Introduction
“The duality of Wilde in all aspects fascinates, confuses…” 1
Oscar Wilde is well-known for his contradictory remarks. The above quoted comment made
by Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, seems certainly to pertain to his ambivalent
relationship to fin de siècle feminism. Although the playwright has become a popular topic of
academic research over the last two decades, even recent studies on Wilde do not clarify this
ambiguity, but instead, add to the confusion. In fact, for a long time Wilde’s literary
achievements were largely ignored, due to the fact that most critical accounts emphasised his
life rather than his work. However, with the change of direction within literary history in the
1970s, this situation changed dramatically.2 The relationships between issues such as power,
authority, and discourse came to be seen as the central concerns of literary history, which led
to significantly altered perceptions of Wilde. As Ian Small points out,
it allowed the life and the work to be read against each other in new and complex ways… Critics’
concern with the replication of ideologies (especially those of sex and gender) in literary works has
enabled Wilde’s oeuvre to be viewed as an exemplary locus of nineteenth-century politics.3
This study aims to elaborate on that tradition by trying to explore Wilde’s relationship to
feminism. Opinions on Wilde’s work in relation to feminism are sharply divided: whereas
some critics recognise Oscar Wilde as a proto-feminist, other critical studies consider his
work to be misogynistic. This widely divergent critical work is my starting-point for an
analysis of the representation of women in Wilde’s plays and will be considered more fully in
the subsequent chapters.
In the first chapter, I will sketch the dominant discourse on the Woman Question, the social
debate on the position of women in Victorian Britain; this overview will give a distinct view
of the way Wilde engaged with fin de siècle feminism. My emphasis in this chapter is on the
fin de siècle phenomenon of the New Woman. In the first instance, the New Woman was a
literary and journalistic response to feminists at the end of the nineteenth century.
Multitudinous articles on the New Woman appeared in the periodical press throughout the
1880s and early 1890s. As Sally Ledger argues, “the ideological discourses on the New
Woman were undoubtedly promoted in order to ridicule and to control renegade women.”4
INTRODUCTION
2
However, by “naming” the New Woman the periodical press prised open a discursive place
for her, which was quickly filled by feminist textual productions sympathetic toward the
claims of the New Woman. In Foucauldian terms, the hostile dominant discourse on the New
Woman made possible “the formation of a ‘reverse’ discourse.”5 Foucault has argued that the
appearance of a dominant discourse automatically invokes its other, and makes possible an
articulation of hitherto suppressed voices. He puts it thus:
We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an
instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a
starting point for an opposing strategy. 6
Consequently, the first chapter will also concentrate on this “reverse discourse.” Discussing
the dominant and reverse discourse will make it easier to determine what Wilde’s place was
in this debate. Another reason to focus on the New Woman is to utilise the discourse on
women for an analysis of possible manifestations of this figure in Wilde’s plays.
In the subsequent chapters I will deal with Wilde’s plays in chronological order of
composition. The corpus of my research consists of the symbolist play Salome (1891) and his
three society comedies, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893),
and An Ideal Husband (1895). Every chapter concentrates on one play separately. In these
chapters I will focus on the main female characters, taking into account their characteristics
and their function in the plot. In addition, I will refer to the critical studies written on the
plays.
I have chosen to explore the plays rather than any other part of Wilde’s oeuvre, because they
were most likely to attract a large audience and, as Dellamora argues: “Wilde believed
passionately that dramatic performance has the potential to transform an audience.”7 In a
letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde emphasised this capability: “I altered the minds
of many men and the colours of things: there was nothing I did or said that did not make
people wonder.”8
I will analyse Wilde’s works using feminist theory and methodology. The critical position
from which feminism operates, depends on acknowledging the gendered position of both
sexes. Within feminist criticism, the concern with “conditioning” and “socialisation”
underpins a crucial set of distinctions, that between the terms “female” and “feminine.” As
INTRODUCTION
3
Toril Moi explains, the first is “a matter of biology,” and the second “a set of culturally
defined characteristics,”9 often referred to as gender. Feminist critics have explored a
pervasive binary opposition built around gender which reduces women to objects by which
the power and value of all that is male is affirmed.
The title of my thesis, The Representation of Women in the Plays of Oscar Wilde, indicates its
concern with one of the first areas where women’s studies began critical work – cultural
representation. The representation of women in literature is felt to be one of the most
important forms of “socialisation,” since it provides the role models which indicate to women,
and men, what constitutes acceptable versions of the “feminine” and legitimate goals and
aspirations. Thus, one of the aims of feminist literary theory is to expose what might be called
the mechanisms of patriarchy, that is, the cultural mind-set in men and women which
perpetuates sexual inequality.
The analysis of the plays will depend on the dialogue between context and text. By measuring
and evaluating Wilde’s plays against the discourse of his day, I will consider how they relate
to fin de siècle feminism. Taking into account the Victorian ideology on women makes this
study historically contextual. To locate a text’s meaning in the discourse and events
surrounding its historical production is one of the reading strategies used within feminist
literary criticism.
Another theoretical tool used by feminist literary critics is the idea of “reading against the
grain.” This feminist reading strategy is based on the reader-response notion that texts are
capable of bearing different interpretations depending on the orientation of readers; “reading
against the grain” aims at discovering covert texts in literature regarding stereotypical notions
about gender.
Consequently, one of the sub-questions addressed in this study will be: is Wilde’s
representation of women stereotyped? According to Josephine Donovan, female characters
lack authenticity if they are not portrayed as complex and unique individuals. Although
“women have in all historical periods been seats of consciousness and moral agents,”10 they
are often represented in literature as the Other. They are used as “vehicle[s] for the male's
growth in self-awareness,” but they gain no insight themselves.11 The stereotypes of women
in literature can be either positive or negative: either spiritual (good) or material (evil). But
both poles of this binary opposition result in inauthentic characters.
INTRODUCTION
Embroidering on stereotypical representations of women, several concrete sub-questions
connected with the central question of this study will be explored: What are the plays’
assumptions regarding women? What characteristics are attributed to women? Are women
identified as the Other to man who is then seen as the defining and dominating Subject? In
what ways is power manipulated in the text and does this establish and perpetuate the
dominance of men and the subordination of women? What are the female points of view,
concerns, and values presented in the text? To what extent do women follow Victorian role
models?
Summarising, to resolve some of Wilde’s perceived duality regarding his relationship to
feminism is one of the aims of this thesis. An analysis of the discursive constructions of
women in his plays in relation to the Victorian discourse on women, is necessary to settle the
question of Wilde’s ambiguous position regarding feminism. By trying to clarify his attitude
toward women I hope this study will be a useful contribution to the discourse on Wilde.
4
INTRODUCTION
5
Notes
Merlin Holland, “Biography and the Art of Lying,” in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. Peter
Raby (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), 3.
2
Ian Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods of Research (Greensboro, NC:
ELT Press, 1993), 4.
3
Ibid.
4
Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle (Manchester: Manchester UP,
1997), 9.
5
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol.1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 101.
6
Ibid.
7
Richard Dellamora, “Oscar Wilde, Social Purity, and An Ideal Husband,” Modern Drama 37:1 (1994): 134.
8
Oscar Wilde, Letters, 466. Quoted in: Sos Eltis, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the plays of Oscar
Wilde (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), 26.
9
Toril Moi, “Feminist, Female, Feminine,” The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary
Criticism, ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 117.
10
Josephine Donovan, “Beyond the Net: Feminist Criticism as a Moral Criticism,” The Denver Quarterly 17
(1983): 237.
11
Ibid.
1
1
The Woman Question
All wonder now, ‘Which is the woman?’
But a new fear my bosom vexes;
Tomorrow there may be no sexes!1
In this chapter I will describe briefly the cultural attitudes toward women in Victorian
England. In the mid-nineteenth century, the debate about women’s place in society, or the
Woman Question, as the Victorians themselves called it, concentrated mainly on the nature of
women. In particular, the model of a pure domestic angel played a large role in the public
debate. However, the social changes acquired by the women’s movement intensified the
debate. The discussion in the 1880s and 1890s consisted largely of antagonistic reactions
toward fin de siècle feminists, or New Women; this, in turn, led to feminist thinkers reacting
against the hostile discourse. A brief overview is necessary to comprehend fully Wilde’s place
in the debate.
