This article is of a fictional matinee performance of the 'Doll's House', in the West End Theatres, London, late 1893, post the period where the play was drumming up quite as much scandal due to Ibsens other contributions, such as 'Ghosts', which provided fresher objects for the public's ire. The magazine is 'Punch ' Magazine, comical and satyrical in it's presentation, but quite serious in subject, written for a upper middle class, educated readership.
             There is no modern trend, in the wide variety of modern trends available for a young lady's perusal, more disturbing than that of a matinee performance of drama at the West End theatrical establishments. These establishments, at three o' clock on a Saturday afternoon, become a hive of predominantly female activity; of be-feathered, grossly oversized hats (which indeed lose all practical purpose in terms of attractive decoration and seem to be worn almost solely in order to impress other women), chattering voices communicating essentially silly pleasantries, quite charmingly of course, and most perturbingly of a sense of wild, girlish giddiness at the idea of an afternoon spent absented from the household. It seems, according to one young woman of my acquaintance who I happened to meet, that the women themselves seem to view these events as 'almost sinful', and give them a 'delightful little thrill, as if doing something forbidden'. There is of course nothing, at first glance at least, untoward about attending a small matinee performance, unless we are to admit to being positively Cromwellian, and so I did not take my acquaintance very seriously. It seemed at that point to be merely the distinctly female habit of creating an illusory perception allmost intentionally, in order to increase the enjoyment of an experience. I had misjudged her however, and when one considers that the above quotation was a direct one, one can begin to understand the frightening flippancy involved in the ...