Pygmalion Theme As Transformative Process

Within the last two weeks, I watched the film version of the Pygmalion theme, the first non-musical version (with Leslie Howard as Professor Higgins and Wendy Hiller as his pupil) and the musical version, "My Fair Lady." (with Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins and Audrey Hepburn as his pupil). I was delighted with both versions. The theme dates back to the time of the early Greeks (I could not locate this connection but will keep looking). As a teacher, one of my motivates is to re-create my pupils into more literate and, hopefully, wiser persons, a goal I hold for myself. Perhaps this theme of teacher-pupil is universal and it is certainly a compelling one.
In the film versions, the professor bets one of his colleagues that he can transform his pupil, a flower girl, into a princess. Working on her phonetics and her voice quality, he devotes his life for the next few months to acheiving this goal and winning his bet. His pupil, in turn, has her goal, to become a lady, to leave her life as a flower girl. In the end, they both achieve their goal not without alot of sparing in between. It does have a happy ending. I regard these two films as both wonderfully entertaining and also instructive - it makes me glad to have been fortunate enoght to have become a teacher whose joy is to be part of this transformative process.