Eliza Doolittle
Eliza Doolittle is the Cockney flower seller in George Bernard Shaw's play *Pygmalion* (1913), transformed by phonetics professor Henry Higgins into a woman who can pass for a duchess.
The character became iconic through the musical adaptation *My Fair Lady*.
Her name now evokes dramatic self-improvement or class transformation: She pulled an Eliza Doolittle, going from receptionist to CEO.
- HigginsIrish-origin family name
- cockneyLondon working-class dialect
- flowerPlant's reproductive organ
- flower girlYouth strewing petals at weddings
- girlYoung female person
George Bernard Shaw · phonetics · fair · lady · upper class · guttersnipe · rain · Spain · loverly · transformation · accent · speech · Garden · My Fair Lady · musical · elocution · bet · duchess
- ShawPygmalion, Saint Joan, Geneva, Henry Higgins, prefaces
- literary charactersSherlock Holmes, Scout Finch, Elizabeth Bennet, Macbeth, Huck Finn
- Title CharactersAladdin, Amadeus, Anastasia, Annie, Bambi
- Musical CharactersElphaba, Jean Valjean, Javert, Cosette, Fantine
- Tragic CharactersHamlet, Oedipus, Macbeth, King Lear, Antigone
Eliza DoolittleHenry Higgins
Miss Havisham · Blanche DuBois · Daisy Buchanan · Jay Gatsby · downwardly mobile
Eliza DoolittleHenry Higgins
Pygmalion · Svengali · puppet master · Stepford wife · damsel in distress