One need not be a fan of Audrey Hepburn to consider it a moral outrage that My Fair Lady ends with a continuation of Henry Higgins’ weirdly critical, sexless relationship with Eliza Doolittle (you can always pretend it’s the Julie Andrews stage version, if that helps). No man who wears hats that unbecoming has any right to be such a prescriptivist in matters of dialect (what is that brown, shapeless mess he has on his head in the opening scene? It is an insult to hats, and his coat is no better).
He is a terrible man, and not fun terrible either, like Wesley Snipes on 30 Rock, just regular terrible, like the mean manager who works at every BevMo. His attraction to women as a gender is questionable at best; his treatment of Eliza is worse than how James Spader treats Maggie Gyllenhaal in that stupid movie about chaining your secretary to your desk until she pees herself. No one deserves to be treated like that. Not Maggie Gyllenhaal, and not Audrey Hepburn, even though she is now dead.
The following is a partial but by no means complete list of My Fair Lady characters who would have done a better job of making Eliza happy than Henry Higgins, who looks like the fey ghost of John Wayne and is real mean.
The obvious choice: Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Oh, I’m sorry, do you have a problem with men who match their spats to their top hats and have handsomeness sewn into every lineament of their face? Then go ahead and spend the rest of your miserable life fetching Henry — who will never let you call him Henry, you know, he will insist on being called “Mr. Higgins” or even “Professor” right until he dies — his damn slippers and listening to him criticize your interior decorating choices without ever offering a constructive suggestion.
Colonel Pickering
If you’re going to enter into a lavender marriage, it should be with someone delightful who thinks you’re sweet.
The butler
He’s polite, he has a job, and he has never once called Eliza “a squashed cabbage leaf” while making fun of her for being poor in front of an entire street full of Edwardians. Point, butler.
Any of the following background characters in the “Loverly” sequence: the sweet old man who brings her flowers, the strong-looking youth in the newsboy cap who picks up the cabbage cart, the sandy-haired dude who does a soft-shoe with her, the masculine woman in a boater hat who dances with her, the chivalrous gentleman who puts his coat over a puddle for her to walk on
The sleazy vocal coach at the Embassy ball with the amazing head of hair
Any one of these dudes, they seem nice
Pick any other character from this movie; go ahead. None of them have ever stuffed marbles in her mouth or forced her to undergo sleep deprivation or ruined her career prospects and told her the only man who’s ever expressed romantic interest in her will cheat on her and leave her penniless.
Henry Higgins is a monster who wears awful smoking jackets and I hope Eliza Doolittle murdered him quietly after updating his will for him, then retired to Brighton and wore a veil always and smiled mysteriously at strangers and walked her little dogs every night at sunset on the beach.
Tags: jeremy brett, marry the butler, musicals, my fair lady, terrible romantic pairings, this criticism does not extend to rex harrison who is great
Related Posts
Jeremy Brett: The Fan Fiction
Scenes From Classic Mel Gibson Movies That Seemed Innocuous At The Time But Have Been Ruined For Me In Light of His Behavior Over the Last Decade
How To Tell If You Are In A 1950s-Era Alfred Hitchcock Movie
Tim Curry and Morgan Freeman Finally Take You Up On Offer To Read The Phone Book
The Singles In Your Area Are Getting Restless
Your Feelings Are No Longer Considered Canon And Have Been Marked As Spam
I never did understand why she ended up with Higgins. He’s such a jerkface who treated her horribly. Stockholm, maybe?
Because My Fair Lady is basically an alternate-ending fanfic of the play Pygmalion, and Pygmalion ended with Eliza having the good sense to ditch Higgins.
Or so the internet tells me.
Agreed! Completely, wholeheartedly, Professor Higgins is the absolute worst. However, I will have to beg to differ re: Secretary. Maggie Gyllenhall was awesome in that movie =)
I didn’t realize this until recently, but the short story it was based on is completely different from the movie’s. The Rumpus had an interesting piece that analyzes the contrast (“What Men Talk About When They Talk About Mary Gaitskill”). It changed my perspective on the movie and put Gaitskill on my “to read” list.
I always ship her with Clara Eynsford-Hill. I mean, Eliza’s general delightfulness motivates Clara to stop being genteel and poor, and to get an actual job.
What about Prince Gregor from the ball? He singles her out for the first dance and he looks like a Kennedy–obviously girl wouldn’t do too bad there! Even if (when) he cheats on her, I doubt she’d be left penniless if she’s a princess.
