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 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 #2
The flower girl enters in state. She has a hat with three ostrich feathers, orange, sky-blue, and red. She has a nearly clean apron, and the shoddy coat has been tidied a little. The pathos of this deplorable figure, with its innocent vanity and consequential air, touches Pickering, who has already straightened himself in the presence of Mrs. Pearce. (2.21)
What seems like an honest attempt at "looking respectable" to Eliza seems merely pitiful to Pickering. Not all transformations are successful, and sometimes the failure to change can be more affecting than success.
Quote #3
[[Doolittle] hurries to the door, anxious to get away with his booty. When he opens it he is confronted with a dainty and exquisitely clean young Japanese lady in a simple blue cotton kimono printed cunningly with small white jasmine blossoms. Mrs. Pearce is with her. He gets out of her way deferentially and apologizes]. Beg pardon, miss.
THE JAPANESE LADY. Garn! Don't you know your own daughter? (2.289-290)
Given the right circumstances, even the most superficial adjustment can lead to a profound and surprising change.
Quote #4
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 #5
LIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me? (4.60)
Having achieved her goal and won the bet, Eliza finds that her metamorphosis has left her confused. Having just "become" something new, she is already afraid of what will come next.
Quote #6
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 #7
Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little work-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much taken aback to rise.
LIZA. How do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite well?
HIGGINS [choking] Am I— [He can say no more]. (5.115-117)
Here, once again, Higgins is stunned to find that his "creation" is now able to control and change her manner with ease. That said, Shaw's use of the word "exhibition" casts the truth of that change in doubt.
Quote #8
Eliza. You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will. (5.143)
Ironically, Eliza argues that the man who taught her to be a lady will never see her or treat her as one. She also suggests that transformation is subjective, that not all people will acknowledge all changes.
Quote #9
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 #10
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.