Pygmalion Eliza Doolittle Quotes

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.

Eliza Doolittle

Quote 14

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.

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.