In many soap operas, a permanent question is either implied
or actually posed every day by the serial narrators.
These questions are usually expressed in terms of doubt,
indecision, or inner struggle.  Which is more important, a
woman's heart or a mother's duty?  Could a woman be happy
with a man fifteen years older than herself?  Should a
mother tell her daughter that the father of the rich man
she loves ruined the fortunes of the daughter's father?
Should a mother tell her son that his father, long believed
dead, is alive, well, and a criminal?  Can a good, clean Iowa
girl find happiness as the wife of New York's most famous
matinee idol?  Can a beautiful young stepmother, can a
widow with two children, can a restless woman married to
a preoccupied doctor, can a mountain girl in love with a
millionaire, can a woman married to a hopeless cripple, can
a girl who married an amnesia case - can they find soap-opera
happiness and the good, soap-opera way of life?  No,
they can't - not, at least, in your time and mine.  The
characters in Soapland and their unsolvable preplexities
will be marking time on the air long after you and I are gone,
for we must grow old and die, whereas the people of Soapland
have a magic immunity to age, like Peter Pan and the
Katzenjammer Kids.  When you and I are in Heaven with
the angels, the troubled people of Ivorytown, Rinsoville,
Anacinburg, and Crisco Corners, forever young or forever
middle-aged, will still be up to their ears in inner
struggle, soul searching, and everlasting frustration.

James Thurber ``II - Ivorytown, Rinsoville, Anacinburg,
and Crisco Corners'' _Soapland_ in _The Beast in Me and
Other Animals_ p.222