My Fair Lady vs. Pygmalion

Deric Skidmore
Mrs. Kanney
English 12
9. November.2012
My Fair Lady

The musical My Fair Lady is inspired by the play Pygmalion. The central theme is the transformation, which starts out as an experiment but ends up in love.
You can compare the two main female characters, and in both situations they are merely objects to the leading men. There is no respect, only a view of them as an object that can be changed, sort of like changing the wallpaper in a room. There is no real acknowledgement of their human feelings. “Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.” You may even want to consider that their behavior in the beginning is narcissistic, that is, that the male characters have absolutely no concern for the women they transform because they are so self-centered it never even occurs to them to care because of house full of themselves they are. “Every girl has a right to be loved.”

The females then go through several stages of development. At first they are willing to go along, and then they see that they are only objects. They rebel. They try to make their point, but it falls on deaf ears. Then they get angry, and they begin to gain enough self-respect that they are no longer able to put up with their treatment. It is only when they are among other people, and they get a different perspective that they find the grief and sadness in their situation and they have to go out into the world...they have to abandon their creator because he cannot see them for who they have become.
It is only after they have left that the male characters experience a metamorphosis and step outside their own self-centeredness for enough time to realize they miss their creation as people, and that they have been so selfish. It's a classic reaction... "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".
Both plays describe a lot about the English language. “The English have no respect...