Lil and Albert

Walter Sickert, Off to the Pub

The scene suddenly cuts to a working-class London pub, where a cockney woman is reporting a conversation she has had with Lil, whose husband Albert has just been "demobbed" (demobilised, or returned to civilian life) after four years' service in the Great War. The speaker has warned Lil that she will now have to make more of an effort with her appearance, or risk losing her husband to a more attractive rival.

Lil is powerless, and exemplifies the downtroddden lives of women throughout history. She is only 31, but is already exhausted by motherhood, and her health has been ruined by pills taken to terminate another pregnancy; her teeth are rotting. She is wasting away in the cage of her marriage just as surely as the Sibyl is withering in her bottle.

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