The play The Little Foxes tells the reader about Regina, her brothers, and their business that can lift a family out of poverty and greatly enrich it. In addition, the play shows how destructive the pursuit of profit can be for an entire family. Nevertheless, it is essential to emphasize that the play’s meaning is very ambiguous, as are its characters. It is necessary to analyze the protagonist and the plot itself to identify the evil that has led the characters to their downfall.
To begin with, Regina herself is an ambiguous character. At the beginning of the play, the protagonist wants the best for her family, works honestly, and dreams of becoming a wealthy plantation owner (Hartley & Ladu, 1948). As the story progresses, the negative traits of the various characters are shown, and the heroine is no exception. It becomes apparent that the antagonist in the play is not a specific person but money. The money opposes the human traits of the characters, which makes them suffer and forces them to do horrible things. For example, the thirst for profit motivates one of the characters, Leo, to steal bonds to obtain funding (Hartley & Ladu, 1948).
Another even more striking example is Regina’s transformation into a deceitful and hypocritical woman who wants an inheritance as soon as possible (Hartley & Ladu, 1948). She is willing to do anything for money, even to contribute to the painful death of Horace and to blackmail her brothers.
The play reveals the external forces that turn the man into a worthless and embittered creature. Capitalism, which creates and actively promotes the need for money, corrupts society and encourages the soul’s rotting and corruption. This is no excuse for the characters’ actions but explains the essence of such a phenomenon as a betrayal of the self. The example of Horace’s wife shows that the cult of wealth erected by capitalism makes ordinary individuals into people who are never satisfied; they will always be short (Hartley & Ladu, 1948). This leads to pallid consequences, where the protagonist becomes rich, as she had planned, but money is all he has left (Hartley & Ladu, 1948). Regina has lost everything, including her family, her daughter’s love, and her dignity.
Regina’s story suggests that money is an essential resource for improving the quality of life. But people must think about the price they give for wealth. As the play shows, giving up absolutely everything moral and spiritual for money does not make for a happy life. Moral rot and the deprivation of one’s own family and friends will do much more harm than money will not pay off.
Reference
Hartley, L., Ladu, A., (Ed.). (1948). Patterns in modern drama: Ibsen, Chekhov, Galsworthy, O’Neill, Kelly, Thurber, Nugent, Hellman. Prentice Hall. Web.