This play is a bittersweet comedy about two sisters living with their apparently invalid widowed mother. Both must work for
a living: Dolly as a teacher in a young girls''s school; her sister Caroline as a maid, who takes in laundry; they also have a boarder, a shy young clerk named Mr. Thompson.
Dolly is rather sharp-tongued, very bright, and well-educated. She is vocal in her despair that things will ever be any better, that is, that they will ever marry or even improve their situation.
Mr. Thompson comes in and offers the girls (especially Caroline) some chocolates. He goes back to work and Mr. Smythe comes over. He hints that
marriage is a good thing and each girl, both in turn, thinks he means to propose to her. He finally announces, however, that he is marrying another girl, Rose, whom he''ll bring around sometime. He announces he just came (in his somewhat arrogant, thoughtless, insensitive, and flirtatious way) to cheer them up. After he leaves, Caroline goes to get some flounder for Mr. Thompson and Dolly says that the bald Sunday School teacher, Mr. Philips, will be back from holiday. Once her sister leaves for the store, Dolly collapses, head on her arms, in sorrow.
This play is one of the most touching plays about the human condition, in hope and despair and disappointment. It is a deep and despairing commentary on the condition of women, particularly at the turn of the
century, although, except for better job prospects, not that much has changed, even now.
Caroline chooses a quiet, comforting, traditionally feminine, gentle way of being. Her sister is more outspoken in her despair--hating her job (for which she is obviously ill-suited), her circumstances, and most of the people in her life. Is it because they offer no way out of a life she hates and sees little or no possibility of changing? Only marriage, she feels, would offer he hope of a better life (or at least different, though she may not realize she is only changing one miserable state for a possibly worse one), and so every hope is for the Proposal--though she and her sister meet few men since they have no father or brother to help them. There is no thought of love, or of caring, or of marriage as anything but some relief from the drudgery and despair of their current existences. It is a terrible thing for life (and love or its abscence) to be like this.