payment page
It is not simple enough to call Eliza Doolittle a working-class working girl. If she begins as one at the beginning of the play, she surely isn’t one by the end of it. As Galatea’s counterpart from Ovid’s Pygmalion myth, Eliza is instrumental in propelling the plot of the play; indeed, it is her inevitable transformation into an independent woman and initial desire for change that convinces Higgins to take her on as a challenge. In Shaw’s characterization of Eliza, we see someone who is not content with her station in life and is willing to defy social conventions. In many ways, Eliza’s reluctance to remain in her social class complicates class lines altogether.
Shaw goes to great lengths in Act 1 to comment on Eliza’s appearance and her speech in order to showcase how she is perceived by others. Her language reveals her status, especially as seen with her constant exclamations of “Ah—ah—ah—ow—ow—oo!” However, as Shaw suggests throughout the play, one’s appearance does not determine one’s identity. In the opening of the play, Eliza displays her sense of self-respect and self-worth. Though she understands her position in society, she stands up for herself when she accosts Higgins for believing her to be improper, insisting, “He’s no right to take away my character. My character is the same to me as any lady’s.” Even early on, Eliza exhibits a refusal to be identified solely by the way she speaks or dresses and does not allow others to characterize her in such a way that would make her believe she is not a “good girl.”
Eliza’s initiative marks a side of her character that other characters in the play do not exhibit. It is her drive to learn how to speak properly so that she can get a job in a flower shop that prompts her to seek out Higgins in the first place. Eliza is keenly aware that education opens opportunities in Victorian society, and as she never received a formal education in the first place, she pursues Higgins’ teaching. Even though Higgins is cruel to Eliza when she first asks him to take her on as a student, she makes her case, knowing full well what she stands to gain, and decides to stay. Once Eliza begins her education she, to Higgins and Pickering’s surprise, is actually quite adept at learning. When she performs exceptionally at the garden party, Pickering suggests that she plays the role of a lady even better than someone who was actually a born into ladyhood: “You see lots of the real people can’t do it at all; they’re such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position and so they never learn.”
Eliza’s transformation from a flower girl into a lady subverts the supposed natural order of things, illustrating the ways in which class lines are divided and how truly superficial the middle class is. Through Eliza, Shaw is able to critique Victorian society’s obsession with appearance, and he highlights the importance of taking into consideration one’s authentic self. And if Eliza upends the rigidity of the middle class by breaking into it, she further goes on to subvert the role of Galatea when she refuses to stay with Higgins at the end of the play. As the play makes clear, Eliza does not change for romantic reasons, nor does she ever mention wanting to marry Higgins. Eliza only wants Higgins to treat her with the same amount of respect that everyone has shown her since becoming a lady. In this regard, Eliza would rather leave Higgins than continue to be treated like Galatea before she was brought to life--that is, as some statue without feelings or thoughts of her own.
