Setting Emily Emerald Hill

Based on the play “Emily of Emerald Hill” by S. Kon, the playwright focuses on the theme of the insignificant women status in society. Generally, the setting of the play in terms of time and place contributes much to the development of its central theme. In this context, Emily, the only character in the play, is the central character who shows the readers more about women status with respect to the play’s physical time and place setting. In the play, readers can observe the theme of insignificant status of women in society through Emily life before her marriage and after her marriage. Besides, the place setting which locates in Singapore, an Asian country   vividly portrays the theme of insignificant women status.
When the play opens, Emily is in her mid-thirties; but during the play, she will move back and forward through time. Basically, I will discuss Emily life, before and after her marriage in respect of the theme of insignificant women status. The first flashback in 1910’s , during her childhood, shows the traumatic vulnerability and powerlessness of her youth due to her status as a girl. She is an orphan from a poor family . Her father died when she is still a small child whereas her mother abandons her. She realises her own worthless status as a female when her mother leaves her behind. It is proven when her mother complains, “Why am I so unlucky, I don’t have a son to take care of me? I only have a useless girl like you,” (pg. 24).
Besides, there is also a very significant line which clearly shows the theme of insignificant women status in the play during her youth, “Before my breasts were grown, I learnt that a woman is nothing in this world that men have made, except in the role that men demand of her,” (pg. 24). This shows how women are seemed worthless in the society except in their roles of mother and wife in that era.  
During 1950’s, long time after her young marriage in 1929, the readers can observe that how Emily’s present flows out of her...