My Fair Lady follows the story of a young Cockney-speaking flower girl, Eliza. After hearing her ghastly misconstruing the English language, Professor Higgins claims he can transform her into a duchess. The fact that Higgins assumes his dialect of English is correct and every other one is wrong suggests that there can only be one "right" or "true" language and all others are inferior. The claim that correcting Eliza's language can turn her into a duchess implies there is a connection between proper English and high society. Wanting to be more than a common flower girl and run her own shop, Eliza seeks Higgins and dares him to make good on his offer. Threatening her with starvation, Higgins forces Eliza through countless, insensitive drills to refine her speech. Among these were constant repetition of her vowels, "the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain," "in Hertford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen," and general speaking with marbles in her mouth. This harsh and unnecessary treatment is a caricature of the hard work and suffering that goes into learning a new language. Once Eliza has "mastered" the language, Higgins and his colleague take her out to the races - a taste of real high class society.
Restricted to speaking of weather and health, Eliza stumbles her way through her first "proper" conversation. She passes of her mistakes as the new small talk and manages to snag the attention of a particular Freddie Eynsford-Hill. However, once Eliza becomes involved and excited in the race, she unconsciously reverts back to her loud Cockney self. This illustrates that once Eliza actually felt something, she went back to the language that she felt comfortable expressing herself in.
At the end of the film, Eliza is passed off as a duchess but she remains unhappy. Although she looks the part, there lacks substance. The movie as a whole suggests that gaining a language to fit in with society is not all positive gain. Eliza had to give up part of herself in throwing away her Cockney accent. The real question posed is whether the benefits of relinquishing a language or dialect outweigh the consequences.
You provide a very good account of the events of the film here. I like how you tied in the implied connections between speaking standard english and being part of high society. Also, you made good mention of the linguistic training that Eliza was forced to undergo. However, to further the effectiveness of your post, you may wish to consider including an explanation of what, exactly, these particular drills did to alter her speech paterns.
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