Day 22: Double Take

My next grouping of favorite stories are variations on the "ugly duckling" story. Each story is mainly about a woman who is valuable and beautiful, but not recognized as such early on in the story, especially by the one who will fall in love with her by the end. They are all fairy tales, with the unrealistic premise that a few speech lessons or a stunning formal gown would be all it takes to bring a rough-around-the-edges woman to her full potential. But there is something irrestistible about these stories, as you can tell by the popularity of reality "makeover" shows on TV. The moment of the big reveal, someone looking fabulous, and all the family members or formerly uninterested men doing a double take, with jaws dropped in wonder. There is often a staircase scene to add extra drama to the grand entrance.

The musical My Fair Lady is a classic example of this story. A street vendor girl with no understanding of high class vowels or polite manners is taken in by a professor of linguistics. He sees her as a challenging experiment in language and pronunciation and usage, and I think his success with her is motivated by a bet with his friend. He is impatient and rude with her and forgets often to treat her with human kindness. But of course, at the night of the big ball, she has been transformed, and the professor sees her for the first as a desirable woman and realizes, almost too late, that he has fallen in love with her. "Almost" is the key word of course.