Eliza Thoughts

In the play Pygmalion, Eliza was viewed from a Marxist criticism. , because she was only a flower girl with a horrible was to speak English. At the beginning of the play Eliza was able to hear Higgins say that he can transform any girl into duchess, even though the girl would actually just be a common girl. When Eliza heard that, she too wanted to become a lady and she went over to ask for lessons. As she arrived at the Higgins home to ask for the lessons, Mrs. Pearce insulted her by saying Act I, “how can you be such a foolish girl as to think you could afford to pay Mr. Higgins?” at the moment Mrs. Pearce was right about Eliza as a “have not”. Therefore she would never be able to have the lessons, Mrs. Pearce was right about Eliza not being only offered to pay, yet Eliza was still able to get the lesson thanks to Mr. Pickering. Mr. Pickering only offered to pay for Eliza lesson, because he too had heard what Higgins said about transforming any girl into a lady and decided that Eliza would be perfect fit to prove what Higgins has said earlier in the play. That is also from a Marxist view, for they only saw Eliza as an experiment to test out of Higgins cockiness. At the end of Act III, Eliza tells Higgins and Pickering, “I don’t think I can bear any much more. The people all stare too much at me. An old lady just told me that I speak exactly like Queen Victoria. I am sorry if I lost your bet. I have done my best, but nothing can make me the same as these people.” As she tells both of the men this, Eliza realizes that she might act like a lady and think she is a “have”, but she will always “have not”. She could never feel the way the higher society is, because she was use to the common people ways. In page 946, Act VI Higgins informs Eliza that she will never be anything without him, for he is a “have” and she needs him to also be a “have’. He states this by saying, “let her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter three weeks me at