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the possibility that the child might be a girl. This changes everything, and he realises that he must make something of himself to care for the child (Guidetomusicaltheatre.com, n.d., para.10). The point here is that the idea of a girl changes his mindset entirely, this presents a powerful image to audiences that while once baby girls may have been seen as a problem, ‘-you bear offspring, if it is a male, let it live; if it is a female, expose it.’ (Maehler et al., 2010, n/a), this was instead a good thing, an event strong enough to change someone’s entire morality.

To expand on the topic of relationships in musical theatre we should consider the representation in On The Town (1944). One form of freedom women achieved in the 40s was the sense of sexual liberation giving a new dynamic to work with in relationships within musicals. In the number ‘Come Up to My Place’ where the character Hildy uses suggestive lyrics, this shows a woman being outspoken about sex which wouldn’t be typical for female characters before the 40s, (Wolf, 2011, n/a). When we look at this quote ‘The only power women have (we are told) is the sexual power of their body’, (Taylor and Symonds, 2014, p.140) it makes sense why sexual power is one of the first forms of power shown from female characters after 1943. However, it is dubious whether this was really a show of power or simply a way of reducing women to sexualised characters? It is most likely that this was in fact a form of progression, perhaps just in the only way they knew how to present women at the time.