[6] The play begins as middle-aged widower Eustace Gaydon learns that his late sister Fanny has left £30,000 to her impoverished, young, orphaned companion Lois rather than to him.
The magazine Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News expressed surprise that "such a play should have to be presented by a play-producing society instead of by an ordinary management company whose fortune it might easily make.
Sowerby biography Patricia Riley attributes this to a male-dominated British theatre scene that felt free to ignore plays by women.
The review characterizes him as so "wicked" and "villainous" that the character "became incredible and ridiculous" and made a "sad mess of what was once an unusually promising play."
[6] Reviewing the 2008 Shaw Festival revival, Christopher Hoile credits Eustace's character arc with a bit more nuance, writing, "If we do initially see him as a villain we end by viewing him as pitiful human being who has ruined his own life and knows he has done so without fully understanding why.
"[7] J. Ellen Gainor wrote, "The role demands the convincing representation of Lois’s transformation from innocent adolescence to careworn maturity.
Gainor asserts that the success of the revivals at the Shaw Festival and the Orange Tree Theatre demonstrate "the continuing theatrical power and vitality" of the play.
[10]: 24 Under her father's leadership, the glass works undertook several new failed business ventures in the 1880s, and he eventually declared personal bankruptcy and sold the family home.
Patricia Riley sees these events of Sowerby's life reflected in The Stepmother and writes that the play is "suffused with Githa's anger over his irresponsible handling of money.