Important scenes in Pygmalion

"What am I fit for?"

Liza and Higgins return from their party, Liza has been mistaken as a dutchess and both Pickering and Higgens discuss how happy they are to have taught Liza and won their bet.

Liza, however, having won the bet for the men is not happy. She feels defeated and soon realizes what both men had been preparing her for. What now, she thinks to herself.

Here you can watch the power stuggle between both Liza and Higgens. But who is the one in power? Is it Liza or is it Higgens?

To watch this powerful scene click on the photo below (you can also refer to pages 47-51 of your script):

"All I ask is my rights as a father; and you're the last man alive to expect me to let her go for nothing; for I can see you're one of the straight sort, Governor. Well, what's a five pound note to you?"

Doolittle invites himself to Higgens' house. He decides to 'sell' his daughter. While exploring this scene futher it is clear the Shaw had a different intention and message within these few pages.

To watch this scene click on the picture below (you can also refer to pages 27-32 of your script):

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

Doolittle explains how he has changed now that he has come into money. How his friendships have changed and how he is 'stuck' in the middleclass. A place where he doesn't want to be.

To watch this scene click on the picture below (you can also refer to pages 54-57 of your script).

"He treats a flowergirl as if he were a duchess." (Liza)

"And I treat a duchess as if she were a flowergirl." (Higgens)

Social classes would not exist if everyone was treated equally. It is this point that Shaw tries to portray and drive into Victorian Society during the early 1900s. Higgins' representation of middle and upper class society is in fact flawed, which can be seen when Mrs. Pearce, his lower class maid tells him time and time again how to act 'upper class.'

To watch this scene click on this picture below (Pages 61-66 of your script also reveal many parallelisms between the lower and middle class).