Pygmalion Act V | ISC Class 12 Modern English Literature Notes

George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Act V: the setting, sequence of events, Eliza’s confrontation with Higgins, Doolittle’s changed circumstances, character relationships, themes of dignity and independence, dramatic methods, key quotations and the ending.

How do the author, text and setting introduce Act V?

What is Shaw’s central interest?

George Bernard Shaw is the playwright, or writer of the play, Pygmalion. His preface connects speech with social prejudice and describes the play as deliberately didactic, meaning intended to teach. His interest in pronunciation becomes a means of examining how people judge and treat one another.

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. Professor Henry Higgins’s expertise in this field has helped transform Eliza Doolittle’s speech. Act V asks what that achievement means for Eliza’s future and whether professional instruction gives Higgins authority over her personal choices.

The conflict develops through dialogue, the spoken exchanges between characters, and stage directions, instructions describing movement, appearance and delivery. Arguments about manners and money are accompanied by interruptions, changes of position, anger, laughter and gestures of refusal.

Why does Mrs. Higgins’s home matter?

The act opens in Mrs. Higgins’s drawing-room, a room for receiving guests, with her at her writing-table. Eliza is already upstairs. Higgins and Colonel Pickering arrive distressed by her departure and have been using the telephone to contact the police.

This setting gives Eliza protection and a sympathetic listener. Mrs. Higgins can decide when to bring her downstairs and require her son to behave. The teacher who usually directs Eliza must now submit to his mother’s management of the meeting.

The central problem is therefore larger than finding a missing person. Eliza has left of her own accord, and Mrs. Higgins recognises her right to do so. The conversation must address the reasons for her departure and the conditions of any future relationship.

What happens in the section-by-section summary of Act V?

How does the search for Eliza begin?

Higgins reports that Eliza left during the night and collected her belongings early in the morning. He cannot find things or keep track of his appointments. His complaints immediately reveal how much he has relied on the practical work she performed.

Mrs. Higgins condemns the decision to involve the police. She objects to treating Eliza like a criminal or a misplaced possession. The men want her back, but they have not yet understood her right to determine where she lives.

Why does Doolittle arrive in fine clothes?

Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father and a dustman, arrives in fashionable formal clothes. The maid identifies him as a gentleman. He accuses Higgins of ruining his happiness by bringing him into money and exposing him to the demands of respectable society.

Higgins had jokingly recommended Doolittle as an original moralist, a commentator on right and wrong, to Ezra D. Wannafeller. After Wannafeller’s death, a bequest, or gift made through a will, gives Doolittle a share in the Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand pounds a year.

The condition is that he lecture for the Wannafeller Moral Reform World League whenever asked, up to six times a year. He objects chiefly to becoming a gentleman. Relatives and professional advisers now expect money from him, and he feels burdened by responsibility.

Mrs. Higgins suggests refusing the bequest. Doolittle admits that he lacks the courage because he fears poverty in old age. The workhouse, an institution supporting poor people under restrictive conditions, represents the future he wants to avoid.

How does Mrs. Higgins explain Eliza’s grievance?

Mrs. Higgins reveals that Eliza is upstairs. She explains that Eliza worked hard, became attached to both men and received no thanks or admiration after her success. Their relief that the experiment was over left her feeling ignored.

Higgins defends himself by recalling Eliza’s attack with his slippers. Pickering begins to recognise their failure of consideration. Mrs. Higgins arranges the meeting, asking Doolittle to wait on the balcony so that his changed circumstances do not immediately overwhelm Eliza.

What does Eliza say about her education?

Eliza enters with remarkable composure and addresses the men politely. She carries needlework and pays little attention to Higgins’s angry demand that she return. Her controlled behaviour contrasts with his impatience and challenges his claim to have supplied all her thoughts.

She credits Pickering’s courtesy with beginning her self-respect. Being addressed as Miss Doolittle mattered more deeply than clothes. His everyday consideration taught her that she could expect respectful treatment, while Higgins’s conduct kept reminding her of her former position.

Eliza says she cannot return to her old ways. When her splendidly dressed father suddenly touches her shoulder, however, she produces her old cry of astonishment. Higgins triumphs over this lapse, although it does not settle the argument about her dignity.

Why does the conversation turn to a wedding?

Doolittle announces that he is going to marry the woman Eliza knows as her stepmother. He presents this decision as another result of social pressure. Pickering persuades Eliza to be kind, and she agrees to attend the ceremony.