The Nature of Woman
In the mid-century, a problem much commented upon was the increasing disproportion
between the sexes in Britain. The census figures revealed a significant imbalance: there were
over half a million more women than men in the population. The essayist William R. Greg
called attention to the growing number of single women in his widely read essay entitled
“Why Are Women Redundant?” Greg argued that single women, instead of fulfilling their
destiny by “completing, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others, are compelled
to lead an independent and incomplete existence of their own.”2 Greg’s solution was
government-sponsored emigration of single women to the colonies. According to Poovey,
Greg’s main concern was that “redundant women” could form a danger to monogamous
marriage. Although Greg did not perceive women’s sexual desire as a problem, as “[i]n the
[female] sex, the desire is dormant, if not non-existent,” he did consider male sexuality to be
problematic. Poovey sums up the main point of Greg’s essay as follows: “[T]he solution to
the problem redundant women pose, then, is to get them out of harm’s way…”3
THE WOMAN QUESTION
7
Greg’s line of argumentation implies a gender-specific definition of sexuality. This
conceptualisation of sexual desire was accepted by most of his middle-class contemporaries.
The differentiation between active male sexuality and passive female sexuality was
encapsulated within the “double standard.” This concept refers to a code of sexual mores,
which condones extra-marital sexual activity in men as a sign of “masculinity” while
condemning it in women as a sign of deviant behaviour. In general terms, female sexuality
was organized around the dichotomy virgin/whore. A woman’s sexual identity determined
whether or not she was seen as a respectable member of society, or as a “fallen woman.”
Poovey points out that early-nineteenth-century doctors began to represent the differences
between male and female bodies and functions as a series of binary oppositions:
Emphasizing the incommensurability of male and female bodies entailed foregrounding the role of the
reproductive system, so that this difference was seen as more important than any similarities between
men and women; it also entailed effacing other kinds of differences among members of the same sex, so
that the similarity of women’s childbearing capacity became more important than whatever features
distinguished them.4
Poovey further explains that, according to nineteenth-century doctors, the involuntary
ovulation of a woman indicated that female pleasure was irrelevant to reproduction. In fact,
the model of periodic ovulation was enlisted to provide a scientific explanation for what came
to be considered woman’s defining characteristic – maternal instinct. Motherhood became
central to the identity of a woman. As Poovey puts it, “[t]his instinct, theoretically, accounted
for the remarkable fact that women were not self-interested and aggressive like men, but selfsacrificing and tender.”5 Maternal instinct was credited not only with making women nurture
their children, but also with moral influence over men. To take one example, the writer Peter
Gaskell explains that “[t]he moral influence of woman upon man’s character and domestic
happiness, is mainly attributable to her natural and instinctive habits.”6 This image of woman
sketched by Gaskell was further idealized by Coventry Patmore in the mid-1850s. In his wellknown poem “The Angel in the House,” Patmore draws woman as the opposite and necessary
counterpart to man:
Her special crown, as truth is his,
Gives title to the worthier throne;
For love is substance, truth the form;
Truth without love were less than nought; 7
THE WOMAN QUESTION
8
The model of a binary opposition between the sexes, which was socially realised in separate
but supposedly equal “spheres,” underwrote an entire system of institutional practices and
conventions at mid-century, ranging from a sexual division of labour to a sexual division of
economic and political rights.
The ideology of separate spheres assigned the private sphere of the home to women, and the
public sphere of business and politics to men. Marriage was assumed to be the natural destiny
of women. However, Poovey points out that “when a woman became what she was destined
to be (a wife), she became ‘nonexistent’ in the eyes of the law.”8 Married women were legally
represented by their husbands, because the interests of husband and wife were assumed to be
the same; as a consequence, married women were not regarded as individual subjects. Married
women owned nothing; as soon as a woman became engaged, she lost her right to dispose of
her property without her future husband’s consent. Divorces required a private Act of
Parliament, which involved an expensive and time-consuming process far beyond the means
of most people. Very few such Acts were passed and far fewer were granted to women; only
four women ever achieved a divorce in this way.
However, soon after the middle of the century, women began to gain broader legal protection.
The rights of married women were enhanced with the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, a
legislation establishing secular divorce in England. The Married Women’s Property Acts of
1870, 1874, and 1882 granted women the right to control and to dispose of property they had
owned before and earned during marriage. Reform of the school system ensured women an
education equal to that of men and the right to take a university degree. These legal
entitlements were accompanied by alterations in women’s economic and social standing.9
Women moulded teaching and nursing into professions. By 1890, with assured legal
protection and education on a par with that of men, women could concentrate on shaping their
lives by themselves. However, the clash between traditional values, which stressed female
docility, and feminist views, which stressed equality, created anxiety. The broadened options
and altered expectations for women provoked negative reactions toward feminists. The debate
over women’s place in society became turbulent during the nineties, and even those who used
the term in derision recognized her new status when they referred to her as the New Woman.
THE WOMAN QUESTION
9
The New Woman
The Victorian discussion over the nature of women’s role in society reached its height in the
1890s, a decade in which most newspapers, magazines and journals featured articles on The
Woman Question; many of them, however, were polemical and satirical in vein. The term
New Woman acquired its popular sense when it appeared in the “The New Woman” by
Ouida, an English novelist. In this article, she reacts against Sarah Grand’s “The New Aspect
of the Woman Question,” a feminist essay, in which Grand argues that men’s moral failures
make them unworthy to marry the new breed of self-aware young women. In response to
Grand’s idealized depiction of women, Ouida created “the grotesque creature who would
become so familiar in the latter half of the 1890s.”10 After the introduction of the New
Woman in the press, the negative connotations rapidly accrued and resulted in a misogynist
discourse.
Sally Ledger points out that “many of the textual figurations of the New Woman were
partisan, and were deployed as part of an attempt to undermine the late-nineteenth-century
women’s movement and to limit its influence.”11 However, David Rubinstein’s claim that
“never before had literature and fiction contributed so much to the feminist movement as it
did at the fin de siècle” also needs to be considered.12 The widespread attacks on her in the
periodical press made the New Woman begin to speak on her own behalf. In feminist
periodicals and fiction, the so-called New Woman writers ventilated their opinions on what
constituted the New Woman.
Sally Ledger indicates that one of the main sources of the panic provoked by the New Woman
was the “very real fear that she may not at all be interested in men, and could manage quite
well without them.”13 Ledger refers to Blanche Alethea Cackanthorpe, who caused an uproar
by proposing to consider an unmarried girl “as an individual as well as a daughter.”
According to Cackanthorpe, women deserved other options besides marriage, because not all
girls could marry. According to Elaine Showalter, the above-mentioned “redundant woman”
“undermined the comfortable binary system of Victorian sexuality and gender roles.”14 Single
women were the beginning of, to put it in Showalter’s terms, “sexual anarchy.” Feminists
opposed female emigration because “[i]t appeared all too readily as a device to confine
women to their ‘proper sphere’ of the household.”15 Showalter indicates that fin de siècle
feminists used the surplus of unmarried women to prove that women’s traditional roles were
THE WOMAN QUESTION
10
outmoded. If women could no longer be expected to be supported by husbands, they would
have to be educated in order to support themselves.
Eliza Lynn Linton, one of a number of anti-feminist commentators at the end of the century,
characterized the New Woman as a “Wild Woman” who opposed marriage, demanded
political rights and who sought “absolute personal independence coupled with supreme power
over men.”16 The establishment’s desire to defend marriage as an institution was underpinned
by a belief that an end to conventional marriage would mean a breakdown of the rules that
were traditionally thought to hold society together.
