Public consulting group inc with a perpetual license

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Outward Bound, Inc.
NYS Common Core ELA Curriculum • G7:M2B:U2:L11 • June 2014 •
7

Grade 7: Module 2B: Unit 2: Lesson 11
Supporting Materials
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GRADE 7: MODULE 2B: UNIT 2: LESSON 11
Pygmalion :
Epilogue Adaptation
Name:
Date:
The rest of the story need not be shown in action. Indeed, it would not require telling at
all if people were not so accustomed to fairy-tale endings. The common expectation
would be that Eliza, as heroine of this drama, would marry Henry Higgins, its hero. This
is a thoughtless, absurd assumption, which should be obvious to anyone with any
human feeling.
When Eliza Doolittle told Henry Higgins she would not marry him, she was not playing
at being coy and flirtatious. She had announced a well-considered decision for herself:
Eliza was a young woman who knew she was free to choose a husband for herself, and
she chose not to marry Higgins.
Why do we want Eliza to marry Higgins, and why has she decided she could not marry
him? One of the reasons Higgins supplies for us himself when he tells his mother that
he would not marry because he would never find anyone as charming as she was. Eliza
sensed his first loyalty to his mother and was instinctively aware that Higgins would
never be the kind of man who would be open to love, that he did not have “the makings
of a married man in him.” Furthermore, Eliza did not want to be a second interest to
him, with his research into phonetics being his first love and passion. These reasons,
coupled with Higgins’s bullying personality, provide more than enough grounds for her
refusing to marry him.
Whom will Eliza marry? Recall that she mentions to Higgins that young Mr. Frederick
Eynsford Hill, known as Freddy, has been pouring his heart out to Eliza in daily love
letters. What is the attraction? Freddy is a gentleman, treats her kindly, loves her
unaffectedly, and is unlikely to dominate Eliza in any way. And marry Freddy is exactly
what Eliza did.
Eliza and Freddy had difficulties, but they were economic, not romantic. Freddy’s family
kept up the appearances of their former wealth with “an air of gentility,” but they were
really quite poor. Freddy had no occupation and no education to support Eliza. Eliza’s
Created by Expeditionary Learning, on behalf of Public Consulting Group, Inc.
© Public Consulting Group, Inc., with a perpetual license granted to Expeditionary
Learning Outward Bound, Inc.
NYS Common Core ELA Curriculum • G7:M2B:U2:L11 • June 2014 •
9

GRADE 7: MODULE 2B: UNIT 2: LESSON 11
father, having come into sudden and strange wealth, refused to support the couple and
add to his growing financial burdens. Colonel Pickering alone came to the rescue.