an account of the greatest minds of England, and once when he derides Eliza by saying, “I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you” (85). Milton seems to form the basis of moral feeling and pedagogy in both works and nothing can convince me of it being a coincidence, especially given the plot parallels.

    Frankenstein, to me, is a timeless story, and Pygmalion seems to draw from that same well. While the play starts quite slowly, eventually Higgins and Pickering pass Eliza off as a member of the elite. Like Frankenstein, he creates new life and abandons it. He sees his project of ‘creating’ Eliza: “The hardest job I ever tackled [...] you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It’s filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul” (53). Upon their return from their experiment, though, the men discuss how trying the process has been and how bored they’ve been by it. Meanwhile, Eliza is acting like a devoted puppy to Higgins, bringing him his slippers but listening in as they speak as if she did not exist. The scene is powerful and absolutely gutting. The scene is an easy standout with a similar gravity to the scene where Frankenstein’s creature, having been abandoned by his own creator, is told that the doctor will never create a companion for him or fulfil any of his fatherly obligations. Higgins’ callousness is comparable to Frankenstein’s emotional impotence.

    The central question—or rather problem—of Pygmalion is brought forward by Mrs. Higgins, Higgins’ mother, and pertains to the ethics of the play and Shelley’s novel. Mrs. Higgins points out to the men that they have failed to consider “the problem of what is to be done with [Eliza] afterwards” (54). Their concern is the success of the experiment. Her concern is the collateral damage following its success. I appreciate Mrs. Higgins’ challenge to their work because she adds an ethical dimension to the premise that seems highly transferable to other areas. Both the play and the film script allude to Eliza no longer being fit for regular society but unable to support her own lifestyle following the success of the experiment. This is one instance where I think a whole additional play could be written to explore the actual limitations of a life following such a high degree of interference.

    Actually, there’s a novel that explores essentially the very issue that was published around 20 years earlier: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which is another book I’d consider ‘timeless.’ In both texts, we have men engaged in “experiments” that play off the innocence and naivety of a younger person. Lord Henry (coincidence that Henry Higgins shares a name?) seduces Dorian with alternative views on morality that lead him down a hedonistic path. There are two central similarities that I find compelling. First is the way the male leads justify their morals with scientific language. In both stories, there’s a sense that science need not be connected with ethics. The second connection is that very discussion of morality. In Shaw’s play, “middle class morality” is often derided as being ineffectual.

    Despite not playing much of a role in the plot, Eliza’s father serves as an intriguing foil to his daughter. Both are elevated to a higher status, and Alfred Doolittle, like his daughter, is mortified at his new position. Whereas in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the characters pursue exquisite pleasures (like cigarettes), Alfred Doolittle makes an impassioned plea to not be spoiled. He identifies himself as an “undeserving poor.” When he comes to Henry Higgins’ home, he says, “Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen [sic] the middle class morality all the time. If theres [sic] anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: ‘Youre [sic] undeserving, so you cant [sic] have it.’ But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband” (35). It actually makes me think of Shakespeare; Hamlet seems to prove a font of wisdom. When Polonius tells Hamlet that he’ll take care of the actors according to how they deserve, Hamlet says to treat them better: “God’s bodkin, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity – the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty” (II.ii.528-531). I’ve always found Hamlet’s logic here beautiful: treat people better than they deserve; the less they deserve, the more it is to your credit. By extension, Alfred Doolittle takes on the moral conscience of the play: treat people well, especially when they’re undeserving. Don’t conform to the middle class morality that demands people ‘earn’ their right to good treatment. Perhaps that’s an element that makes literature timeless: it advocates for the most downtrodden in society and never punches down. Doolittle continues, “I dont [sic] need less than a deserving man: I need more. I dont eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more [...] well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving” (35). “What is middle class morality?” Doolittle asks, “Just an excuse for never giving me anything. [...] I aint pretending to be deserving. Im undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving” (35). The line of logic is hard to resist and it seems important enough that he gives one of the longest monologues in the play, which is also preserved in the film script.

    The play deals with some big issues, like morality, though obliquely. In most cases, the concepts are dramatized rather than given long didactic monologues. The play gives a clear discourse on language and its relationship to class. Essentially, one could follow the thread to see that language is intrinsically linked to identity. It’s divisive because on the one hand speaking the language clearly is supposed to elevate a person’s status, but potentially at the expense of their identities [Higgins says he gives Eliza a new soul, after all]. I think one could easily find parallels here to colonial discourse as well: in crass and outdated terms, Higgins ‘elevates’ the ‘savage’ Eliza, who then is removed from her context and unable to return to her former state. There’s some comparisons to be drawn between colonial powers imposing their language on a people, and the people no longer being able to engage with one another in the same way. 

    In terms of the actual play, I alluded to a few elements from a writing perspective. I think the play is somewhat unbalanced; the opening takes a long time that could have been (and partially is) condensed in My Fair Lady. It isn’t until the fourth act that I felt it was truly gripping. The conversation the men have, ignoring Eliza, and her reaction is superb. The richness of her character and the dynamic she has with Higgins is complicated and layered. In the final act of the play, the tension is ramped up and Shaw’s stage directions offer motives, intentions, and emotional responses that aren’t necessarily written into the dialogue that flesh out Eliza’s character in a complex and surprising way. In particular, the way she enjoys rattling Higgins is worth discussing—but I feel I need to see some performances to see how others have interpreted these moments.

    Between Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, there are some differences, but none I feel particularly inclined to discuss. The main difference, of course, is the songs. I haven’t heard them, so I might have different favourites after actually hearing them, but I thought the most interesting addition was the song “Show Me”, which decries words in romantic relationships. In part, it reads: “Haven’t your lips / Longed for my touch? / Don’t say how much, / Show me! Show me! // Don’t talk of love lasting through time. / Make me no undying vow. / Show me now!” Given that the play is so intently focused on the connection of language, manners, class, identity, and so on, I like how this song just completely rejects the philosophy underlying the rest of the play. Eliza tries to find love through a material realism that rejects the lofty idealism of Higgins-types. The counterpoint, especially its placement in the play, is a wonderful addition that lets the final scene breathe while further complicating central themes in the text.

    I’m not really any closer to determining what makes a classic a classic, the timeless timeless, the universal universal, and so on, but I will say that Pygmalion is a play worthy of discussion. Books can be memorable for different reasons. Some books speak to the heart, or the mind, or the soul. In this case, For me, Pygmalion is more of an intellectually memorable story, but if its cultural significance is any indication, it’s a play that speaks to peoples’ hearts and souls as well.

    In short, it’s worth the read. Thanks to Heather for giving me a (possibly stolen) copy of this book.

    Happy reading!