"Craig's Wife" tells the story of Harriet Craig, played by Rosalind Russell, a woman so consumed by the upkeep of her home that nothing else interests her. The film was based on a stage play of the same name by George Kelley but differed in its treatment of its female protagonist. The play, in a much more misogynistic look at the American housewife, sided with Harriet's husband, portraying her as cold and disinterested. Arzner's version turned the story into "a plea for women to become their own people rather than beautiful possessions." In her essay entitled "The Woman at the Keyhole: Women's Cinema and Feminist Criticism," Judith Mayne writes that "it is Harriet's husband who married for love, not money" whereas Harriet approached the marriage as "a business contract." In this way, "Craig's Wife" is an example of a running theme in Arzner's work: the repressiveness of heterosexual marriage. Mayer writes that Arzner's films "show again and again that when a man believes he can own a woman and women have to compete for men, then romance, loyalty and friendship go out the window." In "Craig's Wife", Arzner offers the possibility of women's community after the instability of heterosexual romance with the final scene between Harriet and widowed next door neighbor. Both women have been left by their husbands, in vastly different ways, and their next potentially meaningful connection is with each other.