the labor force (and thus independence). Instead, they are captive to "a painstaking attention to the service of the master" (53). Veblen does not say that women are intellectually incapable of participation in the mainstream of either work or play, but that their domestic role keeps them from participating in the fullness of society. He does say that thoughtful women see that "the whole arrangement of tutelage and vicarious life
. . . is somehow a mistake" (356).
The concept of the New Woman came into view in the late 19th century and was controversial. Another author explains that it caused attacks on middle-class women in particular:
[T]he attack . . . was something more than simple nostalgia for an imaginary perfect past. . . . The new woman [] had a dual aspect in popular image. While increased visibility was argued to have expanded her theoretical opportunities to raise the moral tone of society, it had also, according to observers, made her recognizably more open to dangerous and corrupting influences (Hartman 151).
Social theorists described the context that playwrights and novelists took as their subject in this time period. The big picture in Strindberg's Miss Julie and Chekhov's Cherry Orchard is that major social transformation going on. Miss Julie has themes of sexuality, the class system in general, and the moral erosion of the aristocracy in particular. In Cherry Orchard, the aristocracy is eroding physically, falling before the onrush of modern industrial development, but it is also eroding psychically, so much that the aristocratic characters lack the imagination or will to solve their problems in ways that would require them to adjust their view of themselves as belonging to the highest class and entitled to its benefits. As a result, they hang on to their unrealistic view of themselves. Yet their material reality is going to diminish.
Within the big picture of Miss Jul...