Ordinary Lady talks about the rain (in Spain)

 As we approach the final stretch of our series devoted to Ordinary Ladies, I think it's only fair that we pay a visit to arguably the most famous and beloved Ordinary Lady of them all: Eliza Doolittle.


Eliza Doolittle is of course best known in modern society because of the Lerner and Lowe musical My Fair Lady, first performed on Broadway in 1956 and eventually filmed in 1964 (and portrayed by Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn, respectively).


But before My Fair Lady, there was Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw's highly successful 1913 play, and his own cinematic adaptation of it in 1938 (starring Wendy Hiller). It is that version that we'll be showing this Thursday (the 13th of October).


Today, Pygmalion has a slightly unfortunate legacy as The Play That Launched a Thousand Rom-Coms (at least the ones of the "rags-to-riches" variety). Shaw's play has become the inspiration for any number of heart-warming stories about nerdy, unnoticed, awkward girls who are common, uncouth, inelegant or just downright unsanitary, but who are transformed into prom queens by the kindly supervision of an older, wealthier, maler, Knight in Shining Armour, who then proceeds to fall in love with her. Awww (or as Eliza herself might say, "Ouuwwww!").

The subtle point that all those Rom-Coms manage to miss, from Pretty Woman on down (or up, as the case may be) is that Bernard Shaw's play was intended as a savage attack on class barriers and gender roles. Pygmalion was written five years before women in the UK were allowed to vote (and a Covent Garden flower-seller like Eliza wouldn't have been allowed to vote even after women got the vote). The play was never about an ugly, ignorant girl becoming desirable and living happily ever after with her man. It was about a highly intelligent and ambitious young woman who is trapped by her social position, her accent and her gender (in that order) who gains the tools for her own emancipation (Shaw's word). Shaw was always adamant that the story should never end with Professor Higgins and Eliza "getting married". He fought with the actors in the original production, who altered the ending without his consent, and the ending of the film (which is retained in the musical My Fair Lady) was Shaw's compromise to those who felt that the relationship between Higgins and Eliza required some form of closure.


When I began this series of films about Ordinary Ladies, I wanted to showcase female characters who are normally assumed to exist at the margins of the story, but who surprise everyone by taking control of their own narratives. Eliza Doolittle is in many ways the template for such characters. Long before Feminism was fashionable (and almost before the term even existed) Bernard Shaw's Eliza showed the world that an uneducated flower-girl from Covent Garden could do absolutely anything she wanted, once she was given the means and the opportunity.

We will screen Pygmalion at 7.30 on Thursday, the 13th of October, at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.


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