It is raining in Covent Garden at 11:15 p.m. Clara complains that Freddy has not found a cab yet. Freddy returns to his mother and sister and explains that there are no cabs to be found. They chide him, and as he runs off to try again to find a cab, he knocks into Liza, a flower girl, spilling her flowers into the mud. Freddy's mother gives her sixpence when she complains that her flowers are ruined. Colonel Pickering comes onstage, and Liza tries to sell him a flower. He gives her three hapence. A bystander advises Liza to give Pickering a flower for it, because there is a man behind a pillar taking down every word that she says.

Liza becomes hysterical, claiming that she has done nothing wrong. She thinks that he is an informant for the police. The man, Higgins, shows Liza what he has written--which is not a record of possible misdeeds. When she complains that she cannot read it, he reads it out to her, reproducing what she has said in her exact accent.

Higgins amuses the small crowd that has gathered when he listens to what they say and guesses their hometowns with exactitude. Higgins whistles for a taxi for Clara and her mother, and they exit.

Liza picks her flowers out of the mud while Higgins explains to Pickering that he is able to guess where people are from because he studies phonetics. To make money, he gives lessons to millionaires to improve their English, which allows them to be accepted in higher social milieus. When Higgins finds out that Pickering has been in India and is the writer of [I]Spoken Sanskrit, he exclaims that he was planning to travel to India to meet the man. Pickering is equally excited when he realizes that he has happened upon the creator of "Higgins's Universal Alphabet"--for he has traveled from India to meet Higgins.

They arrange to have dinner together. Liza makes a last-ditch effort to sell Pickering some flowers, claiming that she is short for her rent. Having recorded what she was saying, Higgins points out that she cannot be short for her rent because she said she had change for half a crown. (His record traps her in her own words after all.) Liza flings her basket at him in desperation. Higgins hears a church bell tolling and generously fills her basket with money anyway, before leaving with Pickering.

Freddy arrives in a cab, looking for his mother and sister. He does not know what to do with the cab when he realizes that they have left already, but Liza wants to take the cab home. The cabman looks doubtful at her ragged appearance, but she shows him her money before she gets in.

Analysis

Besides introducing the major characters of the play, this act introduces socioeconomic class as a central theme of Pygmalion. As a socialist, Shaw was particularly concerned with exploring and exposing the power divide between the poor and the rich. By setting the play in London, Shaw chooses to deal with a society that is particularly stratified. British class-consciousness is based not only on economic power, as it is in many other societies, but also on history (historic class differences). The play highlights British people's recognition of accents to differentiate among themselves not only geographically (a Welsh accent is distinct from a Scottish accent, which is distinct from a Surrey accent), but also to distinguish (on another but related dimension of accents) the various social classes.

Higgins's ability to pinpoint the location of origin of members of the crowd means not only that he can tell what part of England, or even what neighborhood of London, they are from, but also that he can probably guess fairly easily their socioeconomic status. In the early twentieth century, social mobility in Britain was slim to none, so the fact that Pickering's accent is audibly a Cambridge one (tying him to a very upper-class university) means that he is upper-class and likely to remain so. Conversely, Liza was born into Lisson Grove and, correspondingly, grew up speaking with what was considered a terrible accent. She is thus likely to remain poor not only because her family was poor, but also because everyone else can tell that she had a poor upbringing from the way that she speaks.

Nevertheless, Higgins's system of teaching better English serves to undermine the system in which his keen awareness of language so easily has allowed him to participate. Higgins, like Shaw, sees the strict hierarchy of British society as mutable after all. Higgins's alphabet is a new type of shorthand which more accurately conveys the exact sound of the speaker's voice. So, while normal shorthand conveys the content of a conversation, Higgins's form also records the intonation and accent of a speaker's voice. Even the name of his system of shorthand writing, "Higgins's Universal Alphabet," not only indicates that it reproduces all the sounds of language, but also implies that he believes that everyone should have access to elevated language.

