My Fair Lady: What does the play show us of the society of its time?

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What does the play show us of the society of its time?

The working class were classified as upper working class or lower working class. They were either desperately poor or, former upper-class people who had fallen into poverty after being rich previously in their life for a variety of different reasons. Either way they were then expected to work hard to support themselves.

The middle class were similar to higher class except less grand. They mainly depended on marriage and their money being earned by the inheritance of the males.

There is not a huge difference between the quality of the people from the lower working and upper working class or middle class yet the working class are still looked upon by the higher classes as if they were less superior just because of their lack of education.

“The English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days.”  - P16

Examples of the relationship between working class and middle class are displayed in the novel using mainly Eliza and her father as they crossover from working class to middle.

Education enabled Eliza to satisfy her ambition to further her career and also increase the amount of opportunities she had open for the future.

“I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of sellin at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.” - P23

Only a couple of months of hard work and lessons from Henry Higgins enabled her to promote her class. This merely accentuates the gullibility and ignorance of the upper class.

If people believed so strongly about classes determining the value of an individual, why is it so easy of Eliza to be passed off as a duchess at the ambassador’s garden party.

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When Higgins wrote a letter as a joke mentioning that he knew a man, Alfred Doolittle, who was the most moral man he knew. This gained Doolittle a wealthy sum of money by an American “old blighter” by the name of Ezra D. Wannafeller, without even wanting it.

“Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.” - P86

Ezra D. Wannafeller was searching for a man who he could give 5 million “to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world” in return for Higgins to invent a universal language for him.

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