501 Critical Reading Questions

Critical Reading Questions

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267.
e. Liza’s reply to Higgins suggests that she wants more respect. She
criticizes him for always turning everything against her, bullying
her, and insulting her. She tells him not to be too sure that you have
me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down (lines 24-25).
Clearly he does not treat her with respect, and as her actions in
the rest of the excerpt reveal, she is determined to get it.
268.
b. Liza is from the gutter, but she can’t go back there after being with
Higgins and living the life of the scholar, a refined, educated,
upper-class life. Thus the best definition of common here is 
unrefined.
269.
a. In these lines Higgins threatens Liza and lays hands on her, thus
proving that he is a bully.
270.
c. Higgins refers to Liza as my masterpiece, indicating that he thinks
of Liza as his creation—that he made her what she is today.
271.
b. The excerpt opens with Higgins telling Liza “If you’re going to be a
lady” and comparing her past—the life of the gutter—with her pres-
ent—a cultured life of literature and art. We also know that Hig-
gins taught Liza phonetics (line 40) and that Liza was once only a
flower girl but is now a duchess (lines 55–56). Thus, we can con-
clude that Higgins taught Liza how to speak and act like someone
from the upper class.
272.
d. Higgins realizes that Liza—with the knowledge that he gave
her—now has the power to stand up to him, that she will not just
let herself be trampled on and called names (line 59). He realizes that
she has other options and she is indifferent to his bullying and big
talk (line 55).
273.
c. Liza’s final lines express her joy at realizing that she has the power
to change her situation and that she is not Higgins’ inferior but
his equal; she can’t believe that all the time I had only to lift up my
finger to be as good as you (lines 59–60). She realizes that she can be
an assistant to someone else, that she doesn’t have to be depend-
ent on Higgins.
274.
d. In the first few lines, the narrator states that Miss Temple was the
superintendent of the seminary and that she received both instruction
and friendship from Miss Temple, who was also like a mother to
her she had stood me in the stead of mother.
275.
a. The narrator states that with Miss Temple, I had given in allegiance
to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content (lines 12–13).
276.