My Fair Lady

“A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting noises has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech; that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.”

Henry Higgins expresses his lofty attitude toward the English language while showing very little regard for the humans who speak it and even less regard for humans who don’t speak it “properly,” introducing the theme The Links Between Language and Social Class. For Higgins, accent and speech that mirror those of the English elite are the only “right” ones, making lower-class people like Eliza Doolittle automatically lesser in his eyes.

“An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him. The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.”

In “Why Can’t the English,” Higgins complains about all the different ways that English people butcher the language. In this line, he asserts that this isn’t simply linguistic snobbery by a scholar—every English person hates other English people just from hearing the sound of their dialect. Higgins is suggesting that Eliza is in poverty because of her accent alone, introducing the theme (Im)permeable Hierarchies of Class.

“Anything? I gave her everything. I give her the greatest gift any human being can give to another: life! I introduced her to this here planet, I did, with all its wonders and marvels […] I give her all that, and then I disappears and leaves her on her own to enjoy it.”

Doolittle is exerting a patriarchal claim over Eliza and the expectation of her continued loyalty and support by asserting that he “gave her everything” by fathering her, an act that can never be repaid. Eliza is told multiple times throughout the musical that she needs to show gratitude to the men who claim credit for creating her, reflecting