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
THE FLOWER GIRL. [She is no doubt as clean as she can afford to be; but compared to the ladies she is very dirty. Her features are no worse than theirs; but their condition leaves something to be desired; and she needs the services of a dentist]. (1.29)
More than just language separates Eliza from her fellow women; even here, we see that she would be the better off women's equal (at least as far as appearance is concerned), if only given the money to take care of herself
Quote #2
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)
Higgins suggests that being a maid or a shop assistant requires better English than being an aristocrat. Is he joking? Perhaps a little.
Quote #3
DOOLITTLE. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I'm playing straight with you. I ain't pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that's the truth. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you. (2.273)
Doolittle thinks of himself as a different species of poor person; his comments make it clear that there is more to society than an upper, middle, and lower class. There are, it seems, many different classes within each group.
Quote #4
LIZA. I tell you, it's easy to clean up here. Hot and cold water on tap, just as much as you like, there is. Woolly towels, there is; and a towel horse so hot, it burns your fingers. Soft brushes to scrub yourself, and a wooden bowl of soap smelling like primroses. Now I know why ladies is so clean. Washing's a treat for them. Wish they saw what it is for the like of me! (2.303)
It is interesting that we get to see a poor girl experience the comforts of wealth, but we never get to see a wealthier person "see what it's like" for Eliza.
Quote #5
LIZA. I had a good mind to break it. I didn't know which way to look. But I hung a towel over it, I did.
HIGGINS. Over what?
MRS. PEARCE. Over the looking-glass, sir.
HIGGINS. Doolittle: you have brought your daughter up too strictly.
DOOLITTLE. Me! I never brought her up at all, except to give her a lick of a strap now and again. Don't put it on me, Governor. She ain't accustomed to it, you see: that's all. But she'll soon pick up your free-and-easy ways.
LIZA. I'm a good girl, I am; and I won't pick up no free and easy ways. (2.308-313)
Doolittle equates wealth with laziness and wastefulness, and Eliza's own poverty seems to have instilled in her a sense of modesty. She will not so much as look in the mirror.
Quote #6
Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill are the mother and daughter who sheltered from the rain in Covent Garden. The mother is well bred, quiet, and has the habitual anxiety of straitened means. The daughter has acquired a gay air of being very much at home in society: the bravado of genteel poverty. (3.43)
Just as Doolittle occupies his own position within the lower class, Shaw tells us that the Eynsford Hills are part of what might be called the "genteel poor." They are, it would seem, much closer to Mrs. Higgins's level of wealth than to Eliza's, but they are nonetheless in a less than desirable position.
Quote #7
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Mrs. Higgins] You mustn't mind Clara. [Pickering, catching from her lowered tone that this is not meant for him to hear, discreetly joins Higgins at the window]. We're so poor! and she gets so few parties, poor child! She doesn't quite know. [Mrs. Higgins, seeing that her eyes are moist, takes her hand sympathetically and goes with her to the door]. But the boy is nice. Don't you think so? (3.200)
Class distinctions are, we see, changeable. Clara, raised, we assume, in relative wealth, is apparently unaware of her family's changing fortunes.
Quote #8
MRS. HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll.
HIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul. (3.223-224)
Higgins considers his teaching to be a kind of social work. The inability to communicate, he suggests, is at the bottom of man's social issues.
Quote #9
MRS. HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem of what is to be done with her afterwards.
HIGGINS. I don't see anything in that. She can go her own way, with all the advantages I have given her.
MRS. HIGGINS. The advantages of that poor woman who was here just now! The manners and habits that disqualify a fine lady from earning her own living without giving her a fine lady's income! Is that what you mean? (3.4-6)
Mrs. Higgins understands one of the more paradoxical aspects of class: those skills that put a woman of Eliza's stature on the same level as a woman from high society only prevent her from actually sustaining herself, from keeping herself out of poverty.
Quote #10
HIGGINS. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another. (5.197)
Higgins claims that the key to acting correctly is treating all people in the same way, acting as if class distinctions did not exist. He thinks that the only society that matters is the society of human souls, to which all men belong.