She’d probably shrug and go right back to organizing Transylvania’s public education program.
Prince Gregor would be the best. Well, no, Freddy would be the best because he sings sweetly and doesn’t go into life expecting to be worshipped, but Prince Gregor would be second-best.
Possibly my favorite scene in My Fair Lady is toward the end when Eliza storms out of HH’s house, and there’s Freddy, still singing “On the Street Where You Live” like he’s never left from the first time, and has been there for weeks. (He probably has.)
Not only has he been there for weeks, he has been singing for weeks, nonstop. Because he is a dapper little puppy.
Shaw himself was vehemently against Eliza and Higgins being together. Like he actually wrote an epilogue to Pygmalion detailing why this was such a terrible idea.
oh yes it is great
“Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. […] what is Eliza fairly sure to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins’s slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers?”
BANG
Have you guys read the little sequel that Shaw wrote about Eliza and Freddy in the notes to Pygmalion? They open a flower shop together and Pickering lends them money and Higgins continues to grump in the background and it’s absolutely delightful.
ETA here it is!: http://www.bartleby.com/138/6.html
” Freddy’s power of stating in Latin that Balbus built a wall and that Gaul was divided into three parts did not carry with it the slightest knowledge of accounts or business: Colonel Pickering had to explain to him what a cheque book and a bank account meant. ” &&&&&&FREDDY;;;;;;
“But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.”
CORRECT, SHAW, CORRECT.
Also, in which Shaw comes about as close to saying “You idiots, Higgins is not heterosexual” as it is possible to say in the London theatre scene twenty years after Oscar Wilde went to Reading Gaol:
“When Higgins excused his indifference to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate old-bachelordom. The case is uncommon only to the extent that remarkable mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses.”
Translation: Higgins isn’t interested in women because women are like his mom, and his “sexual impulses” are directed elsewhere. Relatedly, Colonel Pickering never did move out of Higgins’s house on Wimpole Street.
I love this, even though it is based on a really dumb idea about Where Homosexuality Comes From, e.g., liking your mother too much. That idea has done untold damage as mothers determine to be mean and unlikable to their sons just to make sure they don’t turn out to be fairies.
FREDDY!!!!
I hate to be redundant but, FREDDY!!!!!
Also I love authors who write extra little ‘what happened next’ tidbits. A View Without a Room is totally my favorite part of A Room With a View: “Our hostess was reassured, the ban was lifted, and the Moonlight Sonata shimmered into the desert.”
Mallory. How do you do this? You look into the core of my beating heart and just transcribe what you find there, for the whole world to see.
In my mind, My Fair Lady has always ended right after “Without You.” Before Higgins’s awful smug rejoinder song.
“WIthout You” is the best song IN THE WORLD. I sang it to myself all the time when I was a teen.
In my mind Higgins gets to sing his smug song, then goes home alone to his cold empty house, where he can’t even find warm slippers for comfort.
Eliza marries no-one; She lives with Henry’s mother and they are awesome forever.
I was just thinking about how much better Freddy is the other day! GET OUT OF MY HEAD MALLORY
But can we talk about how hilarious all of Higgins’ songs are? I always find them utterly delightful.
OH NO IS THIS INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY
Noooooooooo you ain’t alone. Rex Harrison, despite being generally renowned as Not Very Nice At All, has a very charming delivery of a lot of those “songs”.
Can we talk about how I asked for and memorized My Fair Lady’s soundtrack primarily because of Higgins’ songs??
(Also I think it’s because Lerner and Loewe are just the better movie musical duo. The CLEVEREST lyrics. Musicals for the thinking woman. Who may dissect them and destroy the misogyny, but dang, isn’t it a catchy song. [for example: Gigi. “The world may be round, but everything on it, is flat.” or “Gigi! Was I standing up too close, or back too far?” Just *swoon*)
I like to pretend that Henry Higgins is actually Dr. Dolittle masquerading as a total dickhead speech professor as part of a mission for MI5 (which was founded in 1906, so it is TOTALLY PLAUSIBLE), and as soon as the door shuts behind Eliza he whisks her off on an evening ride on the Giant Lunar Moth.
NEW HEADCANON!
Are we talking the original Dr Doolittle, he of the strangely charming illustrations in a book that had ducks as housekeepers?