The New Woman as a category was by no means a stable one. Ledger argues that “medicoscientific discourse, for example, focused on reproductive issues, emphasizing the New
Woman’s supposed refusal of maternity, [whereas] antipathetic fictional discourse on the
New Woman concentrated instead on her reputed sexual license.”17 Moreover, New Women
themselves did not always agree on who or what the New Woman was: some New Women
championed maternity, while others rejected it; some wanted to remake the world according
to “female” values, while yet others found those values oppressive. On this subject, Ledger
states the following:
The elusive quality of the New Woman of the fin de siècle clearly marks her as a problem, as a
challenge to the apparently homogenous culture of Victorianism which could not find a consistent
language by which she could be categorised and dealt with. All that was certain was that she was
dangerous, a threat to the status quo.18
As opposed to the supposed sexual debauchery of the New Woman, elsewhere she figured in
discourse as mannish and asexual. In describing the “Wild Woman,” Linton defined her as a
“woman [who] does anything specially unfeminine and ugly.”19 Hugh Stuttfield claimed that
“the New Woman or the ‘desexualised half-man’… is a victim of the universal passion for
learning.”20 Higher education colleges for women expanded significantly between the 1860s
and the 1890s. Although the number of female students represented only a tiny and highly
privileged minority of the female population, the New Woman was largely associated with
this elite group and, as Stuttfield’s and other commentators’ responses demonstrate, she was
deemed to be a regrettable by-product of women’s new “passion for learning.” Anti-feminist
commentators deployed pseudo-scientific biological discourse against those women who vied
for achievements in education, warning that women’s reproductive capacities would be
THE WOMAN QUESTION
11
damaged by traditionally masculine pursuits. Amongst supporters of the establishment, the
feeling was that Britain’s women urgently needed to raise a strong British race in order to
sustain the nation’s supremacy, and the New Woman was construed as a threat to this national
need.21 In deploying such images, the press created a threatening portrait of a mannish woman
who denied her natural role of wife and mother. As Ledger argues, “[i]f the New Woman was
constructed as threat to women’s role as mothers of the British Empire, then she was also,
more generally, regarded as a threat to the economic supremacy of bourgeois men, and this
was also another factor which contributed to the spite with which she was condemned.”22
However, although it was largely intended to undermine the credibility of the women’s
movement, the dominant discourse actually provoked alternative views on the New Woman,
opening up a discursive place for feminist textual productions.
Ledger points out that “the supporters of the New Woman occupied decidedly fewer columns
in the periodical press than her detractors.”23 In mainstream journals, feminist voices were
only sporadically heard. However, the articles that appeared in the women’s press indicated
that feminists had had enough of the mainstream press images of the manly New Woman.
Feminist writers sought to reappropriate the term and establish their own definitions of it. The
contributors of the mainstream press were no longer the only ones claiming an identity for the
New Woman, as the following verse from the feminist periodical Shafts illustrates:
As “New Woman” she is known.
‘Tis her enemies have baptised her,
But she gladly claims the name;
Hers it is to make a glory,
What was meant should be a shame.24
Feminists’ construction of the New Woman not only found expression in the feminist press,
but also in the novels they were beginning to write. As Cunningham argues, “since the New
Woman rebelled essentially against personal circumstances, the most effective way of
portraying her was not in journalistic summaries of her principles, but in novels.”25 The
authors of what came to be known as New Woman novels were not consciously creating a
distinct school of fiction and often pursued widely different lines of attack. However, some
common characteristics can be identified; for example, the preoccupation with the institution
of marriage, which constituted a major part of the dominant discourse on the New Woman,
was a preoccupation shared by the New Woman writers. However, as Ledger argues,
THE WOMAN QUESTION
12
“[w]hilst a supposed antipathy to marriage was emphasised by the dominant discourse… the
New Woman had sought not to undermine the institution of marriage but rather to reform
it.”26 Grand’s article “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” attacks merely the double
standard in bourgeois Victorian marriage, but not the institution of marriage itself. Ledger
indicates that “Grand’s article condemned men for their sexual profligacy, and equally
condemned those ‘cow women’ who helped to perpetuate moral inequality between the sexes
by turning a blind eye to their husbands’ philandering.”27
The New Woman continued to hold chastity as ideal, but made it equally applicable to men as
to women. An important strand within fin de siècle feminism was the social purity movement,
which grew out of the campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s. The first
of the Acts provided for forced physical inspection of prostitutes in an attempt to control the
spread of venereal disease. However, the Act failed to do so, because it only sought to control
diseased women, while leaving their male clientele free to infect anyone they came into
contact with.
The general drift of the social purity movement was such that men were being asked to match
the high standards of sexual purity and chastity that had been enforced on women. It was male
sexuality, according to the social purity movement, which most needed controlling; it was the
male body which was responsible for social degeneration.
These ideas were also conveyed in the “purity school” of New Women fiction. The novelists
clung to the notion that there was such a thing as a feminine ideal, that women did occupy a
different, though equally important, sphere, and that “purity” was the highest principle.
However, their conception of purity was not that of the conventional “pure woman.” These
writers maintained that the ideal of female purity should be based on knowledge and
understanding of life’s darker facts. As Martha Vicinus explains, “[b]efore marriage a young
girl was brought up to be perfectly innocent and sexually ignorant.”28 Gail Cunningham notes
that New Woman writers like “Sarah Grand, deplored the condition of carefully nurtured
ignorance and total inexperience in which young girls were supposed to choose their life
partners.”29 Women are not freed of blame in Grand’s novel The Heavenly Twins; the mother
of the heroine is condemned for her belief that a young girl “who knows nothing of the world
and its wickedness is therefore eminently qualified to make somebody an excellent wife.”30
According to Ledger, Grand’s point was that “women to some extent hold the key to their
THE WOMAN QUESTION
13
sexual jail.”31 The social purists, however, were not in favour of sexual liberation. Sexual
acts, according to the social purity movement, could only be legitimated within the confines
of a monogamous marriage; sexuality had to be family-based and for procreative purposes
only.
Essentially, both the arguments of the sympathisers of the “purity school” and the enemies of
the New Woman endorse a traditional view of women. New Women writers appropriated the
tradition of the angelic women, their adversaries that of the demonic women. In this way, both
clung to the binary divisions defining gender.
However, it is important to note that New Women did not make up an ideological monolith,
as was mentioned earlier. For example, Cunningham also pays attention to another type of
New Woman fiction termed the “neurotic school.” Writers belonging to this school were
genuinely more diverse in their approach than the purity novelists. Generally, though, their
feminism was of a more radical kind; they placed greater emphasis on sexual freedom for
women and were far less concerned with establishing an ideal of femininity. Cunningham
refers to Keynotes by the woman writer George Egerton as the first work of the neurotic
school. According to Cunningham, “George Egerton adopted, both in life and fiction, a far
more sophisticated attitude towards sexuality than Sarah Grand and her followers.”32
Cunningham explains that “[t]he main impact of her work lays in the depiction of the sensual
woman for whom ‘purity,’ of whatever kind, was an irrelevance. The lengthy and elaborate
sexual fantasies which many of her Keynotes heroines enjoy could have no place in a purity
novel.”33
In the following chapters I will give an analysis of Wilde’s plays with the main topics of the
Woman Question in mind.
THE WOMAN QUESTION
14
Notes
1
Punch (27 April 1895), 203. Quoted in Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de
Siècle (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1997), 96.
2
W.R. Greg, “Why Are Women Redundant?,” National Review 14 (1862), 432. Quoted in Mary Poovey,
Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 1988), 1.
3
Poovey, 5.
4
Ibid., 6.
5
Ibid., 7.
6
Peter Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England, Its Moral, Social, and Physical Conditions, and the
Changes Which Have Arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour (1833;
reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972), 144-45. Quoted in Poovey, 8.
7
From “The Comparison,” Canto V of The Angel in the House, in The Poems of Coventry Patmore, ed.
Frederick Page (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). Quoted in Carol Christ, “Victorian Masculinity and
the Angel in the House,” in A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women, ed. Martha Vicinus
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 148.
8
Poovey, 52.
9
A discussion of the Divorce Act and the Married Women’s Property Act is to be found in Lee Holcombe,
“Victorian Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law, 1857-1882,” in A Widening
Sphere, 3-28.
10
Talia Schaffer, “‘Nothing but Foolscap and Ink’: Inventing the New Woman,” in The New Woman in Fiction
and Fact, ed. Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 42.
