The Soul Of Motherhood

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A play full of sentiment and prettiness, rather of a French kind appropriately - as the scenes and characters are French. I should not be surprised to hear that it comes from a French original. The 'introduction' opens with a scene of two bedrooms. In one is Victorine, a model; in the other Marie, a rich young woman. Each has a love letter from Charles, an officer, who has deceived Victorine and wants to marry Marie. In the second scene of the 'introduction', 'the garden of life ', the two girls dream - an allegory for motherhood, which Victorine welcomes and Marie rejects. The play proper begins, some months later, in a town in Picardy. Victorine is with her baby, engaged for the laundry in Marie's chateau. The latter refuses to let her keep the baby and she entrusts it to a wicked old woman, who puts it in a basket and gives it to one cherry, to throw away. Cherry is a nearly blind young man, with a beautiful nature, in love with Pauline, the mayor's daughter. Later on a doctor cures him and he is to start for the Front. Not knowing it is hers, he leave the baby, whom he tenderly loves, to Victorine (who thought she had lost it) and to make things look right, pretends to be her husband. In the end he comes back, having distinguished himself, and is going, in a spirit of sacrifice, to marry Victorine, when Charles, repentant, does so instead, and all is explained and Cherry and Pauline are happy. Marie, who behaves ill throughout, also repents. I do not think anybody in these days can object to a play about motherhood centring on an illegitimate baby. Nor to the first scene: it is simply two girls in bed reading letters. Victorine, in one passage reproaches Marie with refusing to be a mother, and the latter, later on, repents of that refusal, but there is nothing unpleasant in either passage. The atmosphere of the whole play is refined, with a good nun making appropriate comments, and as I said above it is full of prettiness. Recommended for Licence. G. S. Street.