“ HIGGINS. Well, of course. That’s just how I feel. And how Pickering feels. Eliza: you’re a fool. LIZA. That’s not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at the writing-table in tears] . HIGGINS. It’s all you’ll get until you stop being a common idiot. If you’re going to be a lady, you’ll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don’t spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If you can’t stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work til you are more a brute than a human being ”
Summary
Quotes from Pygmalion (Bernard Shaw)
“ HIGGINS. I don’t want to, Eliza. Do you? LIZA. Not me. I don’t want never to see him again, I don’t. He’s a disgrace to me, he is, collecting dust, instead of working at his trade. PICKERING. What is his trade, Eliza? LIZA. Talking money out of other people’s pockets into his own. His proper trade’s a navvy; and he works at it sometimes too—for exercise—and earns good money at it. Ain’t you going to call me Miss Doolittle any more? PICKERING. I beg your pardon, Miss Doolittle. ”
“ HIGGINS. Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her Covent Garden pronunciation with professional exactness] s’yollin voylets [selling violets] , isn’t it? LIZA. Don’t sneer at me. It’s mean to sneer at me. HIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn’t become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don’t and won’t trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn’t buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. ”
“ PICKERING. You’re certainly not going to turn her head with flattery, Higgins. MRS. PEARCE [uneasy] Oh, don’t say that, sir: there’s more ways than one of turning a girl’s head; and nobody can do it better than Mr. Higgins, though he may not always mean it. I do hope, sir, you won’t encourage him to do anything foolish. HIGGINS [becoming excited as the idea grows on him] What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day. I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe. ”
“ HIGGINS. Well, here we are, anyhow! [He sits down on the ottoman next Mrs. Eynsford Hill, on her left.] And now, what the devil are we going to talk about until Eliza comes? MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: you are the life and soul of the Royal Society’s soirees; but really you’re rather trying on more commonplace occasions. HIGGINS. Am I? Very sorry. [Beaming suddenly] I suppose I am, you know. [Uproariously] Ha, ha! MISS EYNSFORD HILL [who considers Higgins quite eligible matrimonially] I sympathize. I haven’t any small talk. If people would only be frank and say what they really think! ”
“ 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. MRS. PEARCE. Mr. Higgins: you’re tempting the girl. It’s not right. She should think of the future. HIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you haven’t any future to think of. ”
“ HIGGINS. In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that it? LIZA. No I don’t. That’s not the sort of feeling I want from you. And don’t you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I’d liked. I’ve seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute. HIGGINS. Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling about? ”
“ 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. LIZA. Oh, you ARE a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you don’t care a bit for her. ”
“ Isn’t that so, Colonel Pickering? PICKERING. I believe so. DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That’s the tragedy of it, ma’am. It’s easy to say chuck it; but I haven’t the nerve. Which one of us has? We’re all intimidated. Intimidated, ma’am: that’s what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. ”
“ You’ve had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog’s tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I’ll slam the door in your silly face. LIZA. What did you do it for if you didn’t care for me? HIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job. LIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me. HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things. ”
“ It is astonishing how much Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole Street in spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable that though she never nags her husband, and frankly loves the Colonel as if she were his favorite daughter, she has never got out of the habit of nagging Higgins that was established on the fatal night when she won his bet for him. She snaps his head off on the faintest provocation, or on none. He no longer dares to tease her by assuming an abysmal inferiority of Freddy’s mind to his own. He storms and bullies and derides ”
“ Oh, it’s a fine life, the life of the gutter. It’s real: it’s warm: it’s violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate. ”
“ Now here is a last opportunity for romance. Would you not like to be assured that the shop was an immense success, thanks to Eliza’s charms and her early business experience in Covent Garden? Alas! the truth is the truth: the shop did not pay for a long time, simply because Eliza and her Freddy did not know how to keep it. True, Eliza had not to begin at the very beginning: she knew the names and prices of the cheaper flowers; and her elation was unbounded when she found that Freddy, like all youths educated at cheap, pretentious, and thoroughly inefficient schools, knew a little Latin. ”
“ HIGGINS [coming off the piano restlessly] Oh, Lord knows! I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind. [He sits down on the bench at the keyboard] . So here I am, a confirmed old bachelor, and likely to remain so. PICKERING [rising and standing over him gravely] Come, Higgins! You know what I mean. If I’m to be in this business I shall feel responsible for that girl. ”
“ HIGGINS [taking out his pocket book and coming between Doolittle and the piano] This is irresistible. Let’s give him ten. [He offers two notes to the dustman] . DOOLITTLE. No, Governor. She wouldn’t have the heart to spend ten; and perhaps I shouldn’t neither. Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what I ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less. PICKERING. Why don’t you marry that missus of yours? I rather draw the line at encouraging that sort of immorality. ”
