As everyone who’s read or seen Pygmalion knows, Shaw failed to give his play a coherent ending, which is why audiences have always fantasised that, somehow, Eliza and Higgins find happiness together, in love. This is, of course, nonsense, as they make an impossible couple, something both realise but that Eliza, like the audience, resists. Our deep indoctrination in romantic fiction makes the happy ending inevitable, a point which Shaw stubbornly disputes in his absurd epilogue (absurd because it can’t possibly convince either reader or spectator).
The romantic option triumphs because not even today have we managed to imagine an alternative. Reading the play with my first year students, we came to the passage towards the end of Act V when Higgins, after calling Eliza “damned impudent slut” (!), congratulates her for having finally understood that releasing her pent up anger is far better “than snivelling; better than fetching slippers”. Happy to see that, since the girl is no longer afraid of him, she can finally stand on her own two feet, Higgins imagines a life in which “You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors together instead of only two men and a silly girl.” Yes, a sexless threesome in which, besides, Eliza should be degendered –or, rather, treated as an honorary (celibate) man. Not quite what a woman would dream of, though I do see Higgins’ point. At least, he shows some imagination, we don’t.
I take it that Shaw was joking, or maybe so out of touch with his own society that he truly imagined that his singular threesome –the gentleman, the bully and the lady– could succeed. At any rate, Higgins’ proposal opens untold of possibilities beyond coupledom and the family. It’s close to current flat sharing, only it’s not conditioned by money. Nor by age, and this is what’s truly odd. Fancy a young woman living with two middle-aged men and enjoying it (or for that matter, a young man living with two middle-aged women). Couldn’t they have fun and live in perfect companionship if they chose to? (of course, there’s a Mrs. Pearce to pick up the dirty clothes…)
Funnily enough, the play’s epilogue leads to this final solution, the threesome, complemented with the addition of a fourth member, who seems to be there just to satisfy Eliza’s sexual cravings: pretty Freddy. Shaw gave Higgins a classic Oedipal backstory. Mrs Higgins, that formidable mamma, would, ironically, make a great mother-in-law but Higgins simply won’t have it. He chooses celibacy over young women (or men…), pretending he cannot understand either Pickering’s admiration or Eliza’s feelings. Pickering, surely, must be happy in Higgins’ particular household, as he’s a pliable man who loves the company of those he loves. Eliza, lucky girl, gets a gentle ‘father’, a gentle husband, and a most special friend. And Higgins gets to enjoy her company without the bother of being her husband.
I’m sure poor Cathy Earnshaw would have killed to get her brother Hindley, her husband Edgar and her ‘special friend’ Heathcliff together under the roof of Wuthering Heights, living in perfect domestic bliss. Instead, you see?, she must let herself die.
Eliza, yes, you lucky girl…