Post #3: "romance in five acts"

At first, when I heard Pygmalion's description of "a romance in five acts" I remembered the Greek myth about the man who falls in love with his own sculpture because no other woman is good enough for him, by his standards. I assumed that Higgins (or less likely, yet still possible, Pickering) would fall in love with Eliza (perhaps both men would fall for her) and one of them would marry her. Bam. Perfect story wrapped up in a little bow. But that's not what's real. People fall in love all the time and hardly ever does that one person love them back (unless you go with the theory that nobody truly loves until he meets his one and only soul mate who has, in fact, loved him all along even though in some cases the two never meet).

I never felt the "love" in this play until it was staring me right in the face. Sure, I read between the lines a little and felt like the characters were a little more passionate than they were letting on, but this set of lines was when things clicked for me:

"As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants. I'm worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot."

-Professor Henry Higgins

That quote made me realize how blissfully ignorant Higgins is about love. He obviously loves Eliza because she is different. As the Greek myth goes, she is good enough for him because he made her. Eliza is, in his eyes, his own creation of a woman. However, while she may love him, she realizes he doesn't treat her right and that she can do better, which is why she leaves at the end of the play. Higgins roars with laughter at the end when he tells his mother that Eliza intends to marry Freddy (the son from the beginning who fetched the cab). I assume he is laughing because he is in denial (as he has been the entire time) about loving her. When Eliza leaves, Higgins is trying to show (and convince himself) that he doesn't care, when in fact, it is so obvious he does.