Alvarez Cava, Salvador

Erasmus
CM Littérature L3
6 Mars 2006

Do The Taming of the Shrew and Pygmalion have happy endings?

When approaching to a literary work, many readers expect that their reading

would end in a satisfactory, cheerful situation for the protagonists. They hope not

to find a tragedy at the end of the work, something that drastically changes the

evolution of the plot. However, those turning points, the more they are next to the

end, the more effect and deep impression leave in their readers. Endings are

basic for the final message that the work tries to teach. In these two Dramatic

works, The Taming of the Shrew and Pygmalion, this is precisely what can be

found. Their endings are contradictory, opposed to the general development of

the plot. They are open and there can be more than one interpretation, opposed

between them by the way. The reader cannot guess which one is the correct

interpretation. The opening question of this dissertation is so important because

their final acts radically change the point of view about the characters, the action

and the message. Until then, the reader had had another conception about the

work.

A happy ending can be explained as the correct and appropriate ending of a

plot. It seems that most literary works tend to finish like that. Nevertheless, if it is

finally agreed that these two plays have a happy ending, they would not follow the

traditional canon in literature.

 The question that raises here can be strikingly shocking; do The Taming of

the Shrew and Pygmalion have happy endings? And why are so important their

endings? Normally, question like those are not substantial enough to write a

dissertation about them, but in this case, it is so important that even sometimes

critics do not agree in their theories regarding to this theme in these plays.

First, I will talk about Katrina’s ending in The Taming of the Shrew. Her

evolution is so surprising that breaks with the image she had shown throughout all

the play. Afterwards, I will comment on Eliza’s evolution and final situation in

Pygmalion. Eliza puzzles the readers with her violent verbal reaction at the end of

the play. Finally, I will compare those two endings, pointing out their lights and

shadows.

Katrina is a rebel, an independent woman. She behaves ill-temperedly, and

nobody can verbally defeat her. However, when Petruchio arrives,

it seems he can give her an answer to each insult. They get married and the

“taming” process starts. Finally, she is defeated. After all this, in the Act V scene

II, the end of the story takes place.

Having being treated so badly, Katrina reacts in such an unexpectedly

way. She has lost all her strength, and it is due to her submission that it seems

impossible that at the end, this story could have a happy ending. Anybody cannot

be happy and repressed at the same time.

 One the one hand, Katrina seems completely happy. Perhaps she is so glad

and so much in love that she will resist his cruelty and harsh behaviours just only

for love. In the Act IV scene V there is a dialogue where Petruchio tries to prove if

Kate has learnt who the master is. It is a comic passage where she just affirms

what her husband says. She accepts that all he says will be truth “And be it moon

or sun or what you please / And if you please to call it a rush-candle / Henceforth I

vow it shall be so for me”. She is totally pleased to do and say what his husband

wants.

On the other hand, by accepting her fate, it could seem impossible for the

reader to accept that for Katrina this is a happy ending. She has suffered a lot and

the only thing she can do is to submit his husband. It is not believable if it is taken

into account Katrina’s past actions.

Nevertheless, another theory could be that this final result is what Katrina

has always wanted, a man able to dominate her. This is a very male chauvinist

theory, but very suitable for that historical period. She needed a husband to

respect. Kate always wanted to be married and at last she does, she had to be

tamed, and the one able to tame her has become her husband. It can be said that

it is a happy ending for Kate, as she claims in her final speech, Act V scene II.

Everything that a lady can desire it is fulfilled by his husband. She reproaches to

the other wives their harsh behaviour “When they are bound to serve, love, and

obey”.
 Moreover, other conception of this as a happy ending emerges when

reading in deep analysis Katrina’s final long speech in Act V scene II. Perhaps

she has understood that the only way to do what she really wants is to present a

façade. Apparently, she has been tamed, but in her speech there are some

expressions of total submission that sound a bit hyperbolic, exaggerated. For

example, the strongly repetitive use of “thy”, highlighting the idea of belonging to

them, that leads her to claim that “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, /

Thy head, thy sovereign,”. If the author is playing with the irony and sarcasm, this

can be interpreted as an advice from Kate to her mates, that is, she can be telling

them that if they apparently are subdued to their husbands, they later could do

whatever they want.

