Answer:
Mrs. Pringle uses the dinner party as a way to improve her own social status, as well as the social status of her daughter as she is concerned about the aesthetic value of the party and about impressing Oliver Farnsworth, who is the guest of honour.
Explanation:
From the beginning of the play “Fourteen,” by Alice Gerstenberg, we see that the emphasis of the play revolves around the word or the number fourteen. It commences with Mrs. Pringle hustling around a dinner party that she is hosting for her daughter Elaine who is a debutante in the society.
She wants her daughter to be married to the most eligible bachelor Oliver Farnsworth. She thinks that this party would improve their social status so she wants it to be perfect but everything goes haywire when one by one all her eminent guests call and cancel their presence due to illness and a blizzard.
The play then unfolds how Mrs. Pringle desperately arranges for her dinner party from falling apart. She wants fourteen guests as it would add grandeur to her dining but the guest count fluctuates from 14 to 8 to 16 which gives her a hard time but at the end things do fall into place.
