Pygmalion characters

Also known as Liza

Appears from the start

A young flower seller who speaks with a strong London accent and survives by selling small bunches in the street. Alert to insult and fiercely protective of her respectability, she realizes that improved speech could open better-paid work and refuses to remain merely an object of study for the gentlemen who notice her voice.

Also known as Professor Higgins

Appears from the start

A specialist in phonetics who can identify a person's origins from minute features of speech. Energetic, confident, and absorbed by his subject, he treats voices as material to classify and reshape while giving little thought to the feelings of the people he studies.

Also known as Colonel Pickering

Appears from the start

A courteous military scholar who has come from India to meet Higgins because of their shared interest in phonetics. His respectful manners contrast with Higgins's abruptness, even when he joins enthusiastically in the proposed experiment with Eliza.

Appears from the start

A young man sheltering from the rain with his mother and sister in Covent Garden. Harried by their demands that he find a cab, he collides with Eliza and spills her flowers.

Appears from the start

Freddy and Clara's widowed mother, a genteel woman whose limited income makes social appearances difficult to maintain. She treats Eliza with basic consideration during the confusion outside the theatre.

Appears from the start

Freddy's socially ambitious sister. Impatient with her brother and conscious of status, she is drawn to fashionable behavior even when she does not fully understand it.

First appears in chapter 2

Higgins's housekeeper, responsible for maintaining order in a home filled with delicate recording equipment and her employer's careless habits. Practical and morally attentive, she immediately asks what will happen to Eliza after the proposed lessons and insists that the men consider her welfare.

First appears in chapter 2

Eliza's father, a dustman with a talent for comic argument and a declared dislike of conventional respectability. He comes to Higgins's house after learning that Eliza is there and tries to turn the situation to his financial advantage without pretending to paternal devotion.

First appears in chapter 3

Higgins's perceptive and independent mother. At her home he attempts Eliza's first social test, despite her warning that his experiment is likely to disrupt an ordinary visit. She sees both Eliza's potential and the irresponsibility behind her son's enthusiasm.