# Pygmalion — Character guide

> Key figures in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

- [Henry Higgins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/henry_higgins.md): Higgins commands drawing rooms and lecture halls with equal rudeness, cataloguing strangers' vowels as casually as he insults his own mother's guests. His genuine genius is inseparable from his childishness: he bullies, 
- [Eliza Doolittle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/eliza_doolittle.md): Eliza arrives at Wimpole Street with three ostrich feathers, a shoddy coat, and the nerve to demand lessons like any paying customer, refusing to be called a baggage. Her quick temper and quicker instincts make her far m
- [Colonel Pickering](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/colonel_pickering.md): Pickering arrives in London steeped in Indian dialects and gentlemanly manners, the perfect foil to Higgins's domestic savagery. He funds the experiment and shares its risks, yet his instinct is always to ask the girl wh
- [Mrs. Pearce](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/mrs_pearce.md): Mrs. Pearce runs the household of a man who cannot find his own appointments, and she is the first to notice that a common girl in his study raises awkward questions. She warns Higgins about his language and his behavior
- [Mrs. Higgins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/mrs_higgins.md): Mrs. Higgins receives her son's phonetics experiments, stray dustmen, and startled guests with the same dry composure, correcting Henry's manners with a single raised eyebrow. She understands him better than he understan
- [Alfred Doolittle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/alfred_doolittle.md): Doolittle appears at Wimpole Street looking for his daughter and instead blames Higgins for ruining him: a joke in a letter has made him a gentleman, tied neck and heels to respectability. He was happy, free, and able to
- [Freddy Eynsford Hill](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/freddy_eynsford_hill.md): Freddy belongs to the genteel-poor Eynsford Hills, forever trailing after his mother and sister and apologizing for his own inadequacy. His comic helplessness — sent out for a cab, he returns soaked and empty-handed whil
- [Clara Eynsford Hill](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/clara_eynsford_hill.md): Freddy's sister, a social-climbing young woman impressed by Eliza's new speech.
- [The Parlormaid](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/the_parlormaid.md): Higgins's household maid who announces visitors.
- [Mr. H. G. Wells](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters/mr_h_g_wells.md): A contemporary author mentioned in passing.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/pygmalion_se/characters