Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

by George Bernard Shaw

  HIGGINS Well, Eliza, youve had a bit of your own back, as you call it. Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable ? Or do you want any more?

  LIZA You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with your tempers and fetch and carry for you.

  HIGGINS I havnt said I wanted you back at all.

  LIZA Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?

  HIGGINS About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I cant change my nature; and I dont intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering’s.

  LIZA Thats not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.

  HIGGINS And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.

  LIZA I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman, facing the window]. The same to everybody.

  HIGGINS Just so.

  LIZA Like father.

  HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the comparison at all points, Eliza, it’s quite true that your father is not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously] 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 Amen. You are a born preacher.

  HIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.

  LIZA [with sudden sincerity] I dont care how you treat me. I dont mind your swearing at me. I dont mind a black eye: Ive had one before this. But [standing up and facing him] I wont be passed over.

  HIGGINS Then get out of my way; for I wont stop for you. You talk about me as if I were a motor bus.

  LIZA So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no consideration for anyone. But I can do without you: dont think I cant.

  HIGGINS I know you can. I told you you could.

  LIZA [wounded, getting away from him to the other side of the ottoman with her face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute. You wanted to get rid of me.

  HIGGINS Liar.

  LIZA Thank you. [She sits down with dignity].

  HIGGINS You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do without you.

  LIZA [earnestly] Dont you try to get round me. Youll h a v e 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 cant 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 area 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 dont care a bit for her. And you dont care a bit for me.

  HIGGINS I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask?

  LIZA I wont care for anybody that doesnt care for me.

  HIGGINS Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her Covent Garden pronunciation with professional exactness] s‘yollin voylets [selling violets], isnt it?

  LIZA Dont sneer at me. It’s mean to sneer at me.

  HIGGINS I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesnt become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I dont and wont trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldnt buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetching a man’s slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for youll get nothing else. Youve 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 didnt 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. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

  LIZA I’m no preacher: I dont notice things like that. I notice that you dont notice me.

  HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: youre an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind[230] by spreading them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back or go to the devil: which you please.

  LIZA What am I to come back for?

  HIGGINS [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to her] For the fun of it. Thats why I took you on.

  LIZA [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I dont do everything you want me to?

  HIGGINS Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I dont do everything you want me to.

  LIZA And live with my stepmother?

  HIGGINS Yes, or sell flowers.

  LIZA Oh! if I only c o u l d go back to my flower basket! I should be independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did you take my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I’m a slave now, for all my fine clothes.

  HIGGINS Not a bit. I’ll adopt you as my daughter and settle money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering ?

  LIZA [looking fiercely round at him] I wouldnt marry you if you asked me; and youre nearer my age than what he is.

  HIGGINS [gently] Than he is: not “than what he is.”

  LIZA [losing her temper and rising] I’ll talk as I like.Youre not my teacher now.

  HIGGINS [reflectively] I dont suppose Pickering would, though. Hes as confirmed an old bachelor as I am.

  LIZA Thats not what I want; and dont you think it. Ive always had chaps enough wanting me that way. Freddy Hill writes to me twice and three times a day, sheets and sheets.

  HIGGINS [disagreeably surprised] Damn his impudence! [He recoils and finds himself sitting on his heels].

  LIZA He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me.

  HIGGINS [getting off the ottoman] You have no right to encourage him .

  LIZA Every girl has a right to be loved.

  HIGGINS What! By fools like that?

  LIZA Freddy’s not a fool. And if hes weak and poor and wants me, may be hed make me happier than my betters that bully me and dont want me.

  HIGGINS Can he m a k e anything of you? Thats the point.

  LIZA Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural.

  HIGGINS In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that it?

  LIZA No I dont. Thats not the sort of feeling I want from you. And dont you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I’d liked. Ive 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 [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 Well, of course. Thats just how I feel. And how Pickering feels. Eliza: youre a fool.

  LIZA Thats not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at the writing-table in tears].

