My Fair Lady

Eliza Doolittle is the protagonist of the musical. At the start of the musical, she is a young woman with a strong Cockney accent who sells flowers in Covent Garden. Eliza is frequently self-assured and intelligent. At the beginning of Act I, she stands up for herself to Freddy and his mother. She is clever and bold in selling her flowers. She even tries to stand up to Higgins, although Higgins is an expert of language and often leaves her discouraged.

When Eliza shows up at Higgins’s door, boldly using an address that she only overheard, she sets the main action of the play in motion. Although she only asks for lessons in elocution (which she plans to pay for), Higgins and Pickering decide to use her to make a bet about Higgins’s claims that he could turn her into a duchess. The success of the wager is clearly in Eliza’s hands, as she pushes back when Higgins works her too hard, only achieving a breakthrough when Higgins inspires her to want one.

Eliza embodies the issues of class dynamics in the musical, as she is subjected to both verbal abuse and dismissive treatment by Higgins, who regards her as a means to an end rather than a person in her own right.