Is it true to say that women dominate men in Hobson’s Choice? Why is this significant in the context of the play? Give examples to support your view.
In the play Hobson’s Choice I believe that women do dominate the men greatly, although it is Maggie Hobson who strengthens this theory, throughout the play.
Maggie Hobson is confident and has a very strong-minded character. Throughout the play she stands up for herself against everyone who does not believe in her, especially her arrogant father, Henry Horatio Hobson.
She is unlike her two younger sisters, Vickey and Alice, who are very flirtatious, proud and snobbish.
“It’s the fashion to wear bustles”
“We shall continue to dress fashionably, father”
They are also very n�ive, particularly towards their father’s business. It is Maggie who runs the shop and generally keeps the house in order and the business going. Hobson takes advantage of his daughters and does not pay them any wages.
“Wages? Do you think I pay my own daughters wages? I’m not a fool”
Hobson also does not want his daughters to marry if it means paying settlements.
“From the moment you breathed the word ‘settlements’ it was dead off”
Hobson is a drunk who spends the earnings of his boot shop on drink every lunchtime and at every other available opportunity. He has become an alcoholic.
Even at the beginning of the play, it is not fair to say that the men dominated the women, because they ran both the house and business without any financial or moral support from their father.
To some extend even Hobson’s life was run for him by his daughters. When Hobson offended his
eldest daughter Maggie, the role that she had played in his life for so many years is clearly shown after she leaves him and the family home. He said to Maggie that she was too old to marry, and that no one would want to marry her anyway.
“… You’re past the marrying age. You’re a proper old maid, Maggie, if ever there was one”
I think that this angered Maggie more than it upset her, and it was then that she made the decision that she would marry, and soon, if only to spite her father.
It is at this part of the play where it has become obvious that the women really do take over the male domination.
After leaving her father and her sisters to run the house and shop on their own Maggie went on to marry Will Mossop, Hobson’s old boot hand. Hobson is disgraced over Maggie’s choice of husband for several reasons. These include the fact that it would mean losing Maggie and her sales-woman talent but also the fact that Will Mossop was his old boot-hand and is lower in class. This is another example of Horatio Hobson’s great snobbery along with the incident with Mrs Hepworth earlier.
“… But if there is anything wrong I assure you I’m capable of making the man suffer for it. I’ll -”
After buying a low-class basement to both live and work in Will started up his own shoe business with Maggie. Vickey and Alice also married their desired husbands – with the help of their sister, and Hobson lost them all. A year later when Hobson is diagnosed as having chronic alcohol poisoning, Maggie returns home to look after him, although only after agreeing harsh conditions, and Hobson and Will go into partnership under Will’s conditions. By now Hobson knows that he has lost and must give in to Maggie but more than ever before, her husband, William Mossop.
“I think Hobson and Mossop is best”
“His name on my sign-board!”
“The best I’ll do is this: Mossop and Hobson”
“No”
“… Very well. Mossop and Hobson”
The title ‘Hobson’s Choice’ is very ironic, because the phrase ‘Hobson’s Choice’ means to have no choice, and this is exactly what Horatio Hobson had, if not throughout the play then certainly at the end of it.
I think that the female dominance is significant in the context of the play because although in the 1880s there was slight female dominance, professions and politics were closed to women. The women were expected to listen to and obey their fathers, husbands and fellow men. This is what makes the storyline of the play so strong, because it is an impropriety to people’s lives. The fact that Maggie, Vickey and Alice all defied their father is very unusual and ‘out of place’ behaviour for this period in time.
In 1880, the Victorian values of self-help and independence would have been very much to the fore, and we see in the main characters a reflection of those values, in their determination to ‘better’ themselves, especially Maggie.
Maggie is ambitious and she becomes very forceful and dominant in achieving her independence and ambition.
At the beginning of the play Maggie’s ambition is a selfish one, that sees Willie as a means to an end but towards the end it is influenced by her love for Willie as well as her own desire to be married and free of her father.
Maggie’s dominance is shown by the fact that both Will Mossop and Hobson are presented with the most demanding choices along their respective paths.
I believe that Maggie acts as the catalyst for virtually all the situations in which the various characters find themselves. Without Maggie perhaps choices still would have to be made but they would not be as demanding and as forceful as they are with Maggie.
However, it is not only Maggie who has an ulterior motive. The attitudes of the four women, Alice, Ada, Vickey and Maggie towards the men that they wish to marry are that they are not in love, in any romantic sense (at least not at the beginning of the play).
Out of the three Hobson sisters Maggie is the only one who really knows where she is going in her life.
They each demonstrate a very well developed sense for the pecuniary advantage that could be gained from the marriage. It is not only Maggie Hobson who treats men as subjects and bosses them about but Vickey and Alice both do as well to some extent.
It is a play with the plotting and planning of Maggie at its centre, as she successfully manipulates those around her – for their good, and for her own.
In some contexts the play can be seen as comic. What is so ironic is the fact that while women have been running men for ages they are still banned from politics and professions.
I think that Maggie is frustrated by her life, and sees in Willie the chance to escape from spinsterhood and drudgery in her father’s shop and house.
The Victorian attitude as to who was ‘boss’ in the house was the men-although in this play it would seem this position has been taken over somewhat by the women.
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