The Great Experiment

In a re-interpretation of George Bernard Shaw's 1912 Pygmalion, Carnie Holdsworth presents the story of a relationship across the class divide, as the 'gifted' working-class writer Cora Drummond marries the middle-class Henry Hales. There is social discrimination and distrust between their two families-Henry's mother is belittling of Cora and Cora's alcoholic father suspects Henry of mistreating her and though bearing goodwill towards one another, the married couple too struggle to reconcile their differences.

Carnie Holdsworth makes use of the text to show how a marriage might evolve into a co-operative partnership, in which a husband with an interest in clerical matters comes to appreciate a sense of spirituality and shared humanity through the instruction of his working-class 'protegee.' Thorny issues between individuals from the different classes are overcome through atonement and reconciliation in a plot which suggests a more subtle reorganisation of society than in her other more well-known works.