here comes a luminous moment when
it is suddenly revealed to the Heroine of the Problem Play that it is
Society that is at the bottom of this thing. She has felt all along
there was something the matter. Why has she never thought of it before?
Here all these years has she been going about blaming her poor old
father; her mother for dying too soon; the remarkable circumstances
attending her girlhood; that dear old stupid husband she thought was
hers; and all the while the really culpable party has been existing
unsuspected under her very nose. She clears away the furniture a bit,
and tells Society exactly what she thinks of it--she is always good at
that, telling people what she thinks of them. Other people's failings do
not escape her, not for long. If Society would only step out for a
moment, and look at itself with her eyes, something might be done. If
Society, now that the thing has been pointed out to it, has still any
lingering desire to live, let it look at her. This, that she is, Society
has made her! Let Society have a walk round her, and then go home and
reflect.

Could she--herself--have been to blame?

It lifts a load from us, fixing the blame on Society. There were periods
in the play when we hardly knew what to think. The scientific father,
the dead mother, the early husband! it was difficult to grasp the fact
that they alone were to blame. One felt there was something to be said
for even them. Ugly thoughts would cross our mind that perhaps the
Heroine herself was not altogether irreproachable--that possibly there
would have been less Problem, if, thinking a little less about her
clothes, yearning a little less to do nothing all day long and be
perfectly happy, she had pulled herself together, told herself that the
world was not built exclusively for her, and settled down to the
existence of an ordinary decent woman.

Looking at the thing all round, that is perhaps the best solution of the
Problem: it is Society that is to blame. We had better keep to that.

CHAPTER IX

Civilization and the Unemployed.

Where Civilization fails is in not providing men and women with
sufficient work. In the Stone Age man was, one imagines, kept busy. When
he was not looking for his dinner, or eating his dinner, or sleeping off
the effects of his dinner, he was hard at work with a club, clearing the
neighbourhood of what one doubts not he would have described as aliens.
The healthy Palae