Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw

He is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings.

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.

Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you’re not bad-looking; it’s quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes — not now, of course, because you’re crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you’re all right and quite yourself, you’re what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand.

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. LIZA. [thrilling with hidden joy] I’m glad. I’ve got a little of my own back, anyhow.

HIGGINS. [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely].

DOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.

have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle class morality.

Let her speak for herself. You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven’t put into her head or a word that I haven’t put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me.

Your calling me Miss Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self-respect for me.

the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.

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.

LIZA. So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no consideration for anyone. But I can do without you: don’t think I can’t. HIGGINS. I know you can. I told you you could.

HIGGINS. You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do without YOU. LIZA. [earnestly] Don’t you try to get round me. You’ll HAVE to do without me. HIGGINS. [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you, Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.

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. [much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I’m a common ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I’m not dirt under your feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I come — came — to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like.

HIGGINS. Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

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.

Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.