Act I and II of Pygmalion

In the first two acts of Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower vendor, has an encounter with Colonel Pickering, a student of Indian dialects, and Henry Higgins, the author of the Universal Alphabet, while selling flowers on the street corner of London. Hearing the broken English Eliza speaks disgusts Higgins so much that he develops an urge to teach her how to speak properly. Fearing Eliza’s poor speech could possibly prevent her from being successful in her life endeavors, Higgins brags about his ability to transform Eliza into the polished, refined young adult she is capable of becoming within the time frame of three months. “You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party,” Higgins boasts to Pickering in Act I (18).

Higgins’ annoyance with Eliza’s broken speech reminds me of George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” article our class read last week. Like Orwell, Higgins hates how Eliza unknowingly butchers the English language every time she talks. In fact in Act I, Higgins tells Eliza, “. . .you incarnate insult to the English language. . . .” (18). In this quote, Higgins is telling Eliza she dishonors English language.

Even though I have only read the first two acts of Pygmalion, I have to say, I am enjoying the play already! Particularly, I like how Act I opens with a family of three—a mother, daughter named Clara, and son named Freddy—looking for a taxi cab on a busy London street, whom I assumed to be the main characters of the play. However, it is not until Freddy accidentally bumps into Eliza that I realized the plot of Act I is centered around the character of Eliza, not the characters of the mother, Clara, or Freddy who were introduced first.