Themes
The chief theme in the play is criticism of conventional social institutions, primarily marriage: ?the choked-up, seething pit", "the right to destroy years and years of life". Agnes justifies her adulterous "Free Union" arrangement with Lucas by telling of her miserable marriage, and by dismissing Sybil as "the shrew, the termagant he has now fled from..." She upbraids the Duke for his hypocrisy in marrying a wealthy woman to maintain his position while continuing his debauchery with other women. Gertrude confesses that her late husband made her unhappy, and that she was in love with another man (who is also dead). Sybil tells of her unhappiness with Lucas.
Agnes also upbraids the Duke for his life of unearned luxury, while the masses starve and toil.
But in addition, Agnes is hostile to traditional social conventions. She doesn't want to be "pretty", she is offended when Lucas buys her an elegant gown, and she is disgusted when Lucas waxes conventionally poetical about their future life as not public radicals.
However, the play also, more subtly, attacks the conventions of the radicalism of the time. The "Free Union" between Lucas and Agnes collapses. Even before the Duke proposes the "reconciliation", Lucas has already decided that he and Agnes should not become professional radicals as she had planned. Sybil shows that he is as much to blame for their estrangement as she is. The Duke reveals Lucas as "in morals - an epicure"; that is, a playboy posing as a reformer.
Agnes, in the end, abandons radicalism for at least a while, and turns to religion. Gertrude and Amos are the figures who are not exposed or condemned.
Read more about this topic: The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)