11
Ledger, 9.
12
David Rubinstein, Before the Suffragettes: Women’s Emancipation in the 1890s (Brighton: Harvester, 1986),
24.
13
Ibid., 6.
14
Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (New York: Viking, 1990), 19.
15
A. James Hamerton, “Feminism and Female Emigration, 1861-1886,” in A Widening Sphere, 63.
16
Eliza Lynn Linton, “The Wild Women as Social Insurgents,” Nineteenth Century 30 (1891): 596.
17
Ledger, 10.
18
Ibid.,11.
19
Linton, “The Partisans of the Wild Women,” Nineteenth Century 31 (1892): 460.
20
Hugh Stuttfield, “Tommyrotics,” Blackwood’s Magazine 157 (June 1895): 833-45. Quoted in Ledger, 17.
21
A discussion of the eugenic current of thought is to be found in Angelique Richardson, “‘People Talk a Lot of
Nonsense about Heredity’: Mona Caird and Anti-Eugenic Feminism,” in The New Woman in Fiction and Fact,
183-211.
22
Ledger, 19.
23
Ibid., 20.
24
“The New Woman,” Shafts (Jan/Feb 1895): 378. Quoted in Michelle Elizabeth Tusan, “Inventing the New
Woman: Print Culture and Identity Politics During the Fin-de-Siècle,” Victorian Periodicals Review 31 (1998):
174.
25
Gail Cunningham, The New Woman and the Victorian Novel (London: Macmillan, 1978), 16.
26
Ibid., 20.
27
Ibid., 20-21.
28
Martha Vicinus, Introduction, Suffer and be Still: Woman in the Victorian Age, ed. Vicinus (London: Indiana
UP, 1972), ix.
29
Cunningham, 2.
30
Sarah Grand, The Heavenly Twins (London: William Heinemann, 1894), 39. Quoted in Ledger, 115.
31
Ledger, 115.
32
Cunningham, 64.
33
Ibid., 65.
2
Salome
“A free woman in an unfree society will be a monster.” 1
Richard Ellmann describes in his famous biography how Oscar Wilde had been fascinated by
the figure of Salome for a long time. Toward the end of 1891, Wilde finished writing his oneact play Salome in Paris. Apart from the fact that he wrote it in French, Salome stands out in
Wilde’s oeuvre as his only symbolist play. What is more, Salome has been called the “only
completely successful symbolist drama to come out of the English theatre.”2 Yet in Wilde’s
own day, the play caused immense controversy and was banned by the Lord Chamberlain’s
office on the ground that it depicted biblical figures. As opposed to this critical reception, in
recent decades Salome has attained a prominent place in the Wildean canon. As Ian Small
points out, “because of its representation of sexual topics, Salome is coming to be seen as a
document which allows contemporary issues in the politics of gender to be glimpsed.”3
It is important to note that the exploration of female sexuality in the play may well have been
the actual reason for the censorship, as suggested by Matthew Lewsadder.4 He argues that
“[a]lthough Oscar Wilde was not the first to take Salome as the basis of his work, he was the
first to give her sexual desire and agency.” The importance of Salome’s desire is emphasized
by much of the criticism on the play and in some cases this is expressed in the recognition of
Salome as a New Woman. However, there seems to be disagreement about the meaning this
conveys. According to Allen and Felluga, Salome illustrates the fin de siècle perception of the
New Woman as a sexual threat. Consequently, they describe her as a portrayal of a
“ravenously sexual” New Woman.5 Gilbert and Gubar, too, identify Salome as a case of
misogynist revulsion against women; they argue that Salome “needs to be understood in terms
of male anxiety about unprecedented female achievement.”6 In other words, Gilbert and
Gubar consider Wilde to be part of the hostile discourse reacting against feminist activity, as
described in the first chapter. As opposed to these views, critics such as Marcus and Kailo
assign a more positive meaning to the portrayal of Salome as a New Woman. Marcus reads
Salome “as a parable of the woman artist’s struggle to break free of being the stereotype of
sex object.”7 Kailo argues that”[t]he reversals and ironies of Wilde’s play allow us to
SALOME
16
reconsider the results of the suppression or the negative portrayal of the feminine in drama.”8
The following questions can be extracted from these studies: does Wilde evoke the figure of
the New Woman in order to degrade her or to empower her? Does he use female sexuality
merely as a tool to attack patriarchy, or does he integrate it with feminist themes? Or,
conversely, does his play need to be considered as a reinforcement of patriarchy? In the
remainder of this chapter, I will analyse the representation of Salome by focusing on these
questions.
Salome’s Desire
Although Salome was a well-known fin de siècle icon, the story is originally biblical. In New
Testament accounts she figures as the daughter of Herodias, who dances at the request of her
stepfather Herod. When the tetrarch offers up to half his kingdom in payment, Salome
demands, at her mother’s urging, the head of Jokanaan who has been incarcerated for
denouncing the marriage between Herodias and Herod. Although Herod fears the
consequences, his honour requires him to order the execution and delivery of Jokanaan’s head
to Salome on a silver charger. In the mid-nineteenth century, Salome inspired many artists,
which resulted in a revival of the story through poetry, prose and the visual arts.
Salome had no agency in the biblical representation; she was merely her mother’s pawn and
not even referred to by name. In the artistic representations, Salome was but an object to be
gazed at. According to several critics, Wilde’s Salome, too, is a reinforcement of stereotypical
notions of the female. For instance, Kellog-Davis argues that “Salome is a paradigm of the
symbolist femme fatale”9 and “clearly a product of male – in Wilde’s case bisexual – attitudes
about women. The fascination of Wilde’s depiction of Salome lies in his synthesis of western
– and many eastern – ways of stereotyping women.”10 This way of reading the play simplifies
its meaning. Although Salome traditionally has been a quintessential femme fatale, Wilde’s
representation of this figure is more complex than Kellog-Davis’ conception of it. As I will
argue, Wilde’s focus on Salome’s desire enabled him to assign a subject position to her.
Central to the reversal of Salome’s object position is the notion of the gaze. The looking
relation is the most important form of relation between characters in Salome. In feminist
discourse, the looking relation is understood as gendered: the subject, the looker, is male,
while the object, the looked-at, is female. The gaze is therefore the male gaze, whereby
SALOME
17
women are deprived of subjecthood. To be looked at in this way, is dangerous to a woman,
who in losing her subjecthood loses herself. Throughout the play, Salome is being looked at.
Characteristically, the theme of the gaze is introduced in the opening scene; the young Syrian
describes Salome as a sexually desirable object in a conversation with the page of Herodias:
The Young Syrian How beautiful is the Princess Salome tonight!
The Page of Herodias Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising
from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things.
The Young Syrian She has a strange look. She is like a princess who has little white doves for feet.
One might fancy she was dancing.
