getting at is that she needs a good reason to stay with Professor Higgins. She brings up the fact that Freddy Hill loves her. Upon hearing this, the professor becomes furious. He strongly maintains that Freddy is beneath Eliza. Here, Professor Higgins fails to discern the nature of the problem. Eliza asserts that 'every girl has a right to be loved' and if not loved, at least regarded with consideration and mutual affection by those she respects.

For his part, Professor Higgins fails to see why this is necessary. He sees his relationship with Eliza as a sort of platonic partnership that can be mutually beneficial. As long as both benefit from such an arrangement, he sees no reason to change his brusque and abrupt ways. He is adamant that Eliza must learn to appreciate what she has in him instead of wanting more. Eliza, on the other hand, is not satisfied with the professor's stance.

So, does Professor Higgins love Eliza? Perhaps not in the romantic sense. However, he does admit being fond of her, which is certainly not the same as love.

Yes, Eliza does markedly improve her self-confidence. This comes about as she learns the speech and manners of a lady. Her confidence increases as she gains the acceptance and approval of upper-middle-class people, the love of Freddy, and finally, the acceptance of the nobility, who embrace her as one of them on the basis of her accent, clothing, and demeanor.

We know she has gained self-confidence because by the end of the play, she is standing up to the bullying Professor Higgins and asserting her worth as a human being. She tells him in an impassioned speech that it is wrong to make her a lady, unfit for her old life, and then falsely threaten to throw her back on the street:

Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I can't talk to you: you turn everything against me: I'm always in the wrong. . . . you're nothing but a bully. You know I can't go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel.

In other words, she confronts Higgins, tells him what he is, and says he treats her cruelly only because he knows she has nowhere else to turn. She informs him if he can't treat her kindly that she will pursue "independence." All of this is a far cry from the young woman who was willing to put up with his insults earlier in the play.

Pygmalion is a withering critique of Victorian society and its class structure. The upper-class professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, sets out to transform a humble Cockney sparrow into a lady of quality, whom he will then introduce to high society. Higgins's behavior exemplifies the general level of contempt displayed by the upper-classes toward those they regarded as their social inferiors. He doesn't value Eliza Dolittle or accept her for who she is; he sees her as a problem to be solved by means that are both manipulative and exploitative in equal measure.

At the same time, the artificial methods used by Higgins to transform Eliza into a high-class social butterfly expose the artificiality of the class structure that existed at the time. If someone of Eliza's humble social origins could be passed off as a refined upper-class lady after a relatively short program of instruction and training, then that would seem to suggest that so-called good breeding is ultimately irrelevant, not just in terms of one's worth as an individual, but also in relation to how one is judged and evaluated by society.

In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion  the character of Eliza seems to have developed a connection with Higgins. This connection occurs as a result of him having rescued and refined her from the streets where she first worked as an uneducated flower girl. The fact that he takes the time to reform her seems to Eliza a symbol of care that she much needs. However, she is quick to realize that Higgins is not a romantic man and that his goal of educating Eliza is nothing but his own ambitious way to proof a point: That he is a good enough linguist to turn a flower-girl into a duchess.

However, we see that, at the end of the play in Act V, Eliza's tough surface begins to break while she explains to Higgins what her needs are as a person. It is highly improbable that she would have even brought up the topic had she not wanted some reaction from Higgins to that respect.

[much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under your feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I come—came—to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like.

The reaction that she gets from Higgins at his point is so negative, brash, and awful that she goes back to a defense mode clarifies what a brute she thinks Higgins is (because he is a brute, indeed) and she goes on and on as to who she wants in her life for sure.

However, the story itself narrates how the relationship between Eliza and Higgins has a unique connection, and that perhaps this is the way that they are meant to live in the first place: Close but not together.

To put it shortly, she knew that for some mysterious reason he had not the makings of a married man in him, according to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would be his nearest and fondest and warmest interest

This tells us that there is indeed a certain feeling inside of Eliza which, by nature, makes her suppose that she is meant to be married to Higgins for the fact that he is a bachelor, they shared a huge experience together, and she is of a marriageable age.

But then we encounter what ultimately decides for Eliza: She is just as strong, just as tough,and just as dominant as Higgins. Their relationship certainly would not be too successful, from what we can tell.

Put that along with her resentment of Higgins's domineering superiority, and her mistrust of his coaxing cleverness in getting round her and evading her wrath when he had gone too far with his impetuous bullying, and you will see that Eliza's instinct had good grounds for warning her not to marry her Pygmalion.

In Act Four of Pygmalion, Eliza, Colonel Pickering, and Professor Higgins have just returned from successfully passing Eliza off as a duchess at a series of socially significant events (a garden party, a dinner party, and the opera). Despite the tremendous success of her performance, Higgins shows no appreciation for Eliza's hard work and achievement. While Higgins relaxes in his chair and discusses the evening with Pickering, Eliza busies herself with making him comfortable (fetching his slippers, etc.), which also goes unnoticed by Higgins.

In fact, the two gentleman speak about Eliza as if she was not present in the room. When Pickering first mentions Eliza having done "the trick, and something  to spare..." to Higgins, Higgins simply responds, "Thank God it's over!" In a continued statement on the night, Higgins comments:

     "I knew she'd be all right. No, it's the strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on me. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadn't backed myself to do it I should have chucked the whole thing up two months ago. It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore... When I saw we were going to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour, with nobody but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell you, Pickering, never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The whole thing has been simple purgatory."

With this speech, Higgins manages to singlehandedly dismiss the efforts that Eliza had put into developing her duchess "character" and improving her speech and self. Instead, he focuses on the tremendous "consequences" he's faced as a result of the experiment: boredom, the waste of time, etc.

Higgins' first direct address to Eliza in this scene is a mundane domestic order to turn off the lights and to inform the housekeeper that he would like tea in the morning instead of coffee. When Eliza reacts violently to this, Higgins hurls his most presumptuous insult yet: "YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! I won it!" Higgins--charming fellow that he is--not only fails to appropriately recognize Eliza's efforts, but also takes sole credit for their joint triumph. 

This is an interesting question, because I would want to argue that the biggest change that is evident in Eliza by the end of this excellent play is actually internal. It is easy to focus on the success of Higgins's experiment, and the way that he is able to pass Eliza off as a upper-class lady, and certainly we see that Eliza is treated very differently by all concerned compared to when she was a caterwauling cockney flower seller. However, at the same time, the biggest and most enduring change comes with the epiphany that Eliza experiences after her success and the way that she is treated with complete indifference by Higgins, who has given no thought at all to her future. The way that she is treated by Pickering, by contrast, who has always been kind and polite to her from the beginning, even when she was a flower girl, teaches her this important truth:

You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

The enduring change that is produced in Eliza is therefore not in her outward appearance, how she looks and speaks, but in the knowledge that the true indication of a person's worth is not to be discovered in such outer trappings.