Pygmalion was an artist who created a statue of a woman of great beauty and then fell in love with "her." The goddess of love Aphrodite took pity on him and changed her into a real woman (sort of an antique, feminist Pinnocchio).
The analogy fails to "stick," however, in that in Shaw's work Higgins does not fall for Eliza (Freddy does instead), even though there is indeed a battle of the sexes going on. Moreover, when Eliza is transformed, she no longer finds her place in life, being not really part of one world (social class) or the other. The fate of Eliza is also not conclusive; we can imagine that by her resiliant nature she is indeed destined to do more than simply "fetch" Higgins' slippers - but what?
Some producers of the play revindicated the right to change the ending of the play to be more "Hollywoodian," but Shaw's original version allows no margin for romance between Higgins and Eliza. Thus the allusion to the myth concerns Eliza's transformation from a simple flower girl into a lady, but the analogy stops there.
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