The Page of Herodias She is like a woman who is dead. She moves very slowly. 11
The interpretations of the Page and the Young Syrian retain an indeterminacy of object
choice. This leads to the suggestion that, in this phase of the play, Salome shares an equal
status with the moon: both are objects. Narraboth, however, is not the only man to respond to
her in this way. Her stepfather Herod also feasts his eyes on Salome. In order to flee from
Herod’s objectifying gaze, Salome joins Narraboth and the page on the terrace. She is well
aware of Herod’s gaze:
I will not stay. I cannot stay. Why does the Tetrarch look at me all the while with his mole’s eyes under
his shaking eyelids? It is strange that the husband of my mother looks at me like that. I know not what it
means. Of a truth I know it too well. 12
However, the gendered polarity of the gaze is not maintained in Salome. When Salome hears
Jokanaan’s voice, she is determined to speak with him and orders Narraboth to bring
Jokanaan to her. At this point of the play, Salome starts to subvert her object position. First of
all, she defies Herod’s orders, who wants Jokanaan captivated out of fear for him. Secondly,
she uses her sexuality in order to get what she wants; she promises the young Syrian: “I will
let fall for thee a little flower, a little green flower.”13 Then she goes on to say that
on the morrow when I pass in my litter by the bridge of the idol-buyers, I will look at thee through the
muslin veils, I will look at thee, Narraboth, it may be that I smile at thee. Look at me Narraboth, look at
me. Ah! Thou knowest that thou wilt do what I ask of thee. Thou knowest it…I know that thou wilt do
this thing.14
SALOME
18
Regenia Gagnier notes that “[h]er insistent seduction of the infatuated Narraboth indicates her
awareness of the sexual power she will later use against Herod.”15 When she encounters
Jokanaan, she enforces her newly achieved position as a subject by assuming a male role in
her behaviour and in her language. Both in the way she adopts the male gaze and in the way
she describes him, she objectifies Jokanaan, and in doing so, becomes a subject herself. In the
language she uses to praise him, she concentrates first on his body: “I am amorous of thy
body, Jokanaan! Thy body is white, like the lilies of a field that the mower has never
mowed.”16 She then focuses on his hair: “Thy hair is like clusters of grapes, like the clusters
of black grapes that hang from the vine-trees of Edom in the land of the Edomites.”17 Finally,
she moves on to celebrate his mouth: “Thy mouth is redder than the feet of those who thread
the wine press.”18 Gail Finney points out that this kind of anatomical “scattering” is
reminiscent of the blazon, a motif produced during the Renaissance. This part-by-part
celebration was
introduced by Petrarch and became the standard means by which male poets after him portrayed female
beauty. By depicting the woman not as a totality but as a series of dissociated parts, the male poet could
overcome any threat her femaleness might pose to him. The device functioned as a power strategy,
since to describe is, in some senses to control, to possess, and ultimately, to use to one’s own ends. 19
In her fixation on Jokanaan, Salome sees a way to attain power. When Jokanaan goes back to
the cistern, it becomes clear that the roles are subverted; now it is Jokanaan fleeing from
Salome’s objectifying gaze. An interesting comment on the source of Salome’s treatment of
Jokanaan is provided by Finney:
Close analysis of the play as a whole reveals that her behaviour is clearly learned: this daughter’s
education in a veritable school of lust, where the principle of immediate gratification reigns, undermines
the conventional notion of the femme fatale as a kind of natural force of virtually mythic proportions. In
her fetishization of Jokanaan she is simply following the example of those around her, who treat her the
way she treats him.20
The fact that Salome’s object of desire is a holy man also indicates that she resists the
patriarchal notion of what a woman’s place should be. As Helen Tookey points out, “women
have been profanised and set apart from the patriarchal sphere of the sacred.”21 Tookey notes
that “[b]y demanding that Jokanaan be brought out of the cistern, by looking on him, speaking
to him, and most of all by desiring him sexually, Salome commits sacrilege, bringing the
SALOME
19
profane into contact with the sacred.”22 Jokanaan’s exclamation, “Touch me not. Profane not
the temple of the Lord God,”23 is a good illustration of Tookey’s point. Salome’s contact with
Jokanaan is thus central to the subversion of her object position: she defies both secular and
divine law by ignoring Herod’s command and Jokanaan’s warning.
Paradoxically, in a further attempt to escape her object position, Salome decides to grant
Herod his wish by dancing for him; in the first instance, this may seem surprising, but within
the patriarchal system that denies her the right to pursue her desire, she can obtain agency by
exploiting male desire for her. Her position as an object of desire is, in fact, the only power
she can have access to. In this sense, she uses the social conventions, which were designed to
force her into a subservient position.
When Herod offers her a reward for the dance, Salome is determined to receive Jokanaan’s
head. He tries to persuade her to change her mind and offers her all sorts of valuable gifts.
According to Herod she acts according to her mother’s wishes, but Salome answers: “It is not
my mother’s voice that I heed. It is for my own pleasure that I ask for the head of Jokanaan in
a silver charger.”24 This self-determination underlines her subject position. Moreover, by
emphasizing that it is for her “own pleasure” that she asks for the head of Jokanaan, she also
asserts her sexual subjectivity. Gagnier observes that Salome pursues “sex for sex’ sake” and
that she exists for her own pleasure, instead of serving or reproducing for the benefit of male
interest.25 In this sense, Salome undermines stereotypical notions of the female, because, as
explained in the first chapter, the prevailing Victorian image of women was that of
moralized, sexless angels. This portrayal of Salome corresponds to the female protagonists in
New Women fiction, because as Cunningham has pointed out “whether pure or neurotic, they
have strong sexual feelings.”26
On the other hand, the figure of the New Woman was also portrayed as sexually licentious by
antifeminist writers. In this sense, Salome can be interpreted as a manifestation of patriarchal
fear for female sexuality. It is true that Salome commits a terrible crime in order to satisfy her
desire. As noted earlier, Salome appears in many fin de siècle works as a representation of
feminine evil, a femme fatale. Some of the most apparent factors that reinforced the concept
of the femme fatale in the late Victorian period are feminism and the New Woman. However,
Wilde does not simply depict Salome as the embodiment of evil. His representation of Salome
differs in many respects from those of his contemporaries. Traditionally, the femme fatale
SALOME
20
draws on traditions of the Good Woman/Bad Woman dichotomy. Wilde goes beyond the
conventional notion of the femme fatale; he does not present her as innately evil, and offers
an insight into the motivation of her actions. To begin with, Wilde seems to give her a
justification for the execution of Jokanaan.
Jokanaan’s Decapitation
Melissa Knox notes that Salome wants to punish Jokanaan, simply because he rejects her, “a
blow dealt by infantile frustration.”27 However, Salome’s punishment of Jokanaan is more
complex. It is not implausible that she wants him killed out of frustration, but the reason for
her frustration is not simply Jokanaan’s rejection. Heather Marcovitch points out that her
request for his head is predicated upon her being constantly objectified, even or especially by
Jokanaan, a point overlooked by other critics. Marcovitch notes that, “when he looks at
Salome, he only sees Herodias.”28 When Salome introduces herself to him, Jokanaan responds
by crying out, “Back daughter of Babylon! Come not near the chosen of the Lord. Thy mother
hath filled the earth with the wine of her inequities, and the cry of her sins hath come up the
ears of God.”29 Jokanaan sees Salome merely as a reflection of Herodias and thus denies her
the right to have her own identity. In this sense, he is complicit in the patriarchal system of the
court that has defined Salome by her image. Marcovitch points out that “when the control
over a persona is taken away from the individual behind it, the individual’s desires and will
threaten to pervert his or her persona.”30 This, according to Marcovitch, is what Wilde
illustrates in Salome. As Knox notes correctly, Jokanaan denounces not only Salome’s desire,
“but beyond that he denounces all women and their sexuality.”31 Lewsadder notes that
“Jokanaan’s description of her ‘gilded eyelids’ locates Salome as a ‘painted woman,’ or a
prostitute, which is the only possible figuration for female sexuality within the discourse of
female passionlessness.”32 This suggests that Jokanaan cannot see Salome as a woman with
sexual desires without condemning her. So, perhaps the “pleasure” Salome meant, was not
only sexual satisfaction, but also revenge on the patriarchal system for trying to deny her
sexuality.
The fact that Wilde views his heroine far more sympathetically than his predecessors can be
seen in the fact that Salome is not a heartless fatal woman. Although she initially reacts full of
anger toward the dead Jokanaan, she seems to undergo a development. The first words
Salome utters when she seizes the head of Jokanaan are: “Ah! Thou wouldst not suffer me to
kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a
SALOME
21
ripe fruit.”33 Worth notes that, at this point, Salome comes close to “seeming inhuman, a
savage sex goddess.”34 However, Worth indicates that “it would be a simplification to see her
only in that way. She is a victim as well as destroyer: it is the relation between sexual
frustration and her manic passion which Wilde is especially concerned to explore.”35
Initially, Salome goes on to address hostile words to Jokanaan’s head:
Thou wouldst have none of me, Jokanaan. Thou rejectedst me. Thou didst speak evil words against me.
Thou didst bear thyself toward me as to a harlot, as to a woman that is a wanton, to me, Salome,
daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judea! Well, Jokanaan, I still live, but thou, thou art dead, and thy
head belongs to me. I can do with it what I will. I can throw it to the dogs and to the birds of the air.
