Mrs. Hesione Hushabye tells Ellie Dunn:

People don't have their virtues and vices in sets; they have them anyhow: all mixed.

In other words, everyone is equally composed of both good and bad qualities. This claim certainly bears out within the text itself. Boss Mangan does seem to genuinely care for Ellie Dunn, but he also intentionally ruined her father and stole his business. Mrs. Hushabye wants to try to protect Ellie from marrying a man she does not love, but she also doesn't seem to be particularly faithful to her own husband. Hector Hushabye was in love his wife and was faithful to her for some time, but then he fell into the practice of misleading various women (of which Ellie was one) and eventually falls in love with his wife's sister, Lady Utterword.

Throughout the play, each character is revealed to be somehow dissembling. The persona of "Marcus Darnley," a foundling placed in a wooden chest with a bunch of money, turns out to be an alias of Hector, Hesione's husband. Ellie, who appears to be quite innocent and even naive at first, is later proven to be adeptly strategic and manipulative; she even marries Captain Shotover in secret during the play. Hesione's lustrous black hair is actually a wig. Boss Mangan, whose actions seem to indicate that he is kind and generous, is actually an amoral opportunist. Furthermore, it comes to light that, despite his reputation as a wealthy businessman, Mangan is not at all rich.

Ellie astutely observes that "a woman's business is marriage." She claims that a woman in her situation, with a poor father and no prospects, can only be wise by marrying someone who can improve her life. She says that she does not want to worry about her gloves for the rest of her life. This assertion can be seen to indicate that she does not want a life in which she must struggle in order to keep up the basic necessities of life.

However, gloves can also be seen to represent the genteel conventions of upper-class life; gloves, at the turn of the twentieth century, were used by women mostly as a status symbol and to indicate an adherence to upper class convention. Thus, while Ellie is stating that she has no choice but to marry for money, she also implicitly implies that she must marry for money because the kind of lifestyle that she desires—one in which she can live in grace and elegance—is one that requires a great deal of money.