In our second play, the female protagonist’s end is also a bit difficult to

understand. Once she has become what supposedly she wanted to be, she rebels

against Higgins, his tutor and supposed future couple.

At first sight, Pygmalion could have ended in Act III, with a triumphing Eliza,

equalled to a princess. This could have been the perfect traditional happy ending.

However, in the following Act, all this happiness is destroyed. Eliza expects a little

bit of respect from Higgins, but he is so fascinated by “his” triumph that Eliza does

not exist for him. He is a selfish character and unable to change. He has made the

greatest change in her, but it is something impossible for him.

On one hand, Eliza has become an independent woman who has learnt how

to survive in society from the first time that Pickering called her “Miss Doolittle”
she started to learn self-respect, the first step towards her transformation.  As she

says in Act V, the real difference between a lady and a flower girl is “not how she

behaves but how she is treated.”  So to Higgins, she says, she will always be a

flower girl, but to Pickering, she will be a lady.  Eliza is also able to confront

Higgins, by using his own weapons against him by saying that she will survive by

teaching phonetics.  Eliza ends Act V as a free woman that marries Freddy and

tries to do whatever she wants.

However, this same circumstance reveals that the end is not as happy as it

tried to be in appearance. If the only independence possible for Eliza is marrying

Freddy or some other man, her social status and independence are fictional.

Moreover, Eliza’s problem is that in her society a woman, has not many economic

opportunities, her ability to earn some money to live is made more difficult. For

these reasons, it cannot be argued that the marriage between Freddy and Eliza is

a “happy ending”. It is more a marriage of convenience.

  The author plays at the end of this play with the literary tradition of the

protagonists quarrelling but finally marrying. The marriage is the “happy ending”

that everyone expects. Nevertheless, instead of declaring his “love” Higgins says

in Act V that the three of them (Eliza, Higgins, and Pickering) could stay in their

house together as “three bachelors instead of two men and a silly girl.” He avoids

recognising he is attracted to Eliza; but his interests in knowing to whom she is

going to marry and his desire to control Eliza and to have influence over her

actions shows the readers a different point of view. As a consequence, the ideal
ending is destroyed by the selfishness of this character. According to this, the idea

of the happy ending is not possible.

The author also plays with the fact that name of the play is borrowed from

the Greek myth of Pygmalion y Galatea. In this myth, everything ends in a happy

ending, so the readers’ expectations are a bit deceived when at the end of the

play there is not a marriage between Higgins and Eliza.

Our two feminine protagonists, Katrina and Eliza, seem to represent with

their fate the “happy ending” of their plays. Katrina begins her play as a rebel,

independent woman, and ends it submitted to her husband and loses her dignity.

Eliza begins as an active character, but immediately becomes a passive one. It is

in the end when she shows her strength and her intentions, she recovers her

dignity. Their history can be compared as a “taming” process (Katrina) and an

“awakening” process (Eliza), the two sides of the same coin.

However, I think that neither The Taming of the Shrew nor Pygmalion have a

happy ending.

The Taming of the Shrew represents at the end the result of the war of

sexes. Its ideal of happiness in marriage is either the superiority of the husband,

represented here by Petruchio and his taming process over Katrina, or the

feminine picaresque in order to do whatever she wants, theory which was

explained by the irony in Katrina’s final speech. This marriage has no future, their
love is not trustful. This ending is so double-faced that the audience cannot

certainly know if they have to feel glad or sad at the end of the play.

In Pygmalion the end is even more confusing. Eliza’s ending by paying

attention to Higgins ridiculous exigencies, and the strange epilogue appearing

after all, reveals the audience that the play could not have a happy ending. The

same author is contradicting the ending with this little sequel. In a deeper

analysis, there are signs that show the impossibility of the happy ending, as Eliza

new independence, Higgins inability of change, or even Freddy’s economic

position.

Although some people can expect and interpret that those plays have happy

endings, I cannot say but that the signs the plays show to a careful reader

advance in a certain way that the consequences of the characters’ behaviours

would never lead to a traditional fairy tale happy ending.