That which the dogs leave, the birds of the air shall devour… 36
However, Salome’s first reaction of anger seems to be a necessary condition in order to effect
a process of psychological development. After releasing her frustration and rage, she is able to
lament for Jokanaan: “Ah, Jokanaan, Jokanaan, thou wert the man that I loved alone among
men! All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of
ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver.”37 She then
moves on to confront her feelings for Jokanaan: “Ah! Ah! Wherefore didst thou not look at
me? If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me.”38
In the first instance, these words make her come forward as an immature girl, who is sure
everything would have turned out the way she wanted if only Jokanaan had listened to her.
However, it is should be noted that she has learnt something about feeling, and in this respect
she has gone through a significant development. Worth notes that
[s]he has learnt to the full what passion is and she has learnt through her suffering the value of love.
We cannot forget the horror that came of her agony – she is cradling the head throughout the speech –
but by the end she is accepting her wounds, no longer trying to wound. It seems, against all odds, that
‘love’ is the right word for the feeling she achieves after the cruel passion has spent itself and that, as
she says, ‘the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Love only should one consider.’39
Her realisation of the value of love suggests Wilde’s sympathy for his heroine, which is an
important aspect to be considered when analysing Wilde’s portrayal of Salome.
SALOME
22
Representations of the femme fatale usually result in stereotypical identities. Josephine
Donovan indicates that “female stereotypes symbolize either the spiritual or the material,
good or evil.”40 However, although Wilde uses the stereotypical notion of the femme fatale,
he does not depict her as entirely evil. Indeed, in the end, Salome proves to be capable of
human feelings.
Female characters in literature that does not present the “inside” of women’s experience are
“simply vehicles for the growth and salvation of the male protagonist.”41 These women are
female Others, according to Donovan. Wilde, on the other hand, explores to a great extent the
motivation for Salome’s deed, her feelings of love and her pain in her last speech, indicating
his empathy for his female character. In addition, the final speech also shows that she has
matured. She develops from a vindictive woman to someone who claims that “Love only
should one consider.” In her article, Donovan explores the function of suffering in literature.
She notes that in the great works of Western literature, suffering for the male protagonist
leads to wisdom, to knowledge, to growth, or to positive social change; for the female
characters the suffering is often without meaning. Many writers “define the woman insofar as
she relates to, serves, or thwarts the interests of men.”42 Wilde, however, allows his heroine to
grow and to change. Her suffering is not morally meaningless. These aspects in Wilde’s play
indicate that Salome is an authentic character. She is not reduced to a female Other and this
seems to refute the notion of Salome as a misogynist text. However, these arguments lead to
the question why Wilde allows his heroine to grow, but did not allow her to survive.
Salome’s Death
Kellog-Dennis explains Salome’s death, simply by emphasizing that Salome is a tragedy, as
the subtitle A Tragedy in one Act indicates, and points out that “Oscar Wilde was a brilliant
dramatist with a classical understanding of the distinctions between comedy – ends in
marriage –, and tragedy – ends in death.”43 Although Kellog-Davis is right in her observation,
Salome’s death conveys more than being an appropriate ending for a tragedy. It is important
to consider the reason Wilde chose to treat Salome as a tragedy. Her death is a significant
change to the original story. In fact, only in Wilde’s version does Salome die. In a way,
Salome is similar to Dorian Gray. Wilde granted both of his protagonists the fulfilment of
their sexual desires, and in doing so, he expressed his disapproval of sexual repression. In
having them killed, Wilde illustrated this repression; this point is also taken up by Finney,
who notes that “through her death, symbolically forecast from the beginning of the play, he
SALOME
23
expresses his awareness that neither unbridled female sexuality nor homosexuality could go
unpunished in Victorian society.”44 By killing his female protagonist, Wilde’s play again
strikes a chord with New Woman fiction. Cunningham explains that a heavy emphasis is
placed upon death in all New Woman novels. The point is, according to Cunningham, that the
New Woman’s ideals were too far advanced for her environment. The novelists were trying to
do two things at once: firstly, to argue for a moral and social case for a high degree of
emancipation, and secondly to show how firmly entrenched the creeds and conventions were
which oppressed women. As Cunningham puts it,
It would be absurdly utopian to portray a New Woman succeeding in her aims. Thus the common
pattern of the New Woman novel is to show the heroine arriving at her ideals of freedom and equality
from observation of society, but then being brought through the miserable experience of trying to put
them into practice to a position of weary disillusion. 45
This way of viewing her death suggests Wilde’s sympathy for his heroine and her struggle
against patriarchy. Besides, although some critics have viewed Salome’s death as a victory for
patriarchy, it should be noted that, by killing Salome, Herod has not succeeded in restoring
the old patriarchal order. He depends on keeping his word, in order to maintain an image of
authority in the eyes of the people. In insisting that Herod keeps his oath, Salome creates a
complex decision for him to make; if he does not kill the prophet his word will henceforth be
ineffectual in the community; on the other hand, his fears of Jokanaan’s prophesies prevents
him from killing him with a clear conscience. In addition, killing the prophet will cause havoc
among Herod’s population. When he is finally forced to fulfil his oath, he abdicates his
authoritative position. When he says “Hereafter let no king swear an oath,”46 he is no longer
willing to make commitments to people, and therefore loses his credibility as an authoritative
figure. So although Herod has Salome killed, his weakened position means that she has
defeated him.
However, it could also be argued that Salome is punished for having ordered the execution of
Jokanaan. An interesting counterpoint is provided by Pyle. He argues that
However much Herod is threatened and frightened by Salome’s demand for the head of Jokanaan, it is
not the head as such which is extravagant. Indeed, Herodias regards the demand as a perfectly
reasonable exchange for the dance, and there is nothing about the beheading itself which creates a crisis
for the play. There is nothing about the beheading itself which is in and of itself exorbitant, and,
SALOME
24
however reluctantly, Herod agrees to the demand. But where Wilde’s play achieves significance, where
it arrives at the experience of the sacred, is where it departs from any sense of scriptural fidelity: it is the
kiss and the princess’s discourse of the kiss that delivers the play and everything within it to an
extravagance which transgresses the structures and economics of power and pleasure. 47
This seems to be a plausible explanation, because murder is a crime that Herod has committed
himself; he did, after all, kill his own brother. So Salome’s order for Jokanaan’s execution is
therefore probably for him not the main reason he considers her to be monstrous. It is not until
after the speech, in which she declares her love, that Herod calls her monstrous and it is not
until after the kiss that he gives the order to “kill that woman.” Herod proves to be
hypocritical for punishing Salome for her transgressive desire, while he himself has
incestuous feelings toward her. Finney argues that Salome is an exposure of the double
standard: “for Salome the consequences of the double standard are fatal: in a precise reversal
of the typical femme fatale plot, whereas Herod is allowed his lust, she is killed because of
hers.”48
Conclusion
In the beginning of the play, Salome is nothing more than a desirable object. However, in the
course of the play Salome develops into an individual in her own right, by copying male
behaviour. Wilde showed that women had the same desires as men and thus defied
conventional standards of feminine conduct. The subversive deployment of Salome’s
sexuality is most likely the reason the play was censored. The story changed from one about
male desire to one about female desire. Salome’s desire is even the central feature in Wilde’s
play. Wilde’s other significant change to the Salome narrative, the death of his heroine,
illustrated the repressive forces of patriarchy. Wilde overturned the accepted notions of
femininity by unveiling subversive female sexual desire and thus emancipated the wellknown icon Salome.
The conventional interpretation of the femme fatale theme as an outgrowth of a misogynistic
impulse does not seem to apply to Wilde’s Salome. Wilde’s representation of his femme
fatale is more complex than that of his contemporaries. Although he does present a woman
who commits murder, he also shows that she is not entirely evil. Her assertion that “[l]ove
only should one consider” makes the essential difference; while more conventional
representations of the femme fatale define women as essentially evil, Wilde undermines the
Victorian either/or approach toward women.
SALOME
25
Notes
1
Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (London: Virago, 1996), 27.
