Eliza Doolittle is presented at the start of the play as a nobody-a poor flower girl, earning a small amount of money on the streets. She is portrayed as being very dirty, with her hair in need of a wash and being dressed in old, dirty clothes. Her boots need repairing and she needs the services of a dentist. At the start of the play, Freddy Hill knocks her flowers on the floor and she asks Mrs. Hill to pay for them. However, even though the mother is prepared to pay, Clara, the daughter does not want to because she sees the flower girl as being dirty and below herself. The stage directions explain 'she is not a romantic figure. She is perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, slightly older'. It is here, when they are waiting for the rain to stop, that the flower girl talks to Colonel Pickering and meets Henry Higgins who is writing down the words that she is saying. Little did she know, the man was taking it down to study her accent, but the flower girl thought he was a police officer. The flower girl kept mumbling to herself 'I'm a good girl I am' because she believed that she was talking to a police officer.
             It is here that Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering meet and Eliza keeps getting upset and eventually she drives off in a taxi, goes home, and then, not bothering to get undressed gets into bed and falls asleep.
             The next morning Eliza appears at Wimpole Street, Higgins' house cleaner, Mrs. Pearce, opens the door and Eliza asks for speaking lessons. Colonel Pickering has a bet with Higgins, that in six months he could teach her well enough English to pass her off as a Duchess. She is then given new clothes and when her own father comes in he does not recognise her as she has go from being a poor flower girl, in appearance, to a lady.
             Eliza Doolittle speaks with quite a thick accent that the upper class, such as the Hills and Henry Higgins find very unpleasant. Speech such as 'Theres manners ...