Professor Higgins is amused and delighted
when Eliza offers to pay him at the rate of a shilling a lesson. The absurdity of the situation
obviously appeals to him. He casually threw well over ten times that amount into Eliza's basket
at the end of act 1, and if she had any idea of the cost of keeping rooms and a laboratory in
Wimpole Street, she would realize what a tiny sum of money a shilling is from Higgins's point of
view.
Higgins's whimsical calculations tell us rather a lot about him. His
active brain immediately sets itself to working out what the world looks like from Eliza's
financial perspective. He grasps that for her, a shilling is a substantial sum of money.
However, he entirely neglects to consider what her feelings will be when he starts mentioning
enormous sums such as sixty or seventy guineas. He does not reflect or care that she will not
understand or appreciate his joke. He is amusing himself, as he always does, and riding
roughshod over everyone else's feelings.
This episode also shows that Higgins
is financially secure and not particularly interested in money. Although he makes a sporting bet
with Colonel Pickering, he takes Eliza on as a pupil for the sake of the challenge, without any
interest in financial gain.
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