Free Curtain Up by Julius Green

more sinister aspect. Whilst Christie seems at home with Shaw’s approach to the matter, her comedy both makes merciless fun of the wider philosophy’s advocates and touches on some other burning issues of the day. Faced with an upcoming new law that will enforce eugenic philosophy by allowing only the physically and mentally perfect to marry, Eugenia has taken herself to what she believes to be a eugenics clinic advertising perfect partners. Her maid, Stevens, accompanies her:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  EUGENIA: Talking of divorce, Eugenics will revolutionise the divorce laws.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  STEVENS: Indeed Ma’am. Well I’ve heard as in Norway and Sweden and such countries you can get rid of your ’usband as easy as asking, with no more reason than just losing your taste for him. Very unfair I calls it. All men is trying at times, but don’t turn them helpless creatures adrift, call ’em your cross and put up with ’em. 19
    In the preface to his 1908 play Getting Married , under the heading ‘What does the word marriage mean?’ George Bernard Shaw had written: ‘In Sweden, one of the most highly civilized countries in the world, a marriage is dissolved if both parties wish it, without any question of conduct. That is what marriage means in Sweden. In Clapham that is what they call by the senseless name of free love.’ 20 The divorce laws were the subject of much debate in the early twentieth century, and it was not until 1923’s Matrimonial Causes Act that women were able to file for divorce on the same basis as men. Prior to that, men had simply to prove infidelity on the part of their spouse, whilst women had to establish further exacerbating circumstances such as rape or incest.
    Christie’s play goes on:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  EUGENIA: It’s an equal law for men and for women. Men can obtain a divorce with equal ease.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  STEVENS: Ah! Ma’am, but a wife’s an ’abit to a man, and we all know how attached a man is to his ’abits, drinking and smoking and such like.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  EUGENIA: So you class a wife with drinking and smoking, Stevens!
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  STEVENS: Well, Ma’am it’s true she comes more expensive sometimes.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  EUGENIA: Stevens, you are lamentably behind the spirit of the age . . .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  STEVENS: (thoughtfully) It seems to me M’am, what with the gentlemen being as difficult and scarce to get hold of as they are, that it’s a pity to ask too much of ’em . . .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  EUGENIA: . . . next week, the Marriage Supervision Bill will become Law. It ensures that only the physically and mentally sound shall marry . . . I’m sure I don’t know what society is coming to. A few years ago money was everything – like birth used to be, and now nothing counts but notoriety. To be anybody one must have a new religion, or a new pet. My baby kangaroo, in spite of the fuss with the police, kept me in the forefront of society last season. But this year, Hyde Park is a walking menagerie, and an elephant would hardly attract attention. Eugenics, I feel assured, will be the next society craze. Let me then, be the first to take it up . . . This advertisement caught my eye this morning (reads) ‘Eugenic Institute. Men and Women of England. Protect the Race. Choose mates of physical and mental perfection. Come here and find your mate (Guaranteed with Medical Certificate). Remember the Race and Come. And here we are. What do you think of it, Stevens. Shan’t I be the most talked of woman in society?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  STEVENS: It’s my experience, M’am, as anything that mentions racing, is shady.
    Even the suffrage movement does not escape Stevens’ wisdom: ‘I holds as votes is very much the same as husbands,they’re a lot of