Doolittle privately reveals that he was not married to Eliza’s mother. Pickering had merely assumed that he was. Mrs. Higgins also decides to attend, and Pickering leaves with Doolittle while Eliza and Higgins remain behind.

How does the final confrontation develop?

Eliza rejects a return based on fetching, carrying and accepting Higgins’s temper. He argues that he treats everyone alike and offers companionship without changing his manners. She asks for kindness and insists that she must not be passed over.

She discusses Freddy Hill’s affection and eventually declares that she will marry him when he can support her. She then identifies another possibility: teaching phonetics, even as Professor Nepean’s assistant. Higgins becomes furious at the thought of her sharing his methods.

Eliza realises that Higgins cannot take back her knowledge. He responds with admiration for her strength. When she leaves for the wedding, however, he gives her shopping instructions. She refuses, and he remains convinced that she will carry them out.

How do the main characters reveal their values?

What changes in Eliza Doolittle?

Eliza combines vulnerability with increasing authority over her life. Her calm entrance does not mean that her hurt has disappeared. In private conversation with Higgins, she becomes distressed because he repeatedly turns her request for consideration into an argument against her.

Her distinction between speech training and self-respect shows that she can evaluate her own education. She acknowledges Higgins’s professional skill while recognising the separate value of Pickering’s manners. She refuses to accept that polished pronunciation alone answers the question of who she is.

Her proposal to teach makes her knowledge a possible means of earning. This is a decisive change in the confrontation: a benefit received from Higgins becomes something she can use independently. Her final refusal to shop for him gives practical expression to that change.

Why is Higgins a complicated figure?

Higgins is intellectually energetic and proud of his achievement. He claims to oppose distinctions of social rank because he treats a duchess and a flower girl alike. Yet his language about creating Eliza and possessing a masterpiece repeatedly challenges her freedom.

His feelings are not simply indifference. He admits that he will miss her, says he has learnt from her and distinguishes her living feelings from recordings of her voice. Nevertheless, he refuses to make the changes in manners she seeks.

He admires resistance more than obedience. When Eliza discovers how to confront him, he welcomes her as a stronger companion. His subsequent shopping instructions show how quickly this admiration coexists with the old expectation that she will perform errands.

How do Pickering and Mrs. Higgins differ?

Pickering gives Eliza the everyday courtesy she remembers gratefully. He addresses her respectfully and provides a model of considerate behaviour. His generosity matters, but Eliza explicitly distinguishes its financial aspect from the deeper influence of being treated as a person worthy of respect.

He is also capable of overlooking her needs. He joins Higgins in the search and initially denies that they treated her badly. His later recognition remains qualified: he allows that perhaps they were a little inconsiderate. Gratitude towards him does not make him faultless.

Mrs. Higgins supplies practical judgement. She protects Eliza’s choice, challenges the men’s childishness and explains the emotional consequences of their conduct. Her authority is demonstrated through action: she controls the meeting, checks interruptions and includes Eliza in the wedding journey.

What do Doolittle and the absent Freddy contribute?

Doolittle speaks brilliantly about the burdens of respectability, meaning socially approved status and behaviour. His complaint is sharpened by his unwillingness to abandon financial security. He criticises the rules but accepts the income and prepares to marry.

Freddy Hill does not appear on stage in this act. Eliza describes his affectionate letters and defends the possibility of happiness with him. His importance lies in the alternative he represents to Higgins’s assumption that she must remain dependent on her teacher.

How do Eliza’s and Doolittle’s transformations compare?

What does improved status cost each of them?

Social mobility means movement between social positions. Both Doolittles experience an altered position through Higgins’s intervention. Eliza’s training changes how she speaks and can be received; her father’s income changes how others recognise him and what they expect from him.

Neither treats this change as uncomplicated happiness. Eliza remembers the independence of earning through her flower basket. Doolittle remembers freedom from the obligations now attached to his income. Each discovers that visible advancement can bring pressures that outsiders fail to understand.

Why is their contrast significant?

Doolittle calls himself one of the undeserving poor, his term for poor people who do not satisfy conventional expectations of thrift and respectable conduct. The label is part of his provocative argument, not an objective judgement the audience must adopt.

His account of doctors, solicitors and relatives is likewise his complaint about their changed behaviour. The comedy invites scrutiny of financial motives without requiring every accusation to be accepted as an impartial report.

