Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

First produced: 1913; first published, 1912

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Comedy

Time of plot: c. 1900

Locale: London

Principal Characters

• Henry Higgins, a phonetician
• Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl
• Alfred Doolittle, her father, a dustman
• Colonel Pickering, another phonetician
• Mrs. Pearce, Higgins’s housekeeper
• Freddy Eynsford Hill, a poor young gentleman

The Story

Late one evening in the Covent Garden theater district of London, playgoers are attempting to summon taxicabs in the rain when a crowd gathers around an unkempt young woman selling flowers. The flower girl has been speaking in a very strong Cockney dialect, and a distinguished gentleman has been transcribing her speech into a notebook. The gentleman, Henry Higgins, is a professional phonetician who earns a handsome income teaching people how to change their lower- and middle-class accents so that they can pass as members of the upper class. Higgins amazes the crowd by using his analysis of individuals’ accents to pinpoint where each of them lives. Appalled by the flower girl’s lower-class dialect, Higgins boasts that in a matter of months he could teach her how to speak properly and pass as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party.

The next morning, in the drawing room and laboratory of Higgins’s Wimpole Street residence, Higgins is showing Colonel Pickering his elaborate equipment for recording speech when the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, announces the arrival of the flower girl, Eliza Doolittle. Eliza wants to take lessons from Higgins so she can improve her speech and get a job as a clerk in a proper flower shop. Higgins is impressed by the percentage of her meager wealth that Eliza is willing to pay and accepts her as a student, making a wager with Pickering that in six months he can pass Eliza off as a duchess. Mrs. Pearce asks what is to become of Eliza when Higgins has finished his teaching, but Higgins dismisses the question as trivial. After Mrs. Pearce takes Eliza away so that the young woman can bathe, Pickering asks Higgins if his intentions toward Eliza are honorable; Higgins assures Pickering that he is a confirmed bachelor, determined not to let women into his life.

After helping Eliza into the bath, Mrs. Pearce reenters the drawing room to set down rules for Higgins’s behavior while Eliza is staying in the house—proper dress and table manners and no swearing. Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, a dustman, or trash collector, arrives and attempts to extort money from Higgins. When Higgins insists that Doolittle take his daughter back immediately, he drives down Doolittle’s price to a five-pound note. Higgins offers Doolittle ten pounds, but Doolittle refuses the extra five because he does not want to be tempted to save money. On his way out, Doolittle sees his daughter but does not immediately recognize her, as Eliza is clean and well dressed.

After a few months, the training has gone so well that Higgins decides to test Eliza by taking her to his mother’s flat for a formal visit. He arrives first to prepare his mother, informing her that Eliza can converse on only two topics—the weather and everyone’s health. Unfortunately, as Higgins is explaining the situation, three unexpected visitors are announced: Mrs. Eynsford Hill, her daughter Clara, and her son Freddy. Initially, Higgins is upset with the intrusion of the Eynsford Hills, but then he welcomes them as a greater challenge for Eliza’s performance. When Eliza arrives she is exquisitely dressed and produces an impression of remarkable distinction and beauty. She begins conversing quite adeptly, but as she becomes more engaged in the conversation she slips back into some of her lower-class speech patterns. Higgins, however, is able to convince the Eynsford Hills that her speech is a new and fashionable way of speaking, the “new small talk,” and they are convinced that she is a lady of high society; by the time Eliza leaves, Freddy has obviously fallen in love with her. After the Eynsford Hills leave, Higgins is exultant, but his mother asks him what is to be done with Eliza after the lessons are completed.

When the time comes for Eliza’s performance at the ambassador’s garden party, she succeeds splendidly. Afterward, Higgins and Pickering celebrate their triumph, talking of how glad they are that their work is over and complaining that they had ultimately become bored by the whole affair. Eliza, on the other hand, is brooding and silent. Higgins wonders out loud where his slippers are, and Eliza leaves the room and fetches them for him. Higgins and Pickering talk of the evening as if Eliza were not there, and as they are leaving for bed, Eliza throws Higgins’s slippers after him, calling him a selfish brute. Now Eliza asks the question, “What’s to become of me?”

That evening, Eliza leaves Higgins’s flat to walk the streets of London, and by morning she has gone to stay with Higgins’s mother. Later that morning, Higgins and Pickering, bewildered and worried about Eliza’s disappearance, arrive at the mother’s home. They are shortly followed by Eliza’s father, who enters dressed like a gentleman, complaining that his life has been ruined because of Higgins. Higgins had written a joking letter to an American millionaire, and that letter has led to Alfred Doolittle’s inheriting a huge sum of money. Now, Doolittle complains, everyone is begging money from him. His life is no longer impoverished, free, and simple.

Higgins’s mother reveals that Eliza is upstairs, angered by the insensitivity and indifference Higgins has shown her. Mrs. Higgins asks Doolittle to step outside so that Eliza will not be shocked by his appearance when she comes downstairs. Eliza then enters and meets Higgins and Pickering as a refined lady, the transformation complete. Eliza explains that she has learned her nice manners from Pickering and that the real difference between a lady and a flower girl is not in how she behaves but in how she is treated.

Eliza’s father reenters the room, and Eliza is surprised at how he looks. Doolittle reports that he is now a victim of middle-class morality and is on his way to his wedding. He invites everyone to come to the wedding, and Pickering and Mrs. Higgins leave to get ready, leaving Eliza and Higgins behind. Pickering has urged Eliza to return to live with him and Higgins, but in her last conversation with Higgins, Eliza has decided to leave Higgins forever. She claims that she is only looking for a little kindness and that she will marry Freddy Eynsford Hill. She will earn her living as a teacher of phonetics, teaching others as she has been taught. Higgins is incensed but impressed with Eliza’s spirit, and finally he sees her as more of an equal. As Eliza leaves, vowing never to see Higgins again, Higgins asserts confidently that she will return.

Bibliography

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