I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Pygmalion, but there is something that has been bothering me throughout the play. Neither Higgins nor Pickering, though Higgins more obviously, view Eliza as a person. Higgins constantly refers to her as random inanimate objects. Both have conversations about her while she is next to them while making no effort acknowledge, let alone include her. Pickering sees slightly beyond her role as a student, as he calls her "Miss Doolittle" and notices that her gifts of mimicry extend beyond dialect to the piano. Higgins, however, sees her only in relation to what she can prove about his linguistic prowess, and what she can offer him (his slippers, remembering his appointments).

That's why I love it when Eliza finally has enough, and asserts herself, even if it is in a fit of fury. Sometimes, though, nothing can say "I'm not gonna take it anymore" like a slipper to the face. The conflict further shows Higgins' utter obliviousness to Eliza's existence as an actual person. He has no clue what she's upset about, and doesn't even seem to track that she was right beside him and Pickering when they were discussing "their" victory. Eliza has spent months allowing herself to be shaped, and it's only when she breaks out of the mold that Higgins has created that he shows an actual interest in her as a person.