Mrs. Hardcastle is a little too fond of her son, Tony, by her former husband, and has managed to spoil him already. And she has to pay for it. later. She thinks that Tony can do without learning for he has got fifteen hundred pounds a year to spend. She calls his love of mischief just ‘humour. She coddles him. He is being drugged by his mother who thinks that he is consumptive while he is getting fatter day by day. And later Tony complains. “I have gone through every recipe in the Complete Housewife ten times over: and you have thoughts of coursing me through Quincy next spring. But ecod! I tell you. I’ll not he made a fool no longer.” Tony has good sense, and his mother has not. It is no wonder that he should rebel against her and one day play tricks upon her.
Mrs. Hardcastle. unlike her husband, is little satisfied with the humdrum of country-life. She would like to have a trip now and then to town, she studies the fashion magazines, and models herself upon them. She complains to Hastings that her husband is old-fashioned. She says. “All I can do is to enjoy London at second-hand. I take care to know every tete-a-tete from the Scandalous Magazines, and have all the fashions, as they come out, in a letter from the two Miss Rickets of Crooked Lane.” Here we have the picture of Mrs. Hardcastle, a woman discontented with country-life and aping the fashions of town.
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The mother’s indulgence for the son leads her to scheme to secure her niece, Miss Neville, and her fortune for Tony. Tony is little interested in Miss Neville, and Miss Neville is in love with Hastings. And when Hastings is at the house of Hardcastle there are scheming and counter-scheming in which Tony is made to take part. It reveals the meanness in Mrs. Hardcastle. Miss Neville is willing to elope with Hastings hut Mrs. Hardcastle will not hand over to her the jewels. Of course she has to pretend all the time that she is in love with Tony. She is driven of this deception by Mrs. Hardcastle’s intrigue. Hastings offers to relieve Tony of Miss Nivelle and Tony enters into the counter-intrigue. He steals the casket of jewels from his mother and hands it to Hastings, and Hastings in his turn gives to the custody of Marlow, and Marlow sends it by a servant to the landlady, Le.. Mrs. Hardcastle. Mrs. Hardcastle who makes a terrible row over the loss of the jewels, in which Tony eggs her on, is in a strong position when she gets back the jewels. She accidentally discovers the trick when she reads Hastings’s letter to Tony, and Miss Neville is made to suffer for it. She wants to take Miss Neville at once to her aunt, Pedigree, and leave her there as her punishment. Mrs. Hardcastle is cruel and vindictive. But her design is defeated by Tony.
Later she hears that Hastings and Miss Neville have gone off. She has now satisfied that she has Miss Neville’s fortune with her. Hardcastle remarks, “Sure. Dorothy, you would not be so mercenary?” Mrs. Hardcastle has so long concealed the age of Tony from him with no other motive than to keep him under her tutelage and further her scheme to tie him down to Miss Neville with an eye on her fortune. It is a base motive. It is now exposed when Hardcastle, confronted with Hastings affair with Miss Neville, tells the truth about Tony’s coming of age. He addresses Tony. “While I thought concealing your age, boy, was likely to conduce to your improvement. I concurred with your mother’s desire to keep it secret. But since I find she turns it to a wrong use, I must now declare you have been of age these three months.” Her scheme is finally defeated. She leaves a disagreeable impression upon our mind as none of the characters in the play does.
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