Eliza moves towards testing her freedom, while Doolittle explains why he feels unable to risk his security. Their situations expose different limits on independence. Neither money nor cultivated speech automatically gives a person control over the expectations imposed by others.

What themes and messages emerge from the conflict?

How does respect shape identity?

Self-respect means recognising one’s own worth. Eliza links its beginning to Pickering’s use of her formal name. A small act of courtesy changes the position from which she understands herself and the treatment she believes she may expect.

Her contrast between a lady and a flower girl explicitly sets aside learnable matters such as dress and speech. Within that distinction, treatment is central. The argument challenges the assumption that social value belongs naturally to those who already look and sound privileged.

What responsibility accompanies education?

Higgins treats the transformation as professional work; Eliza asks him to face its consequences for her. She has acquired abilities and expectations that make a simple return to her former life feel impossible. Technical success therefore creates questions about livelihood, belonging and care.

The act does not erase the value of his teaching. Eliza’s plan depends on what she has learnt. Its challenge is to the claim that helping someone develop permits continued control over that person’s choices or removes the need for consideration.

Can independence exist alongside dependence on others?

Independence, for Eliza in this conflict, involves making choices without being forced back into Higgins’s service. Higgins responds that everyone depends on other people. Their disagreement concerns both a general truth about shared life and her particular vulnerability.

His argument about universal dependence does not itself answer her practical problem. She needs a way to live with dignity. The possibility of teaching shifts attention from abstract claims to a skill that might support her outside his household.

What does middle-class morality demand?

Middle-class morality refers here to the expectations of respectable behaviour and responsibility that Doolittle associates with his new status. He believes wealth forces him to support others, employ paid help and formalise his domestic relationship through marriage.

There is a paradox, an apparent contradiction that reveals a difficulty: becoming richer makes him describe himself as less free. The contradiction directs attention towards the costs of respectability, while his refusal to reject the money exposes his fear of poverty.

How are affection and authority connected?

Eliza explicitly distinguishes the kindness she seeks from romantic pursuit by Higgins. She remembers being pleasant together and coming to care for him. His interpretation of her service as an attempt to buy affection fails to satisfy her demand for recognition.

Their argument repeatedly asks whether companionship can survive without domination. His admiration grows when she challenges him, yet the final errand suggests that recognition remains incomplete. Her spoken refusal prevents his confidence from becoming the act’s unquestioned conclusion.

How do language and dramatic methods make the argument effective?

How do humour and irony expose behaviour?

Satire uses humour to criticise conduct or social assumptions. Doolittle’s furious response to prosperity reverses the expectation that inherited wealth brings delight. His account of suddenly attentive relatives and advisers makes his new importance sound financially attractive to everyone around him.

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something a character does not. Mrs. Higgins’s instruction to the maid reveals Eliza’s presence upstairs while Higgins still searches for her. His agitation becomes comic because the audience already knows the immediate answer.

Another reversal occurs when the maid recognises the finely dressed dustman as a gentleman. The quick change in classification demonstrates the influence of clothing. Doolittle’s speech then unsettles the appearance of comfortable prosperity that the clothes suggest.

What do images and movements reveal?

A metaphor describes one thing as another to stress a resemblance. Eliza calls Higgins a motor bus, developing the image of forceful movement without consideration. Her comparison makes his energetic self-assertion seem dangerous to anyone expected to accommodate it.

Higgins’s later image of Eliza as a consort battleship, a warship accompanying another, welcomes her strength. Yet the military comparison offers companionship in his own terms. It does not itself prove that he understands the emotional kindness she has requested.

Stage directions also make disagreement visible. Eliza’s needlework supports her calm refusal to engage with Higgins’s outburst. Her attempts to avoid being alone with him, and his movement to the door, show their struggle over the terms of the conversation.

When Higgins lays hands on her after the threat to teach Nepean, the dispute becomes physically coercive. Eliza refuses to submit in fear. His withdrawal and subsequent admiration mark a shift, although the act supplies no guarantee that his habits have permanently changed.

What does the ending establish about Eliza’s future?

Which possibilities remain proposals?

Eliza’s imagined future has several parts. She declares that she will marry Freddy as soon as he can support her. Earlier, she says that perhaps she could make something of him and that he may make her happier than those who bully her.

These qualifications matter. Her preference challenges Higgins, but it does not establish that Freddy is already able to provide a secure livelihood. Nor does the act stage their marriage. His role here is conveyed through Eliza’s account and her choices.

