Will continually pushes Lou towards achieving more for herself than the average life symbolized by the books she reads. Moyes also seems to be making a subtle complaint towards people who might assume that her book, because it’s in the romance genre, is nothing more than “chick-lit.” Yet Lou also asserts that she is not just Will’s project, as Eliza Doolittle is for Henry Higgins, the protagonist of
My Fair Lady. Will elevates even that analogy, going back to the George Bernard Shaw play
Pygmalion that
My Fair Lady was based on. Again, Lou has to stretch her own level of comfort in high society so that Will can also stretch himself.