Ever Young by Alice Gerstenberg: Summary and Analysis with Questions

About the playwright

Alice Erya Gerstenberg (2 August 1885 – 28 July 1972) was an American playwright, actress, and activist best known for her experimental and feminist drama. Her plays demonstrate her feminist tendencies – critiquing the social roles and decision which constrained women of the time.

About the play: Ever Young

Ever Young is a one-act play set in the backdrop of the 1920s. This was the time when significant changes were taking place in the country. This was due to the changing attitudes towards the place of women in society. The number of working women had increased by as much as 25 percent and women had been granted the right to vote. The play revolves around a conversation between four women who are free and allowed to know the changes happening in the society.

Characters:

Mrs. William Blanchard: Mrs. Blanchard is an elderly woman of about 70. She is thin, a trifle bent with age and needs a walking stick. However, her smile is illuminatingly young. Mrs. Blanchard has divorced her husband after many years together. She never had a chance to live while married and is making up for lost time by gambling the nights away.

Mrs. Agnes Dorchester: Mrs. Dorchester is a calm and sweet person who is not easily excited or irritated. She has white hair and wears eye-glasses. Unlike the other characters, she is conventional and upholds traditional values. She carries a big bag which contains her knitting tools.

Mrs. Phoebe Payne-Dexter: The play opens with Payne-Dexter who is followed by Mrs. Dorchester. Her face is wrinkled but there is little sign of age in her worldly humorous eyes and her vibrant personality. Her white hair is perfectly arranged and her well-manicured hands flash with a ring. 

Mrs. Payne-Dexter advises Mrs. Dorchester that she needs to spend less time tending to the needs of everyone else. Now that the children are gone, it is time for the adults to play. Mrs. Dorchester keeps herself absorbed in various tasks and with various people, not paying attention to her needs and wants. Mrs. Payne-Dexter reveals her belief on helping her child.

Mrs. Caroline Courtney-Page: Mrs. Courtney-Page is white-haired and about sixty, but she has a youthful energy in her manner and her figure is stunning in a white velvet evening gown. She is the type that can be a vampire at any age.

Important Questions

1) How did the locket with the amber lock of hair end up with Mrs. Dorchester?

2) Do you think it is true that to stay young, one must be in love?

3) What do you think was the plight of women in the early twentieth century? Give examples from the play to illustrate.

4) What power helps Mrs. Blanchard to get up and move without her cane?

5) Why did the three women trick Mrs. Blanchard into believing that Oliver Trent truly loved her? Do you think what they did was right?

6) Name the book that Mrs. Blanchard was reading. What was it about?

7) Who was Mrs. Courtney-Page famous as in her youth?

8) What kind of a person was Oliver Trent? Did he truly love Mrs. Blanchard?

9) Why did Mrs. Blanchard divorce her husband after so many years of marriage? Do you think she was happier doing so?

10) What does the word 'debutante' mean? How important was it for the young girls of that time?