Pygmalion: Act 5 Summary & Analysis

Higgins and Pickering are frantically trying to find Eliza, as if she were a lost pet. Mrs. Higgins wisely keeps Eliza upstairs so that she can try to resolve the situation.

Mrs. Higgins stands up for Eliza, whom Pickering and Higgins are treating as if she is an object that they own.

Because of Mr. Doolittle's new appearance, the maid introduces him as a gentleman and Higgins assumes that it cannot be the same Mr. Doolittle he met earlier.

Higgins' joke—making fun of Mr. Doolittle's rejection of Victorian morals as luxuries unaffordable by the poor; which really was a rather unique moral position in Victorian England—unintentionally brought Mr. Doolittle a fortune. Like his daughter Eliza, Mr. Doolittle has now also undergone a transformation, rising in the social hierarchy. The luck involved in Mr. Doolittle's rise implicitly criticizes the common Victorian notion that the wealthy deserve to be wealthy because of some inner worth. More likely it was just luck that lifted up their ancestors, and then they themselves were rich simply because they were rich.

Mr. Doolittle exposes all of the problems that come with moving up the social ladder. He thus critiques the assumption that gaining wealth and becoming more upper-class is necessarily desirable.

Mr. Doolittle presents his inability to reject the money as a lack of nerve to reject the comforts provided by money. He also feels as if, now that he has money, that he must appear like he has money, in dress and speech. In his uneducated, lower-class speech, he compares this dilemma to being stuck between Scylla and Charybdis (another expression for being stuck between a rock and a hard place)—stuck between the discomfort of being poor if he rejects the money and all the responsibilities of being wealthy if he keeps it.

Higgins squabbles over Eliza like a possession or pet, wanting her because he has paid for her, not because he is fond of her as a person. Mrs. Higgins is frustrated by her son thinking that he owns a woman—it is telling that neither Pickering nor Higgins can even understand what she is criticizing them for.

Mrs. Higgins scolds Pickering and Higgins for seeing Eliza merely as an experiment, not as a person. She again has to remind Higgins of his manners, even though he is the one who supposedly taught Eliza how to behave well. Pickering begins to see the truth of it, but the stubborn Higgins refuses.

Ironically, Eliza now has better manners than Higgins, despite the fact that he claims to have basically created this present version of him. Either she has really changed, or she is simply very good at pretending to be noble and polite—but is there really any difference? At what point does pretending to be noble and polite become actually being noble and polite? And remember all the noble people who acted less polite than Eliza did at the party. Are they still more noble than she is simply because they have money? The play questions such attitudes, without coming to any definitive answer.

Despite his high-class upbringing, Higgins lacks proper manners, and actually set a bad example for the pupil he was supposedly teaching how to behave properly. Eliza reveals the power of language as she tells Pickering that his calling her Miss Doolittle—his verbal recognition that she could be someone who could be called Miss Doolittle—was what really spurred her realization that she could change and deserved the same respect a wealthy person takes for granted.

Eliza's comment asserts that there is no inherent difference between the wealthy and the poor—the only difference is in whether other people grant them the respect they deserve. When formulated this way, a change in appearance (clothes and speech) does not change a person so much as give them access to the respect that should have already been granted to them, and perhaps to realize that they should be granted that respect. She demands this respect from Higgins. His curse is a rebuttal, but one can see this rebuttal not as a statement that Eliza doesn't deserve respect but that no one does given Higgins basic rudeness and misanthropy throughout the play.

Higgins and Eliza disagree over whether she has really transformed her identity, or whether she has merely changed her speech and appearance and will return to her old ways. Pickering sides with her, but also wants her to forgive Higgins for not believing that she could have changed.

Moments after claiming she is a changed person unable to go back to speaking as she used to, the shock of seeing her father makes Eliza exclaim in the same kind of unladylike way she did before her transformation. This seems to support Higgins position that people don't change. Meanwhile, Mr. Doolittle is annoyed at being forced into a respectable marriage by the social norms and expectations of his new class.

Mr. Doolittle continues to criticize Victorian social customs, claiming that he has been basically forced into marriage because of middle class expectations, and yet he finds himself unable to resist those norms. He is changed by them.

Higgins stubbornly claims that he will not change his rude behavior because he cannot change his nature—even though he has spent most of the play changing Eliza's behavior.

Higgins finally offers an explanation for his rude behavior. He takes care to behave the same to everyone, regardless of class. This doesn't seem to be completely accurate though, when one considers how he behaved differently in the beginning of the play toward Eliza and Pickering.

Higgins finally shows some fondness for Eliza, rather than treating her as a lab rat. He claims that she took on the role of servant. But Eliza responds that it was his treatment of her—his lack of notice of her as a person—which pushed her into that position.

Higgins' odd proposal to Eliza indicates his idea of an equal relationship, in which two people do exactly as the other wants—two people in complete control of each other. In response, Eliza wishes she could go back to her simpler life as a flower girl and, like her father, is able to see that entering high society is not necessarily good and, especially for a woman, can be its own form of slavery.

Higgins gives Eliza two options, both of which place her under the control of a man. Whereas she thinks of love when considering who she might marry, Higgins is only interested in what a potential husband can "make" of Eliza. He does not see her as capable of "making" anything of herself.

Eliza demands to be treated as who she is, not as someone who needs to be made into anything else at all. Higgins wonders if she wants his love; she responds that she wants his kindness and his respect.

Higgins again asserts that without him she would go back to being a poor person. When she responds that she won't, that she'll marry Freddy, Higgins again manages to claim ownership of and credit for Eliza by saying Freddy isn't good enough for his "masterpiece."

Eliza is fed up with being under the control of men, whether Higgins and Pickering, her father, or a potential husband. In saying she could become a teacher of phonetics she is making a claim for self-control based on her own knowledge, she is claiming what she has been taught as her own, of creating herself. Higgins is finally impressed with her cleverness and willingness to stand up to him and demand independence.

Again, it is Eliza who has better manners than Higgins. But the truth is she has had better manners—in the sense of treating others with kindness and respect—than Higgins even before he began to train her. The play leaves Eliza's final status very ambiguous: has she finally broken free and become an independent woman or will she go back to Higgins? Has she truly transformed, will she relapse into her lower-class customs, or will she remain Higgins possession? The play questions the meaning and possibility of transformation without ever resolving the tensions it brings to the fore, just as it does not resolve Eliza's own situation.