What does Eliza fetching Higgins's slippers symbolize in Pygmalion?
It symbolizes her loyalty and devotion to Prof. Higgins.
Higgins has successfully trained Eliza to be a lady of quality in much the same way that you'd train a puppy to fetch your slippers. Despite her outward demeanor as a duchess, Eliza is still instinctively deferential towards her alleged social superior and so doesn't hesitate to act like Higgins's servant.
But Higgins doesn't show the slightest hint of appreciation for anything Eliza does for him. That includes her astonishing transition from flower-selling guttersnipe to belle of the ball. As far as Higgins is concerned, he and he alone deserves all the credit for that.
No wonder, then, that Eliza angrily throws Higgins's slippers right at him. Her devotion and loyalty have not been acknowledged. From now on, she's determined to be more assertive, less deferential.
Why does Eliza throw slippers at Higgins after the ambassador's garden party in Pygmalion?
Although Eliza has won Higgins's bet for him by passing effortlessly as a high-born lady,...
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he still can't perceive her as fully human. Spoiled and entitled, he wonders where his slippers are and doesn't notice when Eliza gets them for him. He "looks at them as if they had appeared there of their own accord."
As Eliza sits near the piano in her finery after the long day, Higgins speaks of her and his experiment to Pickering, talking callously and cruelly of being glad the whole thing is over, calling it a "bore" and "purgatory" and regretting that he ever took on the project of lifting Eliza out of the gutter. This is naturally hurtful and angering to Eliza, who sees herself as a human being and resents being referred to as if she is nothing more than a tiresome experiment and an object with no feelings.
Higgins shows his indifference again when all he says to Eliza as he and Pickering are leaving the room is an order to her to turn out the lights. When he comes back in, she throws his slippers at him in a rage because she is so hurt, angered, and upset at what he said about her and how he treats her. He is astounded. When she cries that she won the bet for him, the egotistical Higgins calls her a "presumptuous insect" and a "creature."
Eliza is able to communicate to him her fears that now that she has been turned into a lady, she is worse off than she was as a flower seller, fitted for nothing but marriage. She says she could once sell flowers but that now, all she can sell is herself. He dismisses her allusions to marriage as prostitution and belittles her worries, admits she is attractive, and says she can find a husband or that Pickering can buy her a flower shop.
Eliza is able to hurt Higgins back by returning to him the ring he bought her and warning him not to hit her. He says, "You have wounded me to the heart." Eliza retorts that she has gotten back "a little of mine own," meaning he had wounded her to the heart. The scene ends with her feeling some triumph that she managed to hurt him and make him angry.