501 Critical Reading Questions

(Sean Pound) #1

  1. 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.

  2. 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 commonhere is
    unrefined.

  3. a. In these lines Higgins threatens Liza and lays hands on her, thus
    proving that he is a bully.

  4. 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.

  5. 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 girlbut 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.

  6. 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).

  7. 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.

  8. d.In the first few lines, the narrator states that Miss Temple was the
    superintendent of the seminaryand that she received both instruction
    and friendshipfrom Miss Temple, who was also like a mother to
    her she had stood me in the stead of mother.

  9. 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).

  10. d.The context here suggests existence or habitation, not captivity or
    illness.

  11. c. We can assume that the narrator would go home during vacations,
    but she spent all of her vacations at school because Mrs. Reed had

Free download pdf