PLEASE tell me you’ve seen Pygmalion (1938) with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. I recommend watching it by yourself with a bowl of poached pears with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in an oversized t-shirt and slippers, with the radiator hissing behind you.
oh my god Leslie Howard is the only attractive Higgins
Not that I’m advocating anyone having a relationship with Higgins, they should not
I have ungodly amounts of love for Leslie Howard *and* Rex Harrison…
…*sniff* but reading the play Pygmalion, there’s SO MUCH amazing wit and wisdom and while I disagree with some of Shaw’s conclusions (though hahaha Higgins was so gay) I think it makes Higgins a big enough character to not be only a one-sided villain.
Loving those hilarious songs can’t be internalized misogyny though. I refuse.
Plus, Freddy grows up to be Sherlock Holmes.
Yes!
Holy shit, I feel really weird now – I used to watch this movie CONSTANTLY as a child, and always hardcore shipped Eliza and Henry Higgins, and like, HATED Freddy and thought he was dumb. I actually haven’t seen the movie since around 1997.
But omg that video – HOW IS FREDDY THIS HANDSOME?!?! How did little 10-year-old me not see what a fucking DREAMBOAT he is?! Moreover, why in the world would I approve of Henry Higgins over Freddy, especially considering how he is just a big old dick??
Moral: internalized misogyny is REAL and works on 10-year-olds, apparently.
JEREMY BRETT IS ALWAYS THE RIGHT ANSWER. Also I will never forgive Netflix for pulling his Sherlock Holmes from Watch Now. 🙁
If you just put creepy music over the ending of the movie, then it’s very, very clear that Eliza Doolittle is stepping slowly closer to Henry Higgins’ chair NOT to fetch him his slippers, but to strangle him with his own hideously shapeless hat.
That is the beatific smile of someone about to commit a fully justified murder, and I will brook no opposition on this point.
I like to think the servants helped her cover it up, after Higgins’ death broke the Flying Monkey-esque spell he had over them, and that Pickering was fooled by judicious use of Higgins’ recordings and brandy in his tea, and they all lived there together happily ever after.
And sometimes Eliza let Freddy sleep over but mostly she encouraged him to explore his nascent interest in crime-solving.
I love this. (With the musical’s terrible terrible whydidtheychangeittobethat ending, I kind of assume her response to “Where the devil are my slippers?” is, just after the blackout, an “Up your arse, fuckstick” delivered in the plummiest of plummy voices.
PERFECT.
(wow I would definitely read a series about Eliza and Freddy running a cute flower shop while solving mysteries on the side)
I was personally always rooting for Col. Pickering. I mean, if you’re going for a May/October romance, go for the guy who’s not a d-bag, at least.
Also, poor Freddy would have been terribly unhappy; being closeted in Victorian England was bad enough, let alone when you’re married to a beauty like Eliza. Then again, maybe she’d be open-minded about it.
Mollpants you were meant to feel that way because that’s what the writer wanted you to feel. You were meant to think Freddy was dumb and admire Higgins intelligence and therefor ignore teh gay.
OMG I’m disappointed that Pickering wasn’t mentioned in the article. He was probably lavender too but as a little girl I wanted her to be with Pickering because he seemed so sweet compared to nasty Higgins.
I’m also amazed at all these people admitting to loving this as a kid and teen I thought it was a weird thing that I loved it so much and that I was a total geek. I used to go to auditions as a child and sing “without you”. It got me into child roles in The King and I, South Pacific, and a musical version of A Christmas Carol, but I never exactly filled my childhood dream of playing Eliza Doolittle, unless you count a one scene enactment we did in English class when I was 15. I guess I at least got to do it there and shocked my teacher because she wasn’t expecting that kind of performance.
Oh, Freddy, you’re the dreamiest.
Oh, Freddy, you're the dreamiest.
Not only has he been there for weeks, he has been singing for weeks, nonstop. Because he is a dapper little puppy.
…I always hated Freddy with a passion. UGH, it’s not misogynistic to not be attracted to dunderheads, no matter how sweet they are, right?
Maybe I am actually HIggins, instead of Eliza.
Hmmm…1. living in an enormous library, 2. obsessing about a niche area of academia, to the point where you suck in friends and family members, brilliantly well-read, 3. go on delicious rants including sentences like, “You are a human! you have your own spark of divine fire!” and “This is the language of Milton and the Bible!” and “the streets will be strewn with the bodies of men SHOOTING themselves for your favor.”
…(I think if Higgins were a woman, we would all stop and go, “YESSS can I be her please?)
I always thought that Freddy or Colonel Pickering would have been Eliza's best choice.