HIGGINS [carried away] Yes: in six months—in three if she has a good ear and a quick tongue—I’ll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We’ll start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce. Monkey Brand, if it won’t come off any other way. Is there a good fire in the kitchen?

MRS. PEARCE [protesting]. Yes; but—

HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they come.

LIZA. You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I’m a good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do. (SHAW, 1957, p. 32-33)

The first thing to notice is what Higgins reaches for. He does not say teach, train, or instruct. He says clean. The transformation he is about to attempt is a matter of soap and water before it is a matter of language. The bet he is making is to pass Liza off as a duchess, and passing is, before anything else, a matter of how she is seen. Class in his world is read by the eye first. The cleanliness of the skin, the cut of the dress, the freshness of the cloth, all of that comes before speech. The body has to be presentable before the lessons can even begin. And not just any soap. Monkey Brand was a polishing soap, the kind used on iron stoves and stone floors. Higgins names it casually, the way one might name something used on objects. That word choice already tells us how he sees Liza in this moment. She is closer to a surface than a person. He does not address her, he arranges her. She is taken, wrapped, washed, dressed, always the object of the verb, never the one speaking it.

The sequence he gives is even more telling. Take her clothes off. Burn them. Wash her. Wrap her in brown paper. Order new clothes. The order of operations is not random. It is the order of a ritual. The old self is destroyed, the body is purified, the new self is wrapped and waiting for its garments. This is the structure of a baptism, pushed inside a kitchen. Strip, cleanse, reclothe, rename.

REFERENCES

SHAW, Bernard G. Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts. London: Green and Co Ltd, 1957.