Social position is, in fact, the kernel of the play, as the characters wrestle with what kind of relations are appropriate and inappropriate in Egyptian society. In this sense, the idea of the Sudanese as servants fits a long tradi- tion in the representation of social borders. The Sudanese servant is part of an old and idealized image of the proper Ottoman–ruling class household and of the social boundaries upheld and enforced by Egypt's elites.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 956