Self-Deception
Self-deception is a theme which pervades the story. Egbert Mulliner takes a haughty view toward the sentimental fiction of women novelists only to realize when Evangeline transfers his expressions of love verbatim into her story that he is every bit as much an artist of low-brow romance as the writers he castigates. Evangeline likewise deceives herself into thinking she want to be a writer when really she only wants to enjoy the celebrity of having written a novel. Even the agent, Mr. Banks, can be accused of self-delusion by working so hard to get writing assignments for Evangeline when it amply demonstrated that she is not very talented at all.
Literary Satire
The story manages to satirize several literary conventions. It begins with a female fan of a sentimental love story extolling a popular woman author’s ability to expose the very soul of feminist only to end ironically by revealing the novel was actually written by a man. The publishers of Evangeline’s novel are satirized through the way they cravenly misjudge public taste. They only print her novel with the hope of selling all the copies back to her. Meanwhile, they putting the forces of their marketing power behind a story that is the exact opposite. Only when public taste suddenly shifts without notice and they are left with no other choice but to market Evangeline’s novel does it become a best seller. By the end, when Evangeline’s literary desires are proven a sham, the story itself devolves into exactly the sort of melodramatic fiction Egbert professes to despise to the point of Evangeline quite literally chewing the scenery.
Those Who Can't Become Critics
Wodehouse also seems to be taking a shot at literary critics as one of the themes of story. Wodehouse was a wildly popular writer in his time; unlike many of his famous contemporaries he was able to live quite well off the money he made writing. While his is certainly not an example of the writer whom the publics love and the critics revile, even those critics holding him high esteem were prone to admit that his writing was superficial and limited. Thus, one can make an argument that when snobbish literary critics Egbert Mulliner is revealed at the end to also be a hopelessly untalented writer incapable of publishing his fiction under his own name, it is impossible to avoid imprinting upon the story a theme encapsulated in the paraphrase of a popular dictum: “Those who can, write; those who can’t write become literary critics.”
