Saturday, September 26, 2009
What you want, you don't always NEED!!!!
I heard many people say...I didn't like the ending. I wanted them to get together. My brain quickly responds who and why???? If the two involves Eliza and Higgins, well lets just staple the divorce papers along with the marriage license before they leave the ceremony. Shaw gives concise, clear examples of why this union would never work. He provides a descriptive masterpiece and illustrates the title of this blog. Besides the obvious conflict of class, lets take a deeper look into the pyschology of these two individuals. I don't see Eliza as a dumb, flower girl. I am aware of her circumstances but for her to be bold enough to come to Higgins house with the proposal, it shows her fire, passion and determination to do better for herself. She was used to hustling to survive. She is a woman and naturally we are wired to be more sensitive to our feelings. I point this out to justify her vunerability and soft skin around Pickering and Higgins. Lets process Higgins....headstrong, intelligent, crass, direct and wise. Of course, he could talk to her more delicately and kind. However, shaw brilliantly gives you an insight on his perception of people when he stated "The great secret Eliza , is not having bad manners or good manners, but having all manners for all human souls. In short, behave as if you were in heaven, where there are no third-class carriages and one soul is as good as another. The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better." This statement was profound to me. In that line you were able to look right into Higgins soul. He's not a bad man, he revels in his own truth and does not bend on his paradigms of the world. Do they care about each other, yes! Would they have taken care of each other, yes! Would he ever have become as gentle and warm as Eliza needs him to be for her emotional stability..Probally not! It is what it is and they are who they are. People(especially men) dont change, unless they want to. No fairytale fluff here, straight forward reality that I can appreicate and definitely relate to.
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3 comments:
At the risk of sounding redundant I would like to reiterate my comment in class. "The realistic ending is what we are given in the play." Why should Higgins and Eliza end up together? I agree with Jackie wholeheartedly. You might as well staple the divorce papers to the marriage license. The two, it is clear don’t get along and fight on almost everything. Higgins is a headstrong misogynist. And Eliza…well I can’t find anything wrong with her but I’m sure I would if I tried.
I would like to illustrate here, the love affair that we all seem to have with happy endings. We want to see the hero save the day. We want to see justice prevail. We want love to win out. Maybe that is credit to the fact that humanity has not yet lost all hope. But if we, with our work are truly “holding up a mirror to life” then our mirror must be one of those fun house mirrors that distorts images and make them what they are not. I say this because the hero rarely saves the day. Justice almost never prevails. And love eventually runs out on us. Yet we keep imitating it on stage. And Higgins won’t change.
Having said this I would like to point out something that Jackie said “He's not a bad man; he revels in his own truth and does not bend on his paradigms of the world.” We always hold out hope that one can change but as Jackie pointed out “People (especially Men) don’t change unless they want to.” So no matter how much you may hope and pray for your happy endings, the truth remains that they are rare.
Forgive me yall but I have to respectfully disagree. However I will agree with a few points the two of you made. I agree that Higgins is a complete asshole and based on the way he treats Eliza he does not deserve her. However, my opinion that they should end up together at the end of the play is based solely on the fact that the ending breaks conventional dramatic rules. In every well made play there is a protagonist (Eliza) and an antagonist (Higgins). The major conflict of the well made play is based on the relationship and conflict between these two characters or entities.
I am making the choice that the major conflict in Pygmalion is a man vs. man, Eliza vs. Higgins, classic dramatic conflict. Eliza wants to speak properly in order to get a job in a flower shop, find a husband and live a happy and productive life vs. Higgins who wants to make Eliza in to a lady in order to proove that with is superior training he can make the vilest of women in to a perfect duchess.
WOW...writing that out makes me realize that I am completely wrong! LMAO...if these are the super objectives of the two characters then I guess the conflict is resolved at the end. I guess just can't get past feeling like a little bit of Higgins wants Eliza to stay with him. I mean he does make the offer to take her in at the end of the play. And then there is the way he reacts when he finds out Eliza is marrying Freddie. He is obviously upset about it. But now that I think about it both characters do sort of get what they want at the end of the play.
This play reminded me of the movie "Pretty Woman" and I guess I was just really upset it didn’t have a "pretty" ending...that’s realism for you lol !
Your exchange here brings up a really important point about one of the reasons realism as a form was historically significant: the ending. Melodramas and "well-made plays," both dramatic styles that pre-dated realism, were always resolved in the end, and usually followed the rule of "poetic justice." In the end, the "bad guy" was punished and the hero/heroine won out. Realism-Ibsen, et al-changed the rules of the game and said a situation should be followed to its logical conclusion.
But then you have to determine what the "logical" conclusion is. Is there really an identifiable "bad guy" in Shaw's play? And, yes Jared, why is it that we are so attached to happy endings? Have they become "logical" to us, just because we've seen so many? Are audiences determined to believe that life is more satisfying than it is, or is it that they expect theatre to do something different than "mirror" their existence? Have Hollywood endings led us to imagine that the world could be a different, beautiful, perfect place? Do we use plays as hope for what could be (or nostalgia for what was) rather than a reflection of what is going on right now?
Also, is there any way that this could be understood as a "happy" ending, since they're avoiding a life of insufferable arguments (which seems to be what Jackie is getting at)?
I think you're also raising a very important point about interpreting a script: there is not necessarily a right or wrong way to understand the conflict and its outcome. Primarily, your interest should be using the script to communicate something to an audience. How you feel about this play's ending can be clear in your staging: what can you as an actor playing Higgins do to make it seem like you've achieved your goal? What might you do to say that he's actually left with some kind of emptiness or continued longing? Your interpretation becomes clear through your choices.
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