Eliza Doolittle

Eliza Doolittle
Pygmalion character
Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle meets Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins in the 1956 stage musical, My Fair Lady
First appearancePygmalion
Created byGeorge Bernard Shaw
Portrayed by
In-universe information
AliasLiza
Nickname"The Flower Girl" (Act I)
GenderFemale
OccupationFlower girl
FamilyAlfred P. Doolittle (father)
SpouseFreddy Eynsford-Hill
NationalityEnglish
Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle on the set of 1964 film adaptation.

Eliza Doolittle is a fictional character and the protagonist in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (1913) and its 1956 musical adaptation, My Fair Lady.

Eliza (from Lisson Grove, London) is a Cockney flower seller, who comes to Professor Henry Higgins asking for elocution lessons, after a chance encounter at Covent Garden. Higgins goes along with it for the purposes of a wager: That he can turn her into the toast of elite London society. Her Cockney dialect includes words that are common among working class Londoners, such as ain't; "I ain't done nothing wrong by speaking to the gentleman" said Doolittle.[1]

Doolittle receives voice coaching and learns the rules of etiquette. The outcome of these attentions varies between the original play and the various adaptations (see the Pygmalion article).

  1. ^ Shaw, George Bernard. "Pygmalion/Act I". Retrieved 19 June 2016 – via Wikisource.