The next day at 11:00 a.m., Higgins and Pickering are at Higgins's place on Wimpole Street. Higgins has just shown Pickering his Universal Alphabet, and they are about to break for lunch when Mrs. Pearce shows Liza in. She has cleaned up somewhat and wants it to be known that she arrived in a cab. She wants to take language lessons from Higgins, and she offers to pay him back some of the money that he threw into her basket the night before in exchange. She also implies that he was drunk when he gave her the money. Ultimately, she wants to work in a flower shop, which requires that her accent become more genteel.

The idea of teaching someone like Liza grows on Higgins, especially after Pickering bets him he could not pass her off as a lady at the Ambassador's Ball in six months. Pickering offers to pay the full costs of the experiment, having Liza live in the house to become a full-time pupil. Mrs. Pearce protests that the arrangement would be improper. She urges Liza to go home to her parents, but Liza replies that her parents turned her out of their home once she was old enough to make a living. Pickering protests that the girl might have some feelings, but Higgins claims that she has none at all.

Liza attempts to leave, but Higgins offers her a chocolate. As a claim of good faith and to settle her fear that it is poisoned, he cuts it in half, eats one half, and gives her the other. He says that if she is a successful student, he will give her some money to start life as a shop lady. She accepts. She is hustled away by Mrs. Pearce to be given a bath.

Pickering asks Higgins if he is to be trusted around women, and Higgins expresses incredulity at the idea of being attracted to Liza. Pickering feels assured of his honorable intentions. Mrs. Pearce reenters the room and makes Higgins promise to act as a role model for Liza by not swearing. The training is to be about culture and manners rather than language alone.

Liza's father, Alfred Doolittle, arrives at the house. Higgins amazes Alfred by immediately guessing that his mother was Welsh. Undeterred, Alfred claims that he wants his daughter back. Higgins says that she is upstairs and that her father may have her at once. Alfred, taken aback, says that Higgins is taking advantage of him. Higgins claims the reverse, arguing that Alfred is trying to blackmail him. Higgins says that Alfred sent Liza there on purpose. Alfred claims that he has not even asked for money yet, saying that he only found out where Liza was because she took the son of her landlady for a ride in the cab on the way over to Higgins's house. He stayed around hoping to get a ride home, and she sent him to get her luggage when she decided to stay at Higgins's house. The boy reported to Alfred that she only wanted her luggage, but not to bother with any clothes. Alfred says that this report naturally made him anxious as a father.

Higgins, seeing that Alfred has brought his daughter her luggage, asks him why he would do that if he wanted to bring Liza back home. In not too subtle language, Alfred says that he does not mind if Liza becomes Higgins's prostitute so long as he gets some money out of it, too. He asks for five pounds. He adds that his life is very hard because he is one of the "undeserving poor."

Higgins, who finds this character delightful, offers him ten pounds, but Alfred takes only five, saying that ten is too much and might make him feel so prudent that he would want to save the money. Five pounds is just enough for a spree for himself and his "missus." Pickering says that he should marry his missus. Alfred replies that he is willing, but the missus likes being unmarried because it means that he has to be nicer to her and give her presents.

Liza enters wearing a stylish Japanese kimono, now that she is clean from her bath. She asks her father if he recognizes her, and Pickering and Higgins express surprise that she has cleaned up so well. Higgins invites Alfred to come back, saying that he would like his brother the clergyman to talk with him. Alfred makes a quick escape, however, and Higgins explains to Eliza that he said that so that her father would not return anytime soon.

Mrs. Pearce announces that the new clothes have come for Eliza to try on, and she rushes out excitedly. Pickering and Higgins remark about how difficult their job will be.

Analysis

Despite the somewhat pathetic figure that she cuts initially, Liza's goal is admirable. She longs for that which is precisely so difficult in British society: self-improvement. In this act, Mrs. Pearce is the foil for Liza; she represents propriety and morality. Mrs. Pearce is duly shocked at Liza's wish to attain a higher social class. The American motif of success and class mobility through individual hard work is not part of Mrs. Pearce's cultural inheritance.

