Both men (and all the other males in the town) had been symbolically stripped ("undressed") of their masculinity or phallic-strength mounted on their hips..Look at your daughter.She""s going to a big party tonight.And she""s got to wear a dress that""s two years old.How do you expect her o get anywhere?In reality, Alice has a modest, middle-class upbringing and poor family without, in her opinion, proper social graces, but she is supportive of her father""s self-pitying plight and sympathetic o the affliction brought on him by her status-conscious mother.Before the school buses departed at 4:15 pm, Miss Tate taught an English literature class on Mary Shelley""s novelFrankenstein.This was not he first time the subject matter was performed.The screenplay by Howard Koch was based on W.Somerset Maugham""s mid-1920s London stage play (that featured Gladys Cooper in the lead role).Then, it was a Broadway play that opened in 1927 (with Katharine Cornell), followed by Paramount Studios"" talkie of the same name in 1929 with Academy-Award nominated Jeanne Eagels (in her sound film debut) as the female protagonist Leslie Crosbie.