How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Line). Every time a character talks counts as one line, even if what they say turns into a long monologue.
Quote #1
PICKERING. Higgins: I'm interested. What about the ambassador's garden party? I'll say you're the greatest teacher alive if you make that good. I'll bet you all the expenses of the experiment you can't do it. And I'll pay for the lessons.
LIZA. Oh, you are real good. Thank you, Captain.
HIGGINS [tempted, looking at her] It's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low—so horribly dirty—
LIZA [protesting extremely] Ah—ah—ah—ah—ow—ow—oooo!!! I ain't dirty: I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did. (2.76-9)
Higgins's motives for helping Eliza do not seem to spring from compassion, but the skills he agrees to teach her are certainly intended to help her prosper.
Quote #2
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 #3
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 #4
MRS. PEARCE [patiently] I think you'd better let me speak to the girl properly in private. I don't know that I can take charge of her or consent to the arrangement at all. Of course I know you don't mean her any harm; but when you get what you call interested in people's accents, you never think or care what may happen to them or you. Come with me, Eliza. (2.152)
On the other hand, Mrs. Pearce suggests that, under certain circumstances, Higgins's manipulation is inadvertent, and that he is even capable of losing control, of manipulating himself.
Quote #5
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 #6
MRS. HIGGINS. You silly boy, of course she's not presentable. She's a triumph of your art and of her dressmaker's; but if you suppose for a moment that she doesn't give herself away in every sentence she utters, you must be perfectly cracked about her. (3.203)
Mrs. Higgins, like Mrs. Pearce, seems to agree that Higgins can get carried where his "art" is concerned. He seems unable to acknowledge how artificial Eliza's behavior is.
Quote #7
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.
Quote #8
PICKERING [stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It's been a long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the opera! Rather too much of a good thing. But you've won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh? (5.8)
Trick, indeed. Higgins and Pickering talk about Eliza as if she were a pet, a performing animal.
Quote #9
LIZA. Oh! if I only COULD go back to my flower basket! I should be independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did you take my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I'm a slave now, for all my fine clothes. (5.231)
Eliza is not, of course, literally enslaved. And Higgins has no intention of chaining her up. Her training, however, makes her unable to go back to her old ways. She is no longer being manipulated actively; rather, the effects of the manipulation are unshakeable.
Quote #10
LIZA. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You can't take away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That's done you, Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don't care that [snapping her fingers] for your bullying and your big talk. I'll advertize it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself. (5.262)
By the end, Eliza seems to have learned a thing or two about manipulation and control from her teacher. Still, when she turns the tables, he tries to turn them right back.