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Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, is presented as another character from the working class. However, unlike Eliza, Doolittle shows no desire for social advancement. Instead he is content to do, as his name would suggest, as little as possible to make his way through life, whether it be through lying, haggling, or begging. Though seen as somewhat of a comic fool in Act 2, he is actually keenly aware of the restrictions that are placed on middle class society. For all of his rhetoric, he becomes through Shaw’s characterization a kind of social critic, able to call out middle class hypocrisy and what he considers to be “middle class morality.”
When we are first introduced to Doolittle, he appears at Higgins’ home. Initially, he makes himself out to be a concerned father, but this ruse is quickly discovered. When Higgins suggests that Doolittle take Eliza away, Doolittle’s strategy shifts, and he proceeds to say anything and everything to ensure that Eliza stays with Higgins, so long as he himself is able to get some money out of their arrangement. Though Doolittle is seeking money, he is not entirely depicted as greedy. When Pickering suggests “[h]e’ll make a bad use of it, I’m afraid” in regard to the money, Doolittle responds, “Don’t you be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a penny of it left by Monday: I’ll have to go to work same as if I’d never had it.” Here, Doolittle makes it apparent that he would rather use the money on drink or other enjoyments, and not save it in some futile effort to try to climb the social ladder. For these reasons he also rejects Higgins’ suggestion that he receive ten pounds instead of five. For Doolittle, having just enough money to get by is enough: too much and he would be imprisoned by the middle class morality that he so strongly abhors.
Because of a joking letter that Higgins wrote to a moral reformist in America called Ezra D. Wannafeller, espousing Doolittle’s exemplary moral character, Doolittle comes into an inheritance left for him after Wannafeller's death as long as he lectures for the Moral Reform World League. Doolittle’s displeasure with this inheritance, and the obligations and responsibilities that come with it, derives from his falling victim to the exact thing he said he so detested in Act 2: middle class morality. Doolittle’s transformation and melodramatic belief that he is “ruined” suggest that the expectations of middle class society are constricting, so much so that they take away his happiness. Doolittle is now forced to perform a role, this anxiety being one of the reasons he decides to marry Eliza’s stepmother, so that he may keep up with middle class respectability and appearance. Ironically, the one character in the play who wants nothing to do with the middle class ends up coming into wealth and being thrust into it by the end of the play. For Doolittle happiness does not mean wealth, fine clothing, or lavish parties; it is simply being allowed to live out one’s life on their own terms, regardless of their class.