Shaw is at pains in this act to show that Eliza does not enter into the deal willingly. Rather, she is manipulated into participating in the experiment by Higgins's chocolates, plus his promises to her that she will get married or own a flower shop if she does what he says. His offer is one that she can hardly refuse in order to get what she wants. Shaw, who is often read as a feminist playwright, sets Eliza up as a victim of the two older, better educated men, who take up Eliza's case as a challenge rather than a humanitarian endeavor. This situation gives emotional weight to her later anger against them.

The appearance of Eliza's father in this act is quite important, because we realize just how rough a background Eliza comes from. She is an illegitimate child whose father is a dustman willing to pimp his daughter. Doolittle, whose name is a pun on the fact that he hardly works, defines himself explicitly as a member of the undeserving poor. Despite the humor that arises when Doolittle explains that he is no less deserving than a widow who collects from a number of different funds for the death of the same husband, the man's joke holds a grain of truth. As a socialist, Shaw was concerned with all of the poor, not just the working or bereaved poor.

A few months later, Higgins's mother (Mrs. Higgins) is writing letters in her drawing room when she is interrupted by her son. She scolds him for turning up during her "at-home day," the day when she receives guests. Mrs. Higgins claims that her son scares off her guests.

Higgins explains his bet with Pickering over Eliza and says that she is coming to the house to try out her accent. Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill are shown in, and they are the same mother and daughter who were waiting for a cab at the beginning of the play. Higgins recognizes them, but he cannot figure out where he has seen them before. Freddy also arrives. Miss Eynsford Hill tries to flirt with Mr. Higgins, but he rails at the company (including himself) for having no knowledge of science, philosophy, or poetry--merely knowing how to act in society.

Eliza is shown in, exquisitely dressed, and she makes quite an impression. In fact, Freddy falls in love with her. Mr. Higgins realizes that they all met on that day at Covent Garden, but nobody else makes the connection. Eliza, who has been warned to limit her conversation to the weather and to people's health, talks about an aunt of hers who supposedly died of influenza but who was perhaps killed so that the killer might steal her new straw hat. Mr. Higgins grows alarmed, and Eliza leaves, but the Eynsford Hills think that by talking about coarse subjects and swearing, Eliza was using a new, fashionable type of slang. Pickering tries to support this assumption by declaring that he can no longer distinguish high society from a ship's forecastle now that people swear so often. Clara declares the "new slang" charming--and to her mother's horror, she herself uses the British curse word "bloody."

Mrs. Higgins invites the smitten Freddy back to spend more time with Eliza. The Eynsford Hills exit. Mrs. Higgins scolds the men, declaring that their project with Eliza, while clever, cannot work because no skill in pronunciation or fancy dresses can change the subject matter of what Eliza talks about. The content will trump the style; she will always give herself away. Like Mrs. Pearce, she also disapproves of the fact that Eliza lives in the house with the two men. Moreover, she complains that Pickering and Higgins are treating her like a "live doll."

The men protest that they take Eliza very seriously and are quite taken with her talents, including the fact that she has a wonderful ear and has taught herself to play the piano. Mrs. Higgins reminds them of the problem they have not yet faced--what to do with Eliza after the experiment is over--and the men reply that they will set her up in some sort of genteel occupation. They exit, talking about how they will take Eliza to a Shakespeare exhibition and then have her mimic all of the people there when they get home. Mrs. Higgins resumes writing letters and exclaims, "men!!" with exasperation.

Analysis

In this act we witness the transformation of Liza the flower-girl into Eliza the society lady. The change caused by repackaging her in new clothing and providing her with a new accent is so complete that she goes unrecognized by people who have seen her in her former state. Even the rough content of her conversation does not reveal her class, despite the concerns of the people who know to look out for such content.

