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Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics, the inventor of Higgins’ Universal Alphabet, and a self-proclaimed bachelor. In Shaw’s play, Higgins stands in as the Pygmalion figure from Ovid’s myth. Pygmalion, in the myth, falls in love with his sculpture of a perfect woman. After observing Pygmalion’s admiration and love for his sculpture, the goddess Aphrodite brings the statue to life. Galatea, the sculpture turned woman, and Pygmalion proceed to fall in love. Superficially, in this regard, Eliza figures for Galatea as she transforms from a flower girl into a lady. However, Higgins is hardly a romantic, an ironic decision on Shaw’s part that subverts the romantic genre and the Pygmalion myth altogether.
Higgins is rarely shy and tends to speak his mind, even if the things he says are cruel and insensitive. His lack of consideration for others extends to a general lack of social awareness. As is continuously mentioned, Higgins disregards social manners. In Act 2, Mrs. Pearce warns Higgins to be cautious of using dirty language around Eliza, knowing that she is impressionable, especially if he is to become her teacher. Higgins, of course, denies these allegations, but Mrs. Pearce proceeds to list instances in which he has used such language. Higgins here is seen as aloof, unaware of or unconcerned with his own follies, and as something of a hypocrite. At Mrs. Higgins’ home in Act 3, Higgins is once again called out for his improper use of language and manners when Mrs. Higgins suggests that Eliza will not be presentable until she has learned the rules of polite conversation that are required to pass as part of the middle class. Pickering interjects by saying to Higgins, “Come, Higgins: you must learn to know yourself. I haven’t heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in Hyde Park twenty years ago.” Even though Higgins professes to place much importance around language, those closest to him recognize that he is not altogether perfect for Eliza as a teacher in matters of social decorum.
Indeed, Higgins expresses his personal philosophy regarding his equal treatment of everybody regardless of their class position to Eliza but does not consider that his treatment of his mother or of Pickering is starkly different than his treatment of Eliza or Mrs. Pearce. In Act 3, Mrs. Higgins tells the Eynsford Hills, “I’m sorry to say that my celebrated son has no manners. You mustn’t mind him.” Higgins refuses to play according to social conventions and this refusal speaks to his perception that the middle class is vapid and superficial. Higgins’ resistance to change further drives home the impossibility of his ever being seen as the romantic hero of the play. As he says to Eliza in Act 5, “I can’t change my nature; and I don’t intend to change my manners.” Through Higgins’ character, Shaw forces us to reconsider an alternative version of the Ovid myth, one in which Pygmalion does not fall in love with his creation and thus never brings Galatea to life. And while Higgins does help transform Eliza into a lady, he does not do it for love, but for the sheer joy of the challenge, to the point that he even regrets taking on the challenge once Eliza’s transformation is complete. Higgins then is both a version of Pygmalion before he falls in love with his creation--that is, a Pygmalion that was so disgusted with the women around him that he decided to remain celibate--and a Galatea before she was transformed, that is as someone as fixed and rigid as an ivory statue.