  HIGGINS It’s all youll get until you stop being a common idiot. If youre going to be a lady, youll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know dont spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If you cant 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; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep. 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, dont 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 cant appreciate what youve got, youd better get what you can appreciate.

  LIZA [desperate] Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I cant talk to you: you turn everything against me: I’m always in the wrong. But you know very well all the time that youre nothing but a bully. You know I cant 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 couldnt 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 dont 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 hes able to support me.

  HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I’m not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.

  LIZA You think I like you to say that. But I havnt forgot what you said a minute ago; and I wont be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I cant have kindness, I’ll have independence.

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

  LIZA [rising determinedly] I’ll let you see whether I’m dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I’ll go and be a teacher.

  HIGGINS Whatll you teach, in heaven’s name?

  LIZA What you taught me. I’ll teach phonetics.

  HIGGINS Ha! Ha! Ha!

  LIZA I’ll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean.

  HIGGINS [rising in a fury] What! That impostor! that humbug! that toadying ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries ! You take one step in his direction and I’ll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her]. Do you hear?

  LIZA [defiantly non-resistant] Wring away. What do I care? I knew youd strike me some day. [He lets her go, stamping with rage at having forgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that he stumbles back into his seat on the ottoman]. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You cant 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! Thats done you, Henry Higgins, it has. Now I dont 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.

  HIGGINS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But it’s better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isnt it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said I’d make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this.

  LIZA Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I’m not afraid of you, and can do without you.

  HIGGINS Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were like a millstone round my neck. Now youre 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 cant behave himself in church. He makes remarks out loud all the time on the clergyman’s pronunciation.

  LIZA Then I shall not see you again, Professor. Good-bye. [She goes to the door].

  MRS. HIGGINS [coming to HIGGINS] Good-bye, dear.

  HIGGINS Good-bye, mother. [He is about to kiss her, when he recollects something]. Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stil ton cheese, will you? And buy me a pair of reindeer gloves, number eights, and a tie to match that new suit of mine, at Eale & Binman’s. You can choose the color. [His cheerful, careless, vigorous voice shows that he is incorrigible].

  LIZA [disdainfully] Buy them yourself. [She sweeps out].

  MRS. HIGGINS I’m afraid youve spoiled that girl, Henry. But never mind, dear: I’ll buy you the tie and gloves.

  HIGGINS [sunnily] Oh, dont bother. She’ll buy em all right enough. Good-bye.

  They kiss. MRS. HIGGINS runs out. HIGGINS, left alone, rattles his cash in his pocket; chuckles; and disports himself in a highly self-satisfied manner. {59}

  The rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of “happy endings” to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of the transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common enough. Such transfig urations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne[231] set them the example by playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she began by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable, not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine instinct in particular.

  Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was not coquetting: she was announcing a well-considered decision. 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. Her decision will depend a good deal on whether she is really free to choose; and that, again, will depend on her age and income. If she is at the end of her youth, and has no security for her livelihood, she will marry him because she must marry anybody who will provide for her. But at Eliza’s age a good-looking girl d
oes not feel that pressure: she feels free to pick and choose. She is therefore guided by her instinct in the matter. Eliza’s instinct tells her not to marry Higgins. It does not tell her to give him up. It is not in the slightest doubt as to his remaining one of the strongest personal interests in her life. It would be very sorely strained if there was another woman likely to supplant her with him. But as she feels sure of him on that last point, she has no doubt at all as to her course, and would not have any, even if the difference of twenty years in age, which seems so great to youth, did not exist between them.

  As our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion, let us see whether we cannot discover some reason in it. When Higgins excused his indifference to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate old-bachelordom. The case is uncommon only to the extent that remarkable mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This makes him a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of sex if they come at all. The word passion means nothing else to them; and that Higgins could have a passion for phonetics and idealize his mother instead of Eliza, would seem to them absurd and unnatural. Nevertheless, when we look round and see that hardly anyone is too ugly or disagreeable to find a wife or a husband if he or she wants one, whilst many old maids and bachelors are above the average in quality and culture, we cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or aided by parental fascination.