The fact that Freddy becomes instantly smitten with her emphasizes the concept of infatuation on the basis of external characteristics. He barely noticed her when she was a flower-girl, but the change in her looks and her talk has made her infinitely more attractive to him. These characteristics make her seem to be of a class much higher than before. The location makes a difference, too; what would a girl like Liza be doing in such a respectable home? Furthermore, the fact that the other characters play her as a cultured woman makes it harder for the visitors to become suspicious.

Act III also brings a sobering touch of realism back to the play. Standing alone, the bet between Pickering and Higgins seems amusing, worthwhile on humanitarian grounds, and intellectually and practically challenging. Taken in the context of society more generally, a stance which Mrs. Higgins emphasizes, the process is potentially dangerous. The primary function of genteel ladies at this time was to secure a safe and lucrative marriage for themselves, a fact of which we are reminded as Clara eyes Higgins. She views him as marriageable not because she loves him, but because she has calculated thatshe would be a "good catch" monetarily and in terms of his position in society. Eliza has already been made dangerous, however, because she exists outside of this market. Because of her background and lack of pedigree, she is unmarriageable, no matter how charming she may seem. Changing her accent and manner of dress ultimately will cause confusion because it will come out that she is taking part in a slice of society of which she cannot become fully a part-Freddy will only be disappointed. Mrs. Higgins puts it bluntly when she complains that Higgins has given Eliza the "manners and habits which disqualify a fine lady from earning her living without giving her a fine lady's income." The change of setting from the isolated Wimpole Street laboratory into a "society house" makes this shift even starker. Eliza is becoming too good for her old society, and she is not yet good enough for her new society. This gap in the experiment is troublesome, and something must be done about it. It is not clear, however, that the men are fully aware of the problem or that they have a viable solution.

At midnight on Wimpole Street, Eliza enters looking pale and tired, almost tragic. Pickering and Higgins ignore Eliza, talking about where Higgins's slippers are and whether there is any mail. They have been to a garden party, a dinner party, and the opera, and Eliza was extremely successful, fooling everyone. Higgins expresses his contempt for society and says that he is glad that the experiment is over, since he was beginning to grow tired of it. Pickering says that it is almost scary how good at it all Eliza is-she is better than the society ladies. Eliza, who has gone to find Higgins's slippers, begins to look angry, then murderous. Higgins leaves, asking Eliza to turn off the light and to ask Mrs. Pearce to make coffee in the morning.

Higgins returns, looking for his slippers again, and Eliza throws them at him. Eliza angrily explains that she does not know what to do with herself, now that she has won the bet. Higgins says that she is overreacting. He tells her that after she sleeps she will feel better. He adds that she is quite attractive, so maybe she could marry after all-perhaps his mother could find someone genteel for her to marry. Eliza responds that she was above selling herself when she was a working-class woman; she merely sold flowers instead of her body. Higgins replies that her moral judgment against marriage is unfair.

Eliza asks whether her clothes belong to her or Pickering, since he is the one who bought them. Higgins replies that of course they belong to her. When she protests that she did not want to be accused of stealing them, he is hurt. (She has not forgotten her roots in poverty.) He says that that her comment shows a want of feeling. Eliza pushes her advantage, asking him to take the hired jewels to his room so that they will be safe. Higgins exclaims that he would shove them down her throat if only he would not have to return them to the jeweler. Eliza also gives Higgins back a ring that he bought her, a piece of jewerly that was not borrowed. He angrily throws it into the fireplace and says that she has "wounded him to the heart."

Eliza is glad to get "a little of her own back." Higgins tries to regain his dignity, saying that he has lost his temper for the first time in a long time. He leaves the room in a controlled manner, but he slams the door on the way out. Eliza smiles, imitates his accent in a wild manner, and gets down on her knees to look in the ashes for the ring.

