The Pygmalion by Bernard ShawThe passage from Act 2 of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion marks a critical turning point in the plot and character development of the novel. The characters of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, who had previously met by pure coincidence, have now deliberately entered into a relationship, for various reasons. Eliza wants to rise in the company hierarchy and Henry wants to demonstrate his talent to Colonel Pickering. The excerpt is significant because it begins a long learning process for Eliza and because Henry changes the next six months of her life, if not the rest. Act 1 served as the beginning of the play, and now this passage in Act 2 stands as one of the play's key turning points. Shaw creates a plot where relationships have an intriguing turning point as Eliza is deciding whether to leave or stay at Henry's house. Through the use of language, character development, not to mention stage directions, Shaw makes this piece interesting and notable. As briefly mentioned above, this passage concerns Eliza's decision in the play regarding her potential departure. There is a lot of character development in this passage as we see selfishness in Henry and weakness in Eliza. It begins with Henry maintaining a selfish and crude attitude towards Eliza. This is also where some of the humor within the passage comes into play. Henry jokes that Eliza is devoid of any form of feeling and Eliza claims that "[she has her] feelings like anyone else", Henry interrupts the conversation and turns only to Pickering asking if he "sees the difficulty [...] to convince her to talk about grammar." This statement from Henry is extremely rude and shows how little respect he has for Eliza and people of his standards. It's only when Eliza threatens to leave that he softens and offers her some chocolates. This is because his interest in proving himself to Pickering makes him realize that he needs to be nicer to Eliza to get something with her. While Henry is rude, we see that Eliza is weak, most likely due to her struggle and desperation. As Eliza lives a life of scraping together whatever she can find, it becomes impossible for her not to accept Henry's offers. Even though she may not seem to like something, there is no doubt that she should accept it.