Eliza, prior to her transformation at the hands of Professor Higgins, was essentially a beggar—impoverished and working on the street. She was the exact opposite of well-dressed and dignified, with nothing about her appearance or bearing that would suggest high social standing. Professor Higgins was seeking someone who could illustrate the ultimate transformation, and he did well by finding Eliza.
Eliza is described as covered in dirt with ragged clothes that were wrinkled and ripped and old. She also attempted to improve her looks by wearing ostentatious ostrich feathers in her hair which, in reality, did nothing to help the situation. Professor Higgins takes her in and cleans her up. With a wash, she instantly looks better, and he is able to dress her in nice clothes to make her look wealthy and refined.
Eliza comes into Mr. Henry Higgins's laboratory looking like a poor young flower-selling woman that she is. She tries to look nice by wearing a hat decorated with ostrich feathers in the colors red, sky-blue, and orange. Her apron is not quite clean, and she has on a shabby coat that "has been tidied a little." She is putting her best foot forward but nevertheless is unmistakably a lower class person out of place in a well-to-do home. As Higgins says of her:
She's so deliciously low—so horribly dirty—
Higgins sends her off immediately to be bathed, and we learn she has never had a full bath in her life. Eliza's appearance shows how wide the class divide was in the England of a hundred years ago. Today, a poor working person like Eliza would probably be able to wear clean clothes and bathe. Eliza's circumstances force her to be dirty and shabby.
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