Fenwick ‘s vision of the “relentless, irresistible advance of science” which will enable “every man or woman [to] understand more than we can ever dream of” has great romantic appeal, while the prosaic nagging of his wife has none. The women of 1799 are frustrated by romanticism—scientific and otherwise—that marginalizes them as undifferentiated objects of affection. Susannah and Harriet are infuriated by the men’s refusal to allow them participation in the world of ideas.

Perhaps Stephenson ‘s unromantic feminist light exposes the pretenses of Fenwick’s liberal politics, but in this play inequities of gender are not what empowers evil. In 1999, gendered power has been reversed. Ellen and Kate are now the powerful scientists, Tom the redundant humanist. Given that high ranking research positions in science continue to be dominated by men, it would seem that a feminist critique of science is not the object of this play. Stephenson’s choice to cast two female scientists in 1999 bypasses the idea that gender causes arrogance and violence and suggests that something else is at the root of evil. Unlike Armstrong Kate does not kill by hand, but she does insist to Phil that, once having identified the gene for manic depression, parents have the moral right to make eugenic decisions. Armstrong is an aristocrat; Kate is a member of the scientific elite. It is their culture of wealth and priveleged knowledge that causes them to succumb to their scientific ambition.

In the play, Tom worries about the market-driven culture of scientific enquiry (denial of history he sees in the “theming” of the Fenwick house into a Disneyfied hotel.) He knows the market place hates history, preferring to think of ethics as a “branch of interior design”. Stephenson’s dual time frame asserts the importance of history by illuminating the social concerns of the present and the future.