Coming of Bill (or: Their Mutual Child; or: The White Hope)

Young Kirk Winfield brings his bride Ruth home expecting nothing but marital bliss. Instead, he finds his happiness menaced by the one force no vows can defeat: a loving relative with theories. Ruth's aunt, the formidable novelist Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, has strong opinions about how young Bill should be raised her progressive ideas about child-rearing clash catastrophically with Kirk's more traditional views. What begins as a clash of philosophies spirals into a comedy of errors that tests every bond in the household. Wodehouse, writing before he perfected the immortal Jeeves and Wooster universe, is already deploying his signature weapons: pomposity punctured, dignity deflated, and every stuffy authority figure brought low by their own absurdity. The humor is period-specific, rooted in early twentieth-century debates about parenting and progressivism, but the fundamental comedy of interfering in-laws and clashing egos is eternal.