Katherine Worth, Oscar Wilde (London: The Macmillan Press, 1983), 7.
3
Ian Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods of Research (Greensboro: ELT
Press, 1993), 197.
4
Matthew Lewsadder, “Removing the Veils: Censorship, Female Sexuality, and Oscar Wilde’s Salome,”
Modern Drama 45.4 (2002): 519-44.
5
Emily Allen and Dino Felluga, “General Introduction to Theories of Gender and Sex,” Introductory Guide to
Critical Theory, Purdue U, 17 July 2002
<http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/genderandsex/modules/introduction.html>
6
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century
(New Haven: Yale UP, 1989), 5.
7
Jane Marcus, “Salome: The Jewish Princess Was a New Woman,” Bulletin of the New York Library 78 (1974):
102
8
Kaarina Kailo, “Blanche Dubois and Salome as New Women: old lunatics in modern drama,” Themes in
Drama 15 (1993): 130.
9
Patricia Kellog-Dennis, “Oscar Wilde’s Salome: Symbolist Princess,” In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, ed. C.
George Sandulescu, (Monaco: The Princess Grace Irish Library, 1994), 230.
10
Ibid., 227.
11
Oscar Wilde, Salome (London: John Lane, 1912), 1.
12
Ibid., 10.
13
Ibid.,16
14
Ibid.
15
Regenia Gagnier, Ydills of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1986), 167.
16
Salome, 21
17
Ibid., 22.
18
Ibid., 23.
19
Ibid., 184.
20
Gail Finney, “Demythologizing the Femme Fatale: Wilde’s Salome,” in: The Routledge Reader in Gender and
Performance, ed. Lizbeth Goodman (London: Routledge, 1998), 183.
21
Helen Tookey, “‘The Fiend That Smites with a Look’: the Monstrous/Menstruous Woman and the Danger of
the Gaze in Oscar Wilde’s Salome,” Literature and Theology: International Journal of Religion, Theory, and
Culture 18.1 (2004): 26.
22
Ibid., 26.
23
Salome, 23.
24
Ibid., 56.
25
Gagnier, 159.
26
Cunningham, The New Woman and the Victorian Novel (London: Macmillan, 1978), 53.
27
Melissa Knox, “Losing one’s Head: Wilde’s Confession in Salome,” in: Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, ed. C.
George Sandulescu (Monaco: The Princess Grace Irish Library, 1994), 243.
28
Heather Marcovitch, “The Princess, Persona, and Subjective Desire: A Reading of Oscar Wilde's
Salome,” Papers on Language & Literature 40.1 (2004): 6.
29
Salome, 23.
30
Marcovitch, 3.
31
Knox, 234.
32
Lewsadder, 523.
33
Salome, 64.
34
Katherine Worth, Oscar Wilde (London: Macmillan, 1983), 69.
35
Ibid.
36
Salome, 64.
37
Ibid., 65.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid., 70.
40
Josephine Donovan, “Beyond the Net: Feminist Criticism as a Moral Criticism,” The Denver Quarterly 17
(1983): 48.
41
Ibid., 50.
42
Ibid., 47.
2
SALOME
43
Kellog-Davis, 229.
Finney, 185.
45
Cunningham, 50.
46
Salome, 63.
47
Forest Pyle, “Extravagance; or, Salome’s Kiss,” The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 7 (1998), 51.
48
Ibid., 68.
44
26
3
Lady Windermere’s Fan
A Play about a Good Woman
Wilde wrote his first society comedy Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1892, the same year he
finished writing Salomé. Ellmann suggests that “[w]riting about a good woman and a bad one
at the same time illustrated his belief that in art contraries are equally true.”1 However, it also
shows that Wilde liked to play with these rigid categories and question them. What is more, in
doing so he seems to deconstruct Victorian womanhood. What at first glance seems to be a
conventional play turns out to be a controversial one.
In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde again figures a nineteenth-century female stereotype.
However, in this play it is not the femme fatale, but the “fallen woman” that Wilde gives a
central part to. In the first instance Lady Windermere’s Fan seems to be a play with an
unoriginal plot; the fallen woman was a familiar figure in Victorian literature and art.
Consequently, many critics have focused on Lady Windermere’s Fan’s similarities with
contemporary plays. However, Wilde treated the subject in another way than his predecessors,
but he kept the changes subtle to avoid censorship. Plays figuring a fallen women were bound
by certain rules. Sos Eltis points out that “[p]ublic performances were dependent on the
granting of a licence from the Lord Chamberlain, and these were only grudgingly conferred
on even the most orthodox and sentimental presentation of the fallen woman.”2 Playwrights
ought to maintain a strict morality: the fallen woman should repent and is punished for her
wrongdoings in the end, usually by death. These plays seem to be a warning to Victorian
women not to go astray. Wilde, however, presents morality in quite a different manner.
Before going into Wilde’s original treatment of the fallen woman theme, it is interesting to
look at what Victorians meant by the term “fallen woman.” Adulteresses, prostitutes and
unwed mothers, for example, were defined as fallen. In other words, a fallen woman had
sexual relationships outside marriage, which was seen as unnatural behaviour for women.
Conceptions of women’s passive sexual nature explain the existence of the notion of the
“fallen woman.” Consequently, these women were seen as deviant and were excluded from
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
28
polite society. The Victorians did not allow for a distinction between a prostitute and a girl
who makes one mistake. This resulted in a dichotomy of the pure woman and the bad one
which persisted throughout the century. It was the double standard that reinforced the concept
of fallen women. Although a woman was not allowed to have extramarital affairs, it was seen
as accepted behaviour for men. Watt points out that “a large number of Victorians accepted
the presence of a large body of prostitutes, not as a force against the status quo but rather as a
supporter of it.”3 The considerable number of prostitutes indicates a large clientele, which,
according to Watt, furthered the myth of the two women. As Watt explains, “[t]o many
middle-class Victorian males there were, indeed, two women: the pure one to be married, the
other to be used. It was essential that there was no meeting of the two.”4 He points out that
“[k]eeping the two worlds apart was essential for the preservation of the status quo. If a
woman transgressed, this represented a threat to the whole system – this threat could not be
tolerated.”5 Wilde questioned the absolute nature of the two groups of women – the pure and
the fallen. Lady Windermere’s Fan seems to be a direct response to the hypocritical society of
nineteenth-century Britain. Mrs Erlynne is a sympathetic creation that clashes with many
prevailing social attitudes, and especially with the dichotomy of the “two women.”
The rigid separation between pure angels and immoral women is also distinctly noticeable in
the beginning of Lady Windermere’s Fan. In the opening scene, Lady Windermere is
immediately represented as a good woman: when the butler announces the visit of Lord
Darlington Lady Windermere hesitates for a moment, because “a visit from a man on his own
was a little unusual.”6 She does order to “show him up” but lets the butler know that she is “at
home to anyone that calls.”7 This indicates that, from Lady Windermere’s point of view, this
is not a private or indiscreet visit. In addition, when Lord Darlington offers to shake hands,
Lady Windermere declines: “No, I can’t shake hands with you. My hands are all wet with
these roses.”8 As Raby points out “the offered hand, on the part of the man, instead of a bow,
indicates a claim of friendship; Lady Windermere’s rejection, perfectly polite, is also
significant.”9 In addition, she is called explicitly a “good woman” by several of the play’s
characters. In the beginning of the play, then, Wilde puts everything into effect to make sure
that the audience cannot possibly fail to notice that the good woman of the subtitle is Lady
Windermere.
The first impression the audience perceives of Mrs Erlynne is based on the description of the
Duchess of Berwick. According to her she is Lord Windermere’s mistress, so she is
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
29
immediately presented as an immoral woman, who has a relationship outside marriage. The
first words she utters about Mrs Erlynne are “that horrid woman” and that she is “absolutely
inadmissible to society.”10 When she reveals the contact between Lord Windermere and Mrs
Erlynne she claims that “while he is there she is not at home to anyone.”11 This conduct
contrasts sharply with Lady Windermere’s reception of Lord Darlington. So in the first
instance the immoral Mrs Erlynne seems to be a foil to good Lady Windermere.