Her teaching proposal similarly expresses a newly recognised possibility. She threatens to assist Nepean and advertise lessons, but she does not take up a post during the act. The immediate achievement is discovering that her knowledge cannot simply be withdrawn by Higgins.

What remains unresolved between teacher and pupil?

Higgins imagines a future of companionship with Eliza and Pickering. His description of the three as old bachelors welcomes her on less submissive terms. Eliza nevertheless prepares to leave and says goodbye rather than agreeing to his arrangement.

The final exchange supplies a direct test. Higgins asks her to order food and buy gloves and a tie. Eliza tells him to buy them himself and leaves. Her refusal is an action the audience witnesses, whereas his confidence that she will obey is his prediction.

The closing stage directions describe his self-satisfaction. They do not show the shopping being done or Eliza returning. Act V therefore ends with a conflict between his continued assumptions and her asserted freedom, rather than a demonstrated reconciliation or marriage to Higgins.

How can key quotations support analytical answers?

A useful quotation should support an explanation of what a character does, believes or challenges. Distinguish the speaker’s assertion from an established outcome. These brief lines trace the movement from Eliza’s right to leave towards her practical refusal of Higgins’s authority.

Which lines establish freedom and its limits?

“The girl has a perfect right to leave if she chooses.”

Speaker and context: Mrs. Higgins answers her son’s distress over Eliza’s departure. The line establishes choice as the proper starting point for the discussion. His inconvenience gives him no automatic right to recover her or determine where she lives.

“It’s making a gentleman of me that I object to.”

Speaker and context: Doolittle explains his reaction to the bequest. His complaint concerns the status and obligations attached to the income, rather than the required lectures. The line supports discussion of the uncomfortable consequences of social advancement.

Which lines clarify Eliza’s demand?

“That was the beginning of self-respect for me.”

Speaker and context: Eliza recalls Pickering calling her Miss Doolittle on her first visit to Wimpole Street. The sentence identifies respectful address as a turning point. Her education concerns how she values herself as well as how she speaks.

“I want a little kindness.”

Speaker and context: Eliza explains what she seeks from Higgins during their private argument. She rejects his assumption that she wants romantic infatuation. The request concerns humane attention within their relationship and makes his repeated insults especially revealing.

Which lines show the change in power?

“You can’t take away the knowledge you gave me.”

Speaker and context: Eliza confronts Higgins after proposing to teach phonetics and assist Nepean. The line turns education into a possible resource for independence. Her teacher’s contribution remains real, but it no longer secures unquestioned control.

“Buy them yourself.”

Speaker and context: Eliza answers Higgins’s last shopping instructions before leaving. The brevity turns the argument into a concrete refusal. It supports an interpretation of resistance, while Higgins’s confidence afterwards shows that the disagreement has not simply disappeared.

Glossary

• Phonetics — The study of speech sounds, forming the professional basis of Higgins’s teaching and Eliza’s proposed employment.
• Didactic — Intended to teach or instruct, as Shaw describes the purpose of his play in its preface.
• Dialogue — Spoken exchanges between characters through which the play develops conflict, relationships and competing interpretations of events.
• Stage directions — Instructions describing movement, appearance, gesture or delivery that help establish how a scene is performed.
• Drawing-room — A room for receiving guests, where Mrs. Higgins manages the meeting between Eliza and the men.
• Bequest — A gift made through a will, such as the income-producing share left to Alfred Doolittle.
• Respectability — Socially approved status and conduct, which Doolittle associates with new demands on his money and behaviour.
• Self-respect — Recognition of one’s own worth, which Eliza connects with Pickering’s respectful manner of addressing her.
• Social mobility — Movement between social positions, illustrated by Eliza’s education and Doolittle’s altered circumstances after the bequest.
• Satire — Humorous criticism of conduct or social assumptions, illustrated by Doolittle’s angry complaints about becoming prosperous.
• Dramatic irony — A situation in which the audience knows something a character does not, making that character’s response revealing.
• Paradox — An apparent contradiction that reveals a difficulty or insight, such as Doolittle’s increased wealth and reduced sense of freedom.
• Metaphor — A comparison that describes one thing as another, such as Eliza’s description of Higgins as a motor bus.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Eliza is missing because she has no right to leave Higgins. Correct: She leaves by choice, and Mrs. Higgins explicitly defends that right while condemning the decision to involve the police.
• Misconception: Higgins directly gives Doolittle three thousand pounds a year. Correct: His joking recommendation leads to Wannafeller’s bequest, with a condition requiring lectures when requested, up to six times a year.
• Misconception: Eliza credits Pickering with teaching her pronunciation. Correct: She acknowledges Higgins’s professional teaching but identifies Pickering’s respectful treatment as the beginning of her self-respect.
• Misconception: Eliza’s startled cry proves that her whole transformation disappears. Correct: Higgins celebrates the lapse, but she subsequently argues for independence and refuses his shopping instructions.
• Misconception: Eliza’s request for kindness means that she asks Higgins to marry her. Correct: She expressly distinguishes her desired friendship and consideration from romantic pursuit by him.
• Misconception: Eliza becomes Nepean’s assistant during Act V. Correct: She proposes this work in the argument; the act does not show her being employed or teaching lessons.
• Misconception: Higgins’s last prediction proves that Eliza returns and obeys. Correct: Her refusal and departure are staged; his expectation remains a claim, not a completed action.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Higgins and Pickering contact the police after Eliza leaves. Mrs. Higgins says Eliza has a right to leave and objects to treating her like a thief or lost umbrella. Explain two reasons for her objection. [2 marks]

