Quote 1
THE NOTE TAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession; also my hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby! You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets. (1.118)
Here, Higgins shows that speech can be regarded as a science and used as a tool.
Quote 2
THE NOTE TAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. (1.125)
Here, however, he invests speech with spiritual and cultural implications; English should be respected, he argues, is important because it is the language of great artists, and a gift from God.
Quote 3
THE NOTE TAKER. You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. That's the sort of thing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I do genuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on Miltonic lines. (1.129)
Again, Higgins displays a sort of ambivalence about language. He treats it as a tool for social advancement, a suitable subject for scientific inquiry, and a medium for artistic expression.
Quote 4
HIGGINS [confidently] Oh no: I think not. If there's any trouble he shall have it with me, not I with him. And we are sure to get something interesting out of him.
PICKERING. About the girl?
HIGGINS. No. I mean his dialect. (2.206-9)
Higgins's understanding of language leads him to treat certain people less as human beings than as test subjects
Quote 5
[To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter] Here! what are you sniggering at?
FREDDY. The new small talk. You do it so awfully well.
LIZA. If I was doing it proper, what was you laughing at? [To Higgins] Have I said anything I oughtn't? (3.122)
Here, Shaw demonstrates how easily language can be misinterpreted. What would seem like normal speech on the corner of Tottenham Court Road becomes novel and humorous in a new context.
Quote 6
HIGGINS. As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants. I'm worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot. (3.221)
Just as he does in Act 1, Higgins associates the act of speech with the soul, the uniquely human spirit. Here, however, he also seems to make little distinction between the physical parts used in the act of speaking and the soul.
Quote 7
HIGGINS. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.
LIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.
HIGGINS. I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you. (5.209-11)
It seems strange that Higgins should say this, given that he associates the soul so closely with speech.
Quote 8
THE NOTE TAKER. Oh yes. Quite a fat one. This is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish Town with 80 pounds a year, and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand. They want to drop Kentish Town; but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths. Now I can teach them— (1.120)
Moving up in society can require a complete transformation; money, it seems, can't buy everything.
Quote 9
PICKERING. We're always talking Eliza.
HIGGINS. Teaching Eliza.
PICKERING. Dressing Eliza.
MRS. HIGGINS. What!
HIGGINS. Inventing new Elizas. (3.226-244)
Pickering and Higgins, caught up in the process of "inventing new Elizas," seem to have forgotten that she is a human being just as they are.
Quote 10
HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed. (4.89)
Higgins, so used to being in control, is disappointed and frustrated to find himself losing hold of his emotions. He, the transformer, has become the transformed, if only momentarily.
Quote 11
HIGGINS. If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's. (5.191)
In claiming that he can't change his own nature, Higgins complicates his own claims about change and transformation; if he can't change his nature, we have to wonder, how can he really understand how to change someone else's?
Quote 12
HIGGINS. Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were like a millstone round my neck. Now you're a tower of strength: a consort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors together instead of only two men and a silly girl. (5.265)
Higgins acts as though he were waiting for Eliza's final act of defiance the whole the time; it is hard to say, however, whether his confidence is as great as he makes it seem.
Quote 13
HIGGINS. Pickering: shall we ask this baggage to sit down or shall we throw her out of the window? (2.30)
Judging Eliza by her slovenly appearance, Higgins treats Eliza like an object instead of a human being. His comment is no doubt sarcastic, but it tells us something about his attitude toward women.
Quote 14
HIGGINS. Oh, pay her whatever is necessary: put it down in the housekeeping book. [Impatiently] What on earth will she want with money? She'll have her food and her clothes. She'll only drink if you give her money.
LIZA [turning on him] Oh you are a brute. It's a lie: nobody ever saw the sign of liquor on me. [She goes back to her chair and plants herself there defiantly]. (2.121-122)
Higgins stereotypes Eliza as a poor person and simply assumes that she has a drinking problem.
Quote 15
HIGGINS. What! That thing! Sacred, I assure you. [Rising to explain] You see, she'll be a pupil; and teaching would be impossible unless pupils were sacred. I've taught scores of American millionairesses how to speak English: the best looking women in the world. I'm seasoned. They might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of wood. It's— (2.165)
Not only has Higgins come to view his clients as objects rather than human beings, he even seems to have lost something of his own identity in the process. There is another interesting interpretation, however: a block of wood, like a canvas, is a medium for artistic expression. He, of course, is paid to shape his clients, but this suggests that he, himself, could also be subject to the same process.
Quote 16
HIGGINS. You know, Pickering, that woman has the most extraordinary ideas about me. Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never been able to feel really grown-up and tremendous, like other chaps. And yet she's firmly persuaded that I'm an arbitrary overbearing bossing kind of person. I can't account for it. (2.197)
Higgins admits that he sees himself as a sort of child, still in the process of growing, an impression which Shaw confirms in his initial description. At the same time, he is unwilling to acknowledge certain other highly visible aspects of his personality.
Quote 17
HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they come. (2.86)
Higgins is so quickly wrapped up (pun not intended) in his project, that he immediately starts to treat her as an object, raw material for his designs.
Quote 18
HIGGINS. Listen, Eliza. I think you said you came in a taxi.
LIZA. Well, what if I did? I've as good a right to take a taxi as anyone else.
HIGGINS. You have, Eliza; and in future you shall have as many taxis as you want. You shall go up and down and round the town in a taxi every day. Think of that, Eliza. (2.140-142)
Higgins takes a strange pleasure in tempting Eliza, as if he is scared she will run away. It seems as though he may be attached to her long before he pleads for her to stay at Wimpole Street.
Quote 19
HIGGINS. [After listening to Doolittle] Pickering: if we listen to this man another minute, we shall have no convictions left. (2.284)
Higgins, himself an expert in language, acknowledges the (sometimes dangerous) power of language and rhetoric.
Quote 20
HIGGINS [to Pickering as they go out together] Let's take her to the Shakespear exhibition at Earls Court.
PICKERING. Yes: let's. Her remarks will be delicious.
HIGGINS. She'll mimic all the people for us when we get home. (3.262-264)
Often, Higgins and Pickering do not seem to treat her like a human being. Her remarkable abilities are simply a source of entertainment for them.