“So here I am, a confirmed bachelor, and likely to remain so.” So go the words of Professor Henry Higgins in the classic film, My Fair Lady.
I recently watched this film again, the first time in many years, and was struck by the psychology weaved into the story. I think it resonated with me so strongly because I’ve now worked in relationship therapy with so many Higgins-like people.
It was a delight to watch this character, so expertly played by Rex Harrison, grow and change through this movie. Yes, I know Eliza Doolittle’s radical change is the basis of the story, but if you watch Henry he also transforms in his way.
Here was this man who was skilled, brilliant, experienced, educated, and inspiring, who excelled in being the expert and having all the control.
But, seemingly in equal parts, for most of the film, he was stuck. Higgins seemed to lack any ability to be vulnerable. To give up some control and be open to learning new things outside of his comfort zone was foreign to him.
He was a pompous and frustrating know-it-all! He could only operate in the one-up or superior position.
And he also makes some pretty thin excuses for not allowing himself to love and be loved in the song, ‘I’m an Ordinary Man’, including that she will redecorate your home and change your plans, you might even spend an evening at a play or ballet searching for her glove!
Poor old Eliza has a selfish and emotionally unavailable father, who shows his outlook on human emotions and relationships with the lines – “The gentle sex was made for men to marry, to share his nest and see his food is cooked. With a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck, you can have it all and not get hooked”.
With a role model like him, I wouldn’t blame her for not allowing herself to love!
She also takes some terrible barbs from Higgins, including being “a squashed cabbage leaf”, “baggage”, “so deliciously low and so horribly dirty” and a “draggle-tailed guttersnipe”.
So poor is the treatment that even Higgins’s chum, Pickering, has to ask him if it occurs to him that Eliza has some feelings!
Yet she dares to fight this man who is in a far superior position to have him teach her. Even at her lowest, she saw her value, which is more than can be said for the professor!
And what is this value? Yes, it is to better her position in society, but primarily, I believe it is to love and be loved. This can be seen in the lyrics of Eliza’s song ‘Wouldn’t it be Lovely’ – “Someone’s head restin’ on my knee. Warm and tender as he can be; who takes good care of me; oh, wouldn’t it be lovely”
Despite her lowly position, Eliza not only committed to bettering herself but to keeping her heart open through the process. To better herself, but not lose herself. What class!
With Higgins’s skills and dedication, and Eliza’s commitment, she does transition into a lady, and it is only after this transition do people start to see her value, and her intelligence, and begin to respect her.
Eliza was now the complete package – heart and brain. She had proven to Higgins that people, no matter how lowly or worthless, can change and grow. Yet, despite this transformation before his eyes, Higgins appears to fight allowing himself the same opportunity.
That was, until he had no other choice: “I’ve grown accustomed to her face! She almost makes the day begin! I’ve grown accustomed to the tune that she whistles night and noon. Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs, are second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in… I was serenely independent and content before we met! Surely I could always be that way again… And yet… I’ve grown accustomed to her looks, accustomed to her voice, accustomed… to her… face.”
This was the moment in his life when his cold heart melted, where he was, perhaps for the first time, not ruled by thoughts, reason, and logic, but something deeper.
That is a better, more balanced, and well-rounded version of Henry Higgins!
As we all know, Ms. Doolittle, the lowly flower seller has become a well-rounded Healthy Adult, and while the fate of Henry and Eliza is left mostly to our imagination at the end of the film, because they have both grown you can’t help but feel that they’re going to be OK no matter what the future holds for them.