1. Eliza has freedom to choose where she lives, so her departure does not justify treating her as someone to be recovered.
2. The comparison with a thief or umbrella exposes a response that neglects her dignity as an independent person.

Q2. Higgins jokingly recommends Doolittle to Wannafeller as an original moralist. Wannafeller’s will then gives Doolittle a share worth three thousand pounds annually, conditional on lecturing for his league when asked, up to six times a year. Explain the chain of events and the condition. [3 marks]

1. Higgins begins the chain with a joking recommendation, describing Doolittle to Wannafeller as an original commentator on moral questions.
2. Wannafeller turns that recommendation into material support through his will, leaving a share that produces three thousand pounds each year.
3. The income carries a lecturing obligation: Doolittle must speak for the league when requested, subject to the stated maximum of six occasions annually.

Q3. Eliza credits Higgins with professional speech teaching. She tells Pickering that his calling her Miss Doolittle began her self-respect, recalls his standing and opening doors for her, and distinguishes his courtesy from the money he spent on dresses. Analyse her view of education. [4 marks]

1. Eliza recognises speech instruction as a genuine professional contribution from Higgins, so she does not deny the value of his expertise.
2. Pickering’s formal address gives her a sense of personal worth, making self-respect a distinct part of her education.
3. His ordinary acts of consideration provide a practical example of respectful behaviour through daily interaction rather than pronunciation lessons.
4. By separating courtesy from expenditure on clothes, she shows that money and outward appearance cannot replace recognition of her dignity.

Q4. Doolittle complains that his new wealth brings relatives seeking money and professional advisers expecting payment. He calls respectability a loss of freedom, yet refuses to reject the income because he fears the workhouse in old age. Explain the satire in this situation. [4 marks]

1. The expected delight at prosperity is reversed: Doolittle complains about receiving wealth, creating humour through an unexpected response.
2. The demands of relatives and advisers suggest that their attention may be driven by financial advantage rather than affection or concern.
3. His description of respectability as lost freedom criticises the obligations society attaches to a financially improved position.
4. His fear of old-age poverty complicates the complaint: he condemns the burden but accepts it because the alternative frightens him.

Q5. Higgins claims that he treats duchesses and flower girls alike. He admits he will miss Eliza, refuses to change his manners and admires her when she defies him. Eliza asks for kindness rather than romantic pursuit and refuses his final shopping instructions. Analyse their disagreement about companionship. [5 marks]

1. Higgins bases his defence on equal treatment across social ranks, suggesting that consistent behaviour matters more to him than conventional politeness.
2. His admission that he will miss Eliza reveals attachment, but his refusal to change his manners limits the consideration he offers her.
3. Eliza’s request for kindness distinguishes emotional recognition from romance; her grievance cannot be answered simply by rejecting romantic demands she has not made.
4. His admiration for her defiance suggests that he values a strong companion, even though he has resisted the terms in which she expresses her needs.
5. Her refusal of the shopping instructions makes the disagreement practical: companionship cannot simply mean continuing to perform tasks whenever Higgins chooses to assign them.