Analysis

In this pivotal act, the relationship between Eliza and Higgins finally explodes. It is revealed that there has been a deeper feeling between them, and the fact that he has given her a ring certainly suggests a promise of marriage. This act also expresses Shaw's deepest condemnation of society, which is fleshed out more fully in Mrs. Warren's profession; that is, he puts in Eliza's words the idea that societal marriage is nothing better than the exchange of sex for money like what one sees among prostitutes. Eliza, if not also Shaw, views the upper-class marriage market as more degraded than her previous profession of selling flowers. From a class perspective, at least, her opinion expresses Shaw's deep socialism, supporting the claim that the working classes can and often do have more dignity than the hypocritical segments of the upper class.

Act Four also reveals an interesting power dynamic between Eliza and Higgins. Eliza most greatly resents the fact that Higgins views her success as his own, and she is infuriated by his idea that (like the mythological Pygmalion) he is the agent who created her. She views this claim as presumptuous and dehumanizing. Although by questioning Higgins about the jewelry she reminds him of the gap in class between them, she succeeds in making him angry. The ability to affect someone who holds himself maddeningly superior to her heartens her-she is glad to get "some of her own back" in this way. The relationship between the two now includes Eliza's pleasure at being able to hurt Higgins.

Eliza's actions at the end of the act remind the audience of the very real dilemma facing Eliza: what is she to do-stay or go? She mimicks Higgins, pleased that she has effectively gotten him angry, but she then begins to search, almost compulsively, for the ring that she has just discarded. This juxtaposition demonstrates that she still has feelings for Higgins, being not yet ready to throw away the sentimental token that he gave her. Searching for the ring also suggests an economic prudence on Eliza's part; her future is very unclear.

Mrs. Higgins is in her drawing room when her parlor-maid enters and informs her that Pickering and Higgins are downstairs calling the police. Mrs. Higgins sends the parlor-maid upstairs to inform Eliza that the men are here and that she should not come until she is called. Higgins enters and explains that he is frantic that Eliza has left-he cannot find anything and now has nobody to remind him of his appointments. Mrs. Higgins scolds her son for calling the police as if Eliza were a lost parcel.

The parlor-maid announces Mr. Doolittle, who enters in a fancy waistcoat. Doolittle claims that Higgins has ruined his happiness. Higgins says that this is impossible because he only gave him a small amount of money, and because he has had only two conversations with him since the first one. Doolittle explains that Higgins wrote a letter to a man named Ezra D. Wannafeller saying that Doolittle was the most original moralist in England, and the man died and left his millions to Doolittle-partially to show that the Americans do not regard class in the same way that the English do. Doolittle says that he is miserable after being made a gentleman: everybody asks him for money, and he does not have the nerve to forsake his new wealth and station.

Mrs. Higgins says that at least he now can provide for his daughter. Higgins objects to this idea, saying that he bought her for five pounds. Mrs. Higgins reveals that Eliza is upstairs, having come upset very early in the morning. Mrs. Higgins censures them for not admiring Eliza or telling her she did a good job.

When Eliza comes down, she looks self-possessed and very much at home. She uses the genteel accents that Higgins has taught her. Higgins is furious and claims that he has made her what she is. Pickering assures Eliza that he does not think of her as just an experiment, and she expresses her gratitude to him for everything, especially for teaching manners to her. She adds pointedly says that Higgins could not have taught her such manners.

Eliza says that the difference between a lady and a flower-girl is not in anything that she does but in how she is treated. Pickering always treated her like a lady, whereas Higgins has treated her like dirt. Higgins claims in response that he treats everyone like dirt.

Doolittle tells his daughter that he is marrying her mother. Doolittle is nervous, and he asks Pickering to come to help see him through the wedding. Mrs. Higgins decides to go as well, leaving Higgins and Eliza alone. Eliza says that she will not come back because Higgins only wants her to pick up his slippers and the like. Higgins says that he cannot change his own manners, but at least he is democratic: again, he says he treats everyone as if they were of the lower class. Eliza says that she shall not be passed over and that she can do without Higgins. Higgins says that he needs to determine if he can do without her, since he has grown accustomed to having her around. Eliza claims that he should not have taught her anything because it only leads to trouble, but Higgins claims that all creation leads to trouble.

