Signet Essay Contest Winner 2015: Maggie Foster

On the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, an indigent young woman in a soiled dress sells flowers in a feeble attempt to improve her squalid lifestyle. From the top of the steps, a pompous family observes her with scorn, and a charitable gentleman buys a flower. But a fourth individual stands on the steps, detachedly taking notes on the girl’s accent, his pitiless ears focusing more on her elocution than her desperation. This man, Henry Higgins, epitomizes the impersonal “humanitarian concern” of aloof intellectuals– a concern too scientific to tangibly affect others’ lives. Although Higgins espouses a love for humanity, his flagrant disregard for individual feelings proves this “love” to be only empty rhetoric.

Throughout the play, Higgins treats Eliza as a mere scientific specimen, disregarding the hopes and feelings that comprise her humanity. As he improves her elocution, he gushes, “But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into quite a different human being by creating a new speech for her,” (423) defining Eliza exclusively by her empirical worth. Emotions are inexorably intertwined with all human ventures, and teachers must nurture positive attitudes within their students in order to achieve educational success. However, Higgins’ actions while training Eliza only inspire insecurity and bitterness. He utterly disregards her feelings, referring to her as a “guttersnipe” and a “squashed cabbage leaf” (446). His adept scientific methods work wonders on Eliza’s elocution, but his gaucherie leaves her starved of the most fundamental goal of all human ventures- love and confidence.

While Higgins treats Eliza unkindly during her lessons, his disregard for her after improving her elocution even more dramatically augments her insecurities, fostering deep confusion and disappointment in the wake of her training. After Higgins gleans his selfish reward from Eliza’s work, he remarks that his concern for her “[is] over and done with,” (429) effectively terminating their relationship. Eliza deeply values her oratorical improvement and respects Higgins as a friend and teacher, so Higgins’ nonchalant disregard for her accomplishments deeply wounds her. She cries to Higgins, “You don’t care. I know you don’t care. You wouldn’t care if I was dead. I’m nothing to you— not so much as them slippers,” (431) and runs from Higgins’ home to escape his cutting remarks. Although Eliza eventually regains self-confidence and happiness, Higgins’ work destroys her confidence, thus proving his impersonal method’s incapability of producing lasting human improvement.

Despite these failings, Higgins regards himself as a principled and moral gentleman devoted to humanity. He describes his elocutionary work as “filling the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul,” (423) blindly ignoring his flagrant disrespect for the individuals comprising the class that he so deeply “loves.” When Eliza highlights the discrepancy between Higgins’ ideals and actions, he responds, “The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners… but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another,” (451-452). While this justification seems judicious and unprejudiced, it only further proves Higgins’ immorality; unkindness that transcends social class does not equal morality— disrespect is disrespect, no matter the equity with which it is dealt. Philosophical musings do not produce love; “love is patient, love is kind… it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking.” (Saul of Tarsus) Higgins’ moral reflection does not create empathy for the downtrodden; it does not make him less judgmental or more charitable. He simply fabricates his “love” to justify his actions. Moral musings alone do not create tangible kindness or accomplishments, and Higgins’ “ethics” are empty.

As any student of human nature understands, the immoral intelligent always hide their iniquities behind a facade of lofty ideals, justifying their transgressions with a professed pursuit of the “greater good.” Josef Mengele, Osama bin Laden, even Adolf Hitler- all tyrants justify their evils with seemingly worthy scientific or societal goals. While Higgins’ sins are obviously far more benign than those of the aforementioned individuals, they stem from the same disregard for individual humanity. They prove that almost all well-intentioned ventures only create pain and suffering unless their owners condition them with love and emotion.

In the industrial setting of “Pygmalion”— and modern America— society has become obsessed with this same scientific material improvement. Individuals work to achieve abstract utilitarian aims void of concern for individual needs, and their ventures stagnate at the limit of reason. Humanitarian organizations research the roots of societal ills and point to empirical data that supports their efforts’ effectiveness, overlooking the pathos necessary to improve society; the wealthy consider themselves charitable for giving money to the impoverished, even as they simultaneously disdain the “lazy” and “dirty” individuals in the poor part of town. Monetary donations and scientific innovations may temporarily mitigate society’s problems, but only kindness can transform individual lives. For the downtrodden girl standing on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral— and the lonely faces that permeate the world— they do not need shallow donations or scientific efforts— they need love.