Shaw also believed that everyone abused the English language & pronounced words incorrectly. He tried very hard to change the spelling system of the English language & so it was quite decided that he should write one of the main characters as an expert of phonetics, which was the study of the sound of language.
In act 1, Eliza thought that the way she came across was normal & acceptable but to many people it wasn’t. Part of Shaw’s’ plot of the play was to make people realise that anyone can speak properly if they took the time & effort to try & it can affect people in different ways. Eliza is insulted by Higgins & feels threatened & intimidated by him. ‘You ought to be stuffed with nails you ought’. Eliza doesn’t feel that she has done anything wrong & is just getting on with her life. In this act, people who are wealthier than her judge her because of her birth & the fact she is lower class.
She compares Pickering to Higgins & sees Pickering as the way that gentlemen should be with women. In the first act she likes Freddy & tries to make herself look like a proper lady by ordering a taxi. She tries to impress him. This shows she is bothered about the things Higgins was saying & is unhappy with her identity. She now does not want to be seen as a common lower class flower girl & is very intrigued by the offer of ‘being passed off as a duchess’ from Higgins.
Eliza feels she has done no harm because she is allowed to do as she pleases. ‘I have a right to sell flowers as long as I keep off the kerb’ Her job gives her independence & pride. Eliza is perceptive & knows that people judge on appearance but she still believes her own character is important to her. ‘My character is as good as any lady’s’ Because she works with the public, she does not have anyone to challenge her place in society & mixes with her social equals, she still has to approach people in a different class but doesn’t see it being a problem asking them to buy a flower.
Higgins treats Eliza like dirt just because of her class status & presumes that because she is not as wealthy as him & never will be, she is automatically an ‘incarnate insult to the English language’. The daughter from the Aynsford Hill family treats Eliza as dirt & doesn’t want to associate with someone as common as a flower girl even though there is not much class difference between these two characters. Pickering sticks up for Eliza & tries to show Higgins that she hasn’t done anything wrong. ‘Anybody could see that the girl meant no harm’. She shows respect for Colonel Pickering throughout the play.
At the end of act one, everyone has judged Eliza on her appearance & speech but she has also judged them.
After act 1, Eliza is very persistent with Higgins about his offer to make her into a duchess & by act 5 she has developed into a girl with many more aspirations for life & bigger hopes & dreams than she had when she was a flower girl. But because she has moved into upper class, some doors have now closed on her & she is automatically expected to marry because of her status. Her voice has changed; her appearance & manners have also changed. Higgins has taught her to speak pronouncing words of the English language the way they should be according to Higgins.
I feel that Higgins attitude towards Eliza has not changed at all, he still sees her as a flower girl because she was that to begin with but he has love for her in his own way & regards her as special. In her eyes, the way he has treated her is not acceptable & since act 1, I feel she has gained independence to stand up to Higgins. Whilst saying this, she has also lost independence because Higgins could turn around one day & just end the ‘game’ at any time because all Eliza was to him was an experiment. The truth is that Higgins NEEDS Eliza & needs her to need him. He cannot operate without her & at the beginning of act 5; we see how he treats Eliza as a servant. ‘But I can't find anything, I don’t know what appointments I have got’.
Again in act 5, we see how certain status’s & class systems affect people’s lives when Mr Doolittle comes into unwanted wealth: ‘im expected to provide for everyone now’ & sees the change in status as a bad thing. When Eliza learns of his father marrying her stepmother, she is furious & reacts like Higgins would & has become like him in a way… ‘You’re not going to let yourself down to marry that low common woman’. Here we see irony in the fact that she used to be a low common woman & that how other people see her has affected her thinking because of her status. Eliza is not a duchess but because she has been made to behave like one, it has affected the way she would normally be in certain situations.
At the very end of the play we see how Higgins loves Eliza but still only attempts to tell her in a way that is very mysterious by still insulting her whilst doing it. I don’t think he likes showing his feelings unless he has to & this is right at the end. ‘I can’t turn your soul on… can take away the voice & the face, they are not you.’
Back in Act 1, we see how Eliza still stands up to Higgins no matter how much he puts her down about her language but she cannot say much back to him. However, when she stands up to him in act 5, he can no longer put her down about the way she speaks because he is the one who has taught her to speak the way she does so in a way, she has gained independence.
Looking from a different prospective, she has lost some of her independence because she is now an upper class lady. She cannot do as she pleases now because she has to maintain her ladylikeness & so cannot be herself whenever she feels like it & also the fact that Higgins can turn around any day & say ‘I have finished with you now’ & what would she be expected to do then? Some of her options have now closed.
An interesting point I have noticed is that even though Eliza has gone through months of ‘training’ of how to become a lady with Higgins, she still occasionally pronounces words like she used to, this shows that she still has some of her lower class routes left in her & you can never forget who you were originally. ‘What I done (correcting herself). What I did.’ She still believes that all her old routes are gone. ‘ I have forgotten my old language & can speak nothing but yours’
From reading the play, I have come to the conclusion that Eliza is both better off & worse off by the end in different ways.
She has now experienced what the upper class people are like more closely than she had when she was selling flowers on the street; she has learnt how to speak to what Higgins calls ‘properly’ & she has learnt how being seen as wealthy can affect behaviour especially with the close people around you. At the moment, she is seen as being in the same class as Higgins & I do not think that Higgins likes this & that is why he treats her they way he does. He still wants credit for all Eliza has been turned into but she thinks the thanks should go to Pickering. ‘It was from you that I learnt really nice manners’
Eliza has learnt to stand up to a man like Higgins, without him being able to make her feel worse, even though they were in different classes, remembering society at the time was structured & was very difficult to move out of a specific class.
Eliza is also worse off by the end of the play because her options have closed on her, & she could never go back to who she was originally no matter how much she wanted to because she is seen as upper class so to be back selling flowers on the street would not be in her character anymore.
I think she feels she is better off because she has a lot of knowledge from Higgins, more independence & the upper class status. At the end, just because of the way she spoke & the clothes she wore, she was automatically seen as upper class. She was not born into a wealthy family. She started off as a common flower girl & ended up as an upper class duchess but technically all that happened to her was that she was taught how to be a lady. So this proves that throughout the play Eliza‘s status was affected by her birth, environment & speech in a way that it completely changed the way she was judged by other people in the space of six months.
