How are Victorian social classes represented in Act 1 of Pygmalion?

Besides introducing the major characters of the play, this act introduces socioeconomic class as a central theme of Pygmalion. As a socialist, Shaw was particularly concerned with exploring and exposing the power divide between the poor and the rich. By setting the play in London, Shaw chooses to deal with a society that is particularly stratified. British class-consciousness is based not only on economic power, as it is in many other societies, but also on history (historic class differences). The play highlights British people's recognition of accents to differentiate among themselves not only geographically (a Welsh accent is distinct from a Scottish accent, which is distinct from a Surrey accent), but also to distinguish (on another but related dimension of accents) the various social classes.

Higgins's ability to pinpoint the location of origin of members of the crowd means not only that he can tell what part of England, or even what neighborhood of London, they are from, but also that he can probably guess fairly easily their socioeconomic status. In the early twentieth century, social mobility in Britain was slim to none, so the fact that Pickering's accent is audibly a Cambridge one (tying him to a very upper-class university) means that he is upper-class and likely to remain so. Conversely, Liza was born into Lisson Grove and, correspondingly, grew up speaking with what was considered a terrible accent. She is thus likely to remain poor not only because her family was poor, but also because everyone else can tell that she had a poor upbringing from the way that she speaks.