“ She knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The very scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he had become used to having her there, and dependent on her for all sorts of little services, and that he should miss her if she went away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the Colonel to say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certainty that she is “no more to him than them slippers”, yet she has a sense, too, that his indifference is deeper than the infatuation of commoner souls. She is immensely interested in him. ”
“ HIGGINS. Oh! Men of the world, are we? You’d better go, Mrs. Pearce. MRS. PEARCE. I think so, indeed, sir. [She goes, with dignity] . PICKERING. The floor is yours, Mr. Doolittle. DOOLITTLE [to Pickering] I thank you, Governor. [To Higgins, who takes refuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his visitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him] . Well, the truth is, I’ve taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if you want the girl, I’m not so set on having her back home again but what I might be open to an arrangement. ”
“ Tosh, Eliza. Don’t you insult human relations by dragging all this cant about buying and selling into it. You needn’t marry the fellow if you don’t like him. LIZA. What else am I to do? HIGGINS. Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist’s shop? Pickering could set you up in one: he’s lots of money. [Chuckling] He’ll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it the millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! ”
“ HIGGINS [dogmatically, lifting himself on his hands to the level of the piano, and sitting on it with a bounce] Well, I haven’t. I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you’re driving at another. PICKERING. At what, for example? ”
“ HIGGINS [walking up and down the room, rattling his keys and his cash in his pockets] You know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling, not as a simple shilling, but as a percentage of this girl’s income, it works out as fully equivalent to sixty or seventy guineas from a millionaire. PICKERING. How so? HIGGINS. Figure it out. A millionaire has about 150 pounds a day. She earns about half-a-crown. ”
“ HIGGINS. Yes: that’s what drives me mad: the silly people don’t know their own silly business. [Rising] However, it’s over and done with; and now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow. Eliza’s beauty becomes murderous. PICKERING. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it’s been a great occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes] . HIGGINS [following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at the door] Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for me in the morning: I’ll take tea. [He goes out] . ”
“ PICKERING. But why did you bring her luggage if you intended to take her away? DOOLITTLE. Have I said a word about taking her away? Have I now? HIGGINS [determinedly] You’re going to take her away, double quick. [He crosses to the hearth and rings the bell] . DOOLITTLE [rising] No, Governor. Don’t say that. I’m not the man to stand in my girl’s light. Here’s a career opening for her, as you might say; and— Mrs. Pearce opens the door and awaits orders. HIGGINS. Mrs. Pearce: this is Eliza’s father. He has come to take her away. Give her to him. ”
“ PICKERING. You’ve never been broken in properly to the social routine. [Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy dipping into it occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a great success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice because Eliza was doing it so well. You see, lots of the real people can’t do it at all: they’re such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There’s always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well. ”
“ Clara’s snobbery went bang. Life suddenly began to move with her. Without knowing how or why, she began to make friends and enemies. Some of the acquaintances to whom she had been a tedious or indifferent or ridiculous affliction, dropped her: others became cordial. To her amazement she found that some “quite nice” people were saturated with Wells, and that this accessibility to ideas was the secret of their niceness. ”
“ Pearce. MRS. PEARCE. That’s her own business, not yours, Mr. Higgins. HIGGINS. Well, when I’ve done with her, we can throw her back into the gutter; and then it will be her own business again; so that’s all right. LIZA. Oh, you’ve no feeling heart in you: you don’t care for nothing but yourself [she rises and takes the floor resolutely] . Here! I’ve had enough of this. I’m going [making for the door] . You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you ought. HIGGINS [snatching a chocolate cream from the piano, his eyes suddenly beginning to twinkle with mischief] Have some chocolates, Eliza. ”
“ 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. Mrs. Higgins returns, dressed for the wedding. Eliza instantly becomes cool and elegant. MRS. HIGGINS. The carriage is waiting, Eliza. Are you ready? LIZA. Quite. Is the Professor coming? MRS. HIGGINS. Certainly not. He can’t behave himself in church. He makes remarks out loud all the time on the clergyman’s pronunciation. ”
“ When a bachelor interests, and dominates, and teaches, and becomes important to a spinster, as Higgins with Eliza, she always, if she has character enough to be capable of it, considers very seriously indeed whether she will play for becoming that bachelor’s wife, especially if he is so little interested in marriage that a determined and devoted woman might capture him if she set herself resolutely to do it. ”
“ I don’t want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Don’t you hit me. HIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart. ”
“ You know I can’t go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn’t bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father’s. But don’t you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down. I’ll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he’s able to support me. HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. ”
