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1. Summary It is midnight when Higgins, Pickering, and Eliza enter the Wimpole Street laboratory, all resplendent in evening dress. The two men are talking with some animation, while Eliza is “brooding and silent.” Higgins and Pickering discuss how tired they are and how glad they are that the experiment is over. It has been a triumphant success for Higgins and, although Pickering gives Eliza some credit for the way in which she carried off the imposture, Higgins does not seem to register that she played any role at all. Pickering confesses to having enjoyed some of the day’s social events, but Higgins is relentlessly vehement about his boredom. He inveighs against the stupidity of society people, who spend all their time obsessing over trivial class distinctions yet do not have the wit to spot the impostor in their midst. He concludes that “the silly people don’t know their own silly business.”
Having decided to go to bed, Higgins starts hunting for his slippers. Eliza, who has been ominously quiet, though the stage directions describe her mounting fury, finds the slippers and throws them at him, displaying her anger at the way he is ignoring her after she won his bet for him. Higgins expresses astonishment when she tells him the reason for her resentment. He is entirely unsympathetic and arrogantly responds, “YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! I won it.”
Higgins has mentioned before (in act 3 particularly) that Eliza is a particularly apt and skilful pupil with a remarkable gift for mimicry, but he has never given her credit for what he regards as his triumph in the experiment. Eliza knows this, and it brings her anger to boiling point by this stage in the play. When she and Higgins begin to argue, however, it transpires that this lack of appreciation was only the trigger for her emotion. She has other, deeper concerns—the first of which is her future, which Higgins has continually dismissed as a matter beneath his concern. What is to become of her now that the experiment is over? What can she do now that she is a poor girl with the accent and manners of an upper-class lady? Higgins is still quite uninterested in the subject, expressing that she is now free and can do whatever she likes, as he can. He expects her to share his relief that the experiment is over. When Eliza persists, he makes some suggestions in a vague and desultory manner. He says she might marry, patronizingly telling her that she should not find it too difficult to acquire a husband, since she is “not bad-looking” and since most men might find her quite an attractive companion.
Higgins’s obvious boredom and condescension further enrage Eliza. She responds that even when she was a poor flower girl on Tottenham Court Road, she only sold flowers, not herself, adding, “Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else.” Higgins clearly regards this as melodramatic, remarking that she doesn’t have to marry anyone she doesn’t like. He then suggests that Eliza stick to her original plan of working in a florist’s shop. Colonel Pickering, who has plenty of money, could probably “set [her] up in one.” He points out that six months ago, it was the summit of Eliza’s ambition to have a flower shop of her own. Now she seems to have grander, though ill-defined, goals which only appear to be making her fractious and unhappy.
Eliza’s manners to Higgins become cold and formal. She asks if her clothes belong to her or to Colonel Pickering, since she would not want to be accused of stealing them. She then asks Higgins to take charge of the jewels she is wearing for the same reason. Higgins is hurt and outraged by these words, as Eliza intended. He roughly takes possession of the jewels, and when Eliza hands him a ring he bought for her earlier, he violently hurls it into the fireplace. Eliza thinks, or pretends to think, that he intends to strike her. She shields her face and cries out, “Don’t you hit me.” This infuriates Higgins more than anything else she has said. He tells her that she has wounded him “to the heart” by suggesting that he is capable of such an action.
Eliza retorts that she is glad to have hurt him, as she has now “got a little of her own back.” Higgins regrets having lost his temper with her and moodily goes off to bed, finally observing that he has wasted his “hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of [his] regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe.” Eliza smiles for the first time since the beginning of the scene. She is initially triumphant, but, after Higgins has left, she kneels down to look for the ring he threw away. When she finds it, she does not know what to do and eventually flings it away herself, then goes upstairs “in a tearing rage.”
2. Passages from Act IV 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?
HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn't bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won't have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn't quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed 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. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap.
[ELIZA again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.] [The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.]
HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well--
LIZA. We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?
LIZA. I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me.
HIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] 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! you'll be all right. I must clear off to bed: I'm devilish sleepy. By the way, I came down for something: I forget what it was.
LIZA. Your slippers.
HIGGINS. Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out when she rises and speaks to him].
LIZA. Before you go, sir--
HIGGINS [dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him sir] Eh?
LIZA. Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?
HIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering?
LIZA. He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.
HIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is that the way you feel towards us?
LIZA. I don't want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.
HIGGINS. But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about that in the middle of the night?
LIZA. I want to know what I may take away with me. I don't want to be accused of stealing.
HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn't have said that, Eliza. That shows a want of feeling.
LIZA. I'm sorry. I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful. There can't be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesn't?
HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].
LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? I don't want to run the risk of their being missing.
HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I'd ram them down your ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the chains].
LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the one you bought me in Brighton. 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.
LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad. I've got a little of my own back, anyhow.
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.
LIZA [pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she won't be told by me.
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].
[ELIZA smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins's exit is confused with her own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring.]
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