Q6. Eliza feels unable to return to selling flowers and resents dependence on Higgins. She proposes teaching phonetics and becoming Nepean’s assistant. Higgins threatens her and lays hands on her; she defies him, recognises that he cannot remove her knowledge, and subsequently refuses his errands. Analyse six aspects of her movement towards independence. [6 marks]

1. Her difficulty returning to flower-selling reveals the practical cost of her transformation: she needs a future compatible with her changed abilities and expectations.
2. Resentment of dependence shows that her conflict concerns control over her life and the ability to choose a future outside Higgins’s household.
3. Teaching phonetics turns an acquired accomplishment into a possible livelihood, giving her a concrete alternative to remaining within Higgins’s household.
4. The proposal to assist Nepean directly challenges Higgins’s authority over the use of his teaching and provokes his threatening response.
5. Her defiance and recognition that knowledge cannot be removed establish a source of confidence that his anger cannot simply cancel.
6. The later refusal of errands expresses this confidence through action, although the proposed employment remains a possibility rather than an achieved career in the act.

Q7. Before Higgins discovers Eliza is upstairs, Mrs. Higgins instructs the maid to keep her there. Later Eliza enters calmly with needlework while Higgins loses his temper. When her richly dressed father surprises her, she gives her old cry and Higgins celebrates. Explain four dramatic effects of these details. [4 marks]

1. The audience’s knowledge of Eliza’s location creates dramatic irony, making Higgins’s continued uncertainty and agitation appear comically unnecessary.
2. Mrs. Higgins’s instruction establishes her control over the timing of the encounter and her protective position towards Eliza.
3. Eliza’s calm needlework contrasts with Higgins’s temper, reversing the expectation that the teacher will display greater control than his pupil.
4. The startled cry punctures Eliza’s composure and gives Higgins a comic moment of triumph, without by itself resolving their deeper disagreement.

Q8. At the close, Higgins gives Eliza shopping instructions; she tells him to buy the items himself and leaves. He predicts that she will buy them, then remains alone and self-satisfied. Distinguish what the ending shows from what Higgins assumes. [3 marks]

1. The visible action establishes Eliza’s refusal and departure, providing direct evidence that she challenges his expectation of service.
2. Higgins’s belief that she will nevertheless obey is a prediction; the ending does not show the purchases being made.
3. His self-satisfaction leaves a contrast between his confidence and her resistance, so the scene does not demonstrate that their disagreement has been resolved.

Key takeaways

• Mrs. Higgins defends Eliza’s right to leave and helps the men confront the consequences of overlooking her feelings.
• Doolittle’s bequest brings financial security alongside obligations that he describes as the burdens of middle-class morality.
• Eliza separates Higgins’s technical teaching from Pickering’s respectful treatment, which she identifies with the beginning of self-respect.
• Higgins argues for treating everyone alike, while Eliza insists that companionship must include recognition and kindness.
• Both Doolittles discover that improved social standing can bring new constraints instead of straightforward personal freedom.
• Eliza’s proposed teaching career matters because she recognises her knowledge as something Higgins cannot take away.
• Freddy’s possible future with Eliza remains a declared intention in Act V, rather than a marriage shown on stage.
• The final refusal of errands challenges Higgins’s authority, while his confident prediction leaves their disagreement unresolved.

Test yourself

Why does Mrs. Higgins object to involving the police?

She recognises Eliza’s right to leave and objects to treating her like a thief or a misplaced possession.

What is the lecturing condition attached to Doolittle’s income?

He must lecture for Wannafeller’s Moral Reform World League when asked, up to six times a year.

Why does Doolittle keep an income he complains about?

He fears the workhouse in old age and admits that he lacks the courage to reject financial security.

Which action by Pickering begins Eliza’s self-respect?

He calls her Miss Doolittle on her first visit to Wimpole Street, addressing her with formal respect.

What prompts Eliza’s sudden return to her old cry?

Her father touches her shoulder, and the unexpected sight of his splendid clothing overwhelms her carefully maintained composure.

Does Eliza ask Higgins for romantic pursuit?

No. She explicitly distinguishes the kindness and friendly consideration she wants from a desire for him to make love to her.

Why does the plan to teach strengthen Eliza’s position?

She realises that Higgins cannot remove the knowledge he has taught her and that it offers a possible livelihood.

What is the difference between Eliza’s last action and Higgins’s prediction?

She refuses the shopping instructions and leaves. He predicts obedience, but the act does not show her carrying out the errands.