Hart is a freelance writer and published author with degrees in English and creative writing. In this essay, she examines the function of Beth in Gilman's play and the elements that make Beth such a flat character.

Gilman's play Blue Surge is about class and economic structure in the United States. The playwright portrays her ideas on these topics through the various characters of her play, with four characters representing the poorer side of society and only one of them the moneyed class. The single character who is rich is Beth, the girlfriend of Curt. Beth has few lines and is seldom seen onstage, and yet hers is a pivotal role, at least in an abstract way. Despite the fact that she is a minor character, she carries the weight of the oppositional point of the argument—the argument of the working class versus the privileged.

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