10. What is the role of Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion? Is he simply a fool cast for comic relief? Or is he more? Explain. Consider him as a mirror image of Higgins.
In the play Pygmalion, the character of Alfred Doolittle seems to be cast as the fool at first, yet as the play carries on we realize that he is the mirror image of Higgins and is meant to reflect his contempt for society. Both Doolittle and Higgins realize the artificiality of social class distinctions, and through Shaw’s use of irony and humor symbolize this theme. The sole purpose of Doolittle’s character is to reflect George Bernard Shaw’s socialist views on how society should be.
Alfred Doolittle is the mirror image of Higgins if the mirror was upside down. Alfred is poor as dirt; he works as a trash man on the streets and barely makes enough to survive. Higgins, on the other hand, is wealthy and of a higher class; he teaches wealthy people to speak properly. How can these characters be mirror images you say? Well if you strip both of these characters down to just their ideals and views on life, they would be spot on. Both have the view that people would be better off without the barriers that divides people among classes, “DOOLITTLE: It’s making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free(Shaw116).” It is ironic that Doolittle was happier as a thief on the streets than he is as a gentleman. Higgins feels the same way about social classes, “HIGGINS: The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners, or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third class carriages, and one soul is as good as another(Shaw197).” In different ways, the two characters reflect each other’s true view on society.