Eliza says that she is holding out for something more, adding that Freddy is infatuated with her and writes her letters every day. She says that she participated in the experiment because she had come to care for Higgins, and all she wanted was a little kindness. She had not forgotten the social and economic gaps between them. Higgins idealizes the lower-class life, saying that you work until you are inhuman, then you squabble or make love or drink until you fall asleep. He also says that Eliza needs too much attention. She says that to assert her independence she will marry Freddy or become a teacher of phonetics. He finds her spirit to be attractive and says that she is no longer a woman but a tower of strength. He suggests that she live with him and Colonel Pickering, the three of them together as bachelors.

Mrs. Higgins returns dressed for the wedding, and she takes Eliza with her. Higgins asks her to run his errands for him, including one to buy some cheese and ham. She says a final goodbye to him, and he seems confident that she will follow his command.

The onstage drama ends, and Shaw adds, in an epilogue, that Eliza recognizes Higgins as predestined to be a bachelor-and that she marries Freddy instead. (This was somewhat of a scandal, but the fact that Eliza's father had become a social success made it less hard on the Eynsford Hills.) With a gift from Colonel Pickering, Eliza opens up a flower shop. The only person truly bothered by this state of affairs is Clara, who figures that the marriage will not help her own marriage prospects. But Clara began to read H.G. Wells and travel in the circles of his fans, and she decides to begin working in a furniture shop herself in the hopes that she might meet Wells (because the woman who owns the shop is also a fan of his). Freddy is not very practical, and he and Eliza have to take classes in bookkeeping to make their business a success. But they do make it a success, and they live a fairly comfortable life.

Analysis

The mythological themes that give the title to this play are at their strongest in this act. The audience learns conclusively that Higgins truly views himself as Eliza's creator.

Shaw sets up a strange, almost Freudian symmetry between Higgins and his mother on the one hand and Eliza and her father on the other. Higgins gives one of his reasons for never marrying as his too great respect for his mother. Her love of beauty, art, and philosophy has led her son to value Milton's poetry and his own universal alphabet more highly than he could a relationship with a woman. From Eliza's perspective, Higgins seems too much like her father in that neither of them really need her. Eliza genuinely cares about Higgins and is stung by the idea that he needs her no more than he needs his slippers. This represents the same sort of nonchalance with which Doolittle sells his only daughter in Act II for a five-pound note. Paternal relations and romantic relations, should be stronger than this. But Higgins's respect for his mother seems to interfere with his own life.

Shaw's description of the final state of affairs shows an interesting perspective on love. Freddy was infatuated with Eliza and remains so, but it is unclear what her feelings are towards him. She certainly likes him, but she continues to feel the most passionately (mostly in anger) about Higgins. She wishes that she could get him on a "desert island" just to see him make love like any other man-but this remains a private fantasy which Shaw dismisses as ultimately unimportant. The social mores of the characters tend to favor balanced and practical love over passionate, romantic love.

Despite the fact that Shaw moved away from Ireland at a young age, he is a quintessentially Irish writer. (See, for instance, John Bull's Other Island Show.) Read in the light of the imperial relationship between England and Ireland, Eliza's final declaration of independence might have a political connotation, especially since language and location have been intertwined from the beginning. The fact that the English forced their language on the Gaelic-speaking Irish, after invading Ireland, has particular bearing on this play, where we witness a male forcibly teaching a female to speak. (One might consider the possibility of similar themes of colonization and intrusion that involve reshaping language in Shakespeare's (otherwise very different play) The Tempest and, much later, Beckett's Endgame.) Like Shakespeare's Caliban, Eliza may see a significant benefit of her newly-acquired language as the ability to curse her "master" with fluency. And Ireland (like many countries) is feminized in the Irish popular imagination, represented by female names like Erin and "Kathleen Ni Houlihan," while in colonial narratives the conqueror is usually portrayed as male. Pygmalion was produced only four years before the 1916 Easter Uprising, and Eliza's demand for self-determination, after rising into her own social maturity, may reflect the Irish nationalist cause.

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