ISC Pygmalion Workbook Answer : Act 2

PLOT DEVELOPMENT

Higgins’s Home: Act II opens in Higgins’s house on Wimpole Street. The living room has been turned into a phonetics laboratory. Higgins is giving Pickering a tour of his laboratory and is having a technical discussion about vowel sounds with him. Higgins tells him how he records the voices of people on his gadgets and then listens to them at leisure.

Announcement of a Visitor’s Arrival: They have just taken a break after a long discussion, when Mrs Pearce announces the arrival of a young woman with a ‘dreadful’ accent. Higgins instructs Mrs Pearce to show her in since he is likely to be interested in recording her accent. Higgins feels that this is fortuitous as it will enable him to show Pickering how he records different voices by using his equipment. Pickering is astonished at Higgins’s ability to hear 130 distinct vowel sounds.

The Flower Girl Enters: When Mrs Pearce returns with the girl, Higgins recognises her as the Flower Girl from the previous night. He had taken down notes on her dialect. The Flower Girl, Eliza, is dressed in what were evidently the cleanest and most respectable clothes she could find. Since Higgins is expecting a new accent to study, on seeing Eliza, with unconcealed disappointment, he orders her to leave as he has already recorded enough of the Lisson Grove dialect. However, Eliza says that she wants to be a lady in a flower shop, but cannot get a job unless she is able to talk ‘more genteel’. Therefore, she wants Higgins to teach her correct pronunciation and is willing to pay one shilling per lesson.

Tuition Fees: She justifies the fees as she believes that since her friend pays eighteenpence an hour for French lessons, it cannot cost as much as that to learn one’s own language. At this, Higgins’s housekeeper, Mrs Pearce asks Eliza how she could be such an ignorant girl as to think she could afford to pay Mr Higgins. Eliza replies that she knows what lessons cost and she is ready to pay. She then tells Higgins that she knew that he would accept her when he would get a chance of getting back a bit of the money that he had thrown at her the previous night. She further accuses Higgins that he was drunk the previous night when he tossed her a sizeable amount of money.

When Higgins calculates that Eliza’s shilling is the equivalent of sixty pounds from a millionaire, Eliza is thrown into a panic at the thought of having to pay sixty pounds an hour. She starts crying and does not relent even when Higgins repeatedly tells her not to weep.

The Wager: Colonel Pickering, unlike Higgins, has treated Eliza with courtesy since her arrival. He reminds Higgins of his claim the previous evening that he can turn Eliza into a duchess and offers a wager for the same. He also offers to pay all the expenses of the experiment. Higgins then agrees to take up the task to “make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe” in three months.

Eliza Placed Under Mrs Pearce’s Charge: Higgins entrusts Eliza to his housekeeper Mrs Pearce’s charge and instructs her to clean her with Monkey Brand, a strong household cleaning product used for scouring and polishing. He also tells her to burn all her clothes and wrap her up in a brown paper until new ones arrive from the shop. Eliza gets alarmed by Higgins’s insensitive remarks and insists that she is a ‘good girl’ and that she will not be taken advantage of. Mrs Pearce also protests that Higgins “cant take a girl up like that as if you [he] were picking up a pebble on the beach.”

The Voice of Reason: Mrs Pearce expresses her concern for Eliza’s future and tells Higgins, “You must look ahead a little.” She asks what is to be Eliza’s position in the house and what is to happen to her after the experiment is over. Higgins treats these objections scornfully, pointing out that Eliza has no future as things stand. She is not married and nobody else wants her. Finally, his will prevails and Mrs Pearce agrees to take Eliza in her charge. They find out that Eliza’s parents threw her out years ago to make a living on her own. Remaining indifferent to her plight, Higgins continues to look at her as an object of study rather than a human being.

Convincing Eliza: Higgins’s lack of concern upsets Eliza and she makes for the door declaring that she is leaving. Higgins tempts her to stay by offering her gold, diamonds, taxi rides and chocolates. Colonel Pickering then intervenes and says that Eliza has a right to know what she should expect if she is to entrust herself to Higgins for six months. Colonel Pickering persuades Higgins to have some concern for Eliza’s feelings and to speak to her gently. Higgins relents and tells Eliza that in six months’ time she shall go to the Buckingham Palace dressed like a duchess, and if the King finds out that she is not a lady but a flower girl, she will be beheaded by the police at the Tower of London. However, if she is not found out, she will receive a present of seven and sixpence to start life with it as a lady in a shop. Mrs Pearce patiently concedes that she knows that Higgins does not mean Eliza any harm, however, when he gets interested in people’s accents’ he “never think(s) or care(s) what may happen to them or you (him).” Mrs Pearce leaves with the reluctant and suspicious Eliza.

Bathroom Scene: This part (i.e., the bathroom scene) is separated in the text by asterisks as it was added to a later print version of the Play by Shaw. Eliza is taken to a spare bedroom on the third floor where Mrs Pearce insists that she (Eliza) take a bath. Eliza is disgusted by the idea of bathing daily and protests that it would kill her. Amid much dramatic histrionics, Eliza is given her first proper bath by Mrs Pearce.

Henry Higgins, A Man with Morals: When Colonel Pickering and Higgins are alone, Pickering asks Higgins if he is “a man of good character where women are concerned”. Higgins assures that his interest in Eliza is purely professional.

Higgins’s Manners and Habits: Mrs Pearce arrives and tells Higgins to be careful about his language and personal habits while Eliza stays with them. She notes in particular his propensity to curse and to neglect his personal cleanliness to the extent of coming to breakfast in his dressing gown and wiping his fingers on his dressing gown. This sympathetic concern for Eliza mildly offends Higgins.

Entry of Alfred Doolittle: At this point Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, a dustman arrives to inquire about his daughter. He tells Higgins that he wants Eliza back. Higgins turns the tables on him and tells him that he may take her at once. Doolittle is taken aback since he does not particularly care about Eliza. Higgins accuses Doolittle of conspiring with his daughter to arrange the entire situation to extract money from him (Higgins). He tells Mrs Pearce to hand Eliza over to her father. Doolittle confesses that all he wants is a five-pound note. He complains that he is generally overlooked by ‘middle class morality’, which regards him as one of the ‘undeserving poor’ and thus, he gets no charity. Higgins is impressed by Doolittle’s rhetoric that he cannot afford morals and gives him five pounds.

Entry of a Clean Eliza: As Doolittle is leaving with his five pounds, he passes a dainty and exquisitely clean young lady dressed in a kimono. Doolittle fails to recognise her. Even Higgins and the Colonel are amazed by Eliza’s physical transformation. Eliza knows that her father does not really care about her and has only come to extort money to get drunk. Doolittle leaves after an angry exchange of words and the scene draws to a close with Eliza running off to try her fashionable, new clothes that have just arrived.

A Sneak Peek into Eliza’s Training Sessions: Next, in an additional scene for the print version, the readers find Higgins giving lessons to Eliza, where he teaches her correct pronunciation, starting with the elementary letters of the alphabet. Higgins’s overbearing manner and threats to drag her around the room by her hair frighten Eliza. The lesson ends amid Eliza’s sobs as she rushes out of the room.