At the dance, however, the idea that the audience has of Mrs Erlynne is contrasted with her
appearance. When she makes her entrance at the party she contradicts the expectations the
audience has of fallen women: Wilde describes her as “very beautifully dressed and very
dignified.”12 Kaplan indicates that “[t]he combination, itself a departure from the brash
overdoing of her predecessors, suggested for Mrs. Erlynne a respectability at odds with her
sense of erotic mystery.”13 The first impression her appearance evokes already indicates
Wilde’s intention to portray a character “as yet untouched by literature.”14 In addition, the fact
that after Lady Windermere “bows coldly” to Mrs Erlynne, she “bows to her sweetly in turn”
is also unexpected behaviour from a cold-hearted fallen woman. It seems that Wilde rejected
every conventional notion of what a fallen woman is from the moment she makes her first
appearance in the play.
Before going back to the protagonists, I want to focus on the characters of the Duchess of
Berwick and her daughter, because this subplot is thematically interwoven with the main plot.
This subplot emphasizes the danger of ideals. Wilde ridicules the fact that women were
supposed to be innocent and therefore were kept ignorant. He points out that ignorance about
the harsher facts of life undermines a realistic attitude. When the Duchess of Berwick intends
to warn Lady Windermere of her husband’s infidelity, she orders her daughter Agatha to “go
out on the terrace and look at the sunset.”15 By keeping Agatha ignorant, the Duchess ensures
that her daughter is more valuable in the marriage market. The only sentence Agatha utters
throughout the play is “yes, mamma.” Of course, this provides for comic moments, but
underneath the comedy lies tragedy. When Lady Windermere proclaims “Windermere and I
married for love,” the duchess answers “Yes, we begin like that.”16 It is clear that she entered
her marriage as the ignorant girl her daughter now is. She explains that “before the
honeymoon was over, I caught him winking at my maid, a most pretty, respectable girl.”17
The duchess is well aware of her husband’s infidelity: “on several occasions after I was first
married, I had to pretend to be very ill, and was obliged to drink the most unpleasant mineral
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
30
waters, merely to get Berwick out of town.”18 Lady Windermere cannot believe that her
husband is untrue to her, but the Duchess of Berwick responds with “Pretty child! I was like
that once.”19 The subplot, then, reinforces Wilde’s point that ideals can only lead to
disappointments. Moreover, a realistic view of life makes people less judgemental, which is
further elaborated on in the main plot.
Another point Wilde makes regarding women’s situation is that women were not only not
allowed to transgress sexually, but were also supposed not to transgress the space they were
assigned to. After the Duchess leaves, Lady Windermere decides to open her husband’s
bankbook in order to find out if she spoke the truth. According to Raby this action signals an
important factor of women’s position. As he points out, “[t]he action highlights the question
of a woman’s legal and moral rights, and the way in which women had been excluded from
whole areas of life.”20 When Lord Windermere discovers the open bankbook, he reacts
angrily: “Margaret, you have cut open my bankbook! You have no right to do such a thing!”21
This comment shows that he does not want his wife to interfere with his male affairs. Wilde,
then, illustrates the fact that women are restricted to the domestic sphere, which emphasizes
his concern for the unequal position of women.
In this respect, Wilde draws attention to the injustice of the sexual double standard. The
reactions from the men after they find Mrs Erlynne in Darlington’s rooms highlight the
double standard. That this kind of behaviour is accepted in men is already clear in the second
act when Darlington tells Lady Windermere “a man can’t tell these things about another
man!”22 However, Mrs Erlynne is looked at in contempt, because she is present in a man’s
room. When Mrs Erlynne comes to return the fan, Lord Windermere lets her know he has lost
all his respect for her.
Lord Windermere Within an hour of your leaving the house you are found in a man’s rooms – you are
disgraced before everyone.
Mrs Erlynne Yes.
Lord Windermere Therefore I have the right to look upon you as what you are – a worthless, vicious
woman. I have the right to tell you never to enter this house again, never to attempt to come near my
wife –
His is a mind which admits the existence of only two kinds of women, the virtuous and the
fallen. Mrs Erlynne’s presence in Lord Darlington’s rooms places her, according to Lord
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
31
Windermere, in the “bad woman” category. Obviously, Lord Windermere wants to think of
his own wife as a good woman. This is the reason that he does not want to see the fan
anymore Mrs Erlynne came to return; it reminds him of the thoughts he had the night before
about his own wife. He tells Mrs Erlynne: “I can’t bear the sight of it now. I shall never let my
wife use it again. The thing is soiled for me. You should have kept it and not brought it
back.”23 What is more, he even denies his wife to have contact with Mrs Erlynne, because he
wants to protect her from contagious contact with a sexually compromised woman.
Windermere can only worship his wife if she remains spotless in his eyes. Mrs Erlynne knows
this and therefore insists that her daughter never reveals what really happened in Darlington’s
rooms.
Unlike her husband, Lady Windermere has shown that she is capable of moral development.
After the events of the night before, she exclaims, “[t]here is a bitter irony in things, a bitter
irony in the way we talk of good and bad women…. Oh, what a lesson!”24 Indeed, Lady
Windermere has learned a lesson, and proves this when she discusses Mrs Erlynne with her
husband; he claims that he thought “she wanted to be good” but that he “was mistaken in her.
She is bad – as bad as a woman can be.”25 In answer to her husband’s opinion, Lady
Windermere shows that she did learn something:
Arthur, Arthur, don’t talk so bitterly about any woman. I don’t think now that people can be divided
into the good and the bad, as though they were two separate races or creations. What are called good
women may have terrible things in them, mad moods or recklessness, assertion, jealousy, sin. Bad
women, as they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, pity, sacrifice. And I don’t think Mrs
Erlynne a bad woman – I know she’s not.26
However, her education is limited: although she holds less strict views now, she still divides
people into categories. As Sos Eltis points out
[s]he has moved beyond a puritan morality of absolutes, but she still divides and labels humanity. She
now separates the world into not two but four categories: not just good and bad, but also good-with-bad
and bad-with-good. Her essential standards of judgement are unchanged. 27
When Lady Windermere insists on seeing Mrs Erlynne her husband refuses. Lord
Windermere does not understand his wife’s wish to see Mrs Erlynne, suggesting: “[m]y child,
you may be on the brink of a great sorrow.”28 Significantly, the repetitious use of “child”
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
32
when he addresses his wife, indicates his feeling of superiority toward her, thereby illustrating
Charlotte Brontë’s comment: “Men, I believe, fancy women’s minds something like those of
children.”29 Lord Windermere is sure that he knows better what she needs than she could
possibly know herself. This is also the reason he makes important decisions concerning her
life, without discussing them with her: he decides that it is would be better for his wife not to
know her mother is alive, than knowing her mother is a fallen woman: “But rather than my
wife should know –that the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, is living – a
divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I
know you to be…”30 Contrary to Lord Windermere’s initial idea to give Mrs Erlynne a
second chance, he now considers her to be “inadmissible everywhere,”31 because to him she
has proven to be a genuine bad woman.
The Rejection of Motherhood
In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde shows that the patriarchal construct of “femininity” was
oppressive to women. Instead of the “purity school” of New Women who took hold of the
position to which they were limited, Wilde sided with the more radical New Women. Wilde’s
representation of motherhood seems to be a response to the Woman Question. Motherhood
was a much debated issue among antifeminists as well as feminists. Antifeminists and the
purity New Women claimed that women were destined to be mothers, but the more radical
New Woman did not agree on that matter. Unhappy experiences of motherhood were
common in New Woman novels; the female protagonists all experienced motherhood as a
fraught and unrewarding phase of their lives. Another inspiration for Lady Windermere’s Fan
is the work of the Norwegian playwright Ibsen. Wilde was familiar with his work and went to
see most of his plays. Motherhood is a central theme in many of Ibsen’s plays, in which
maternity was represented in an unconventional manner. Feminists responded enthusiastically
to his work, but it outraged the more conservative commentators. The theatre critic Clement
Scott, for example, called one female protagonist, who abandoned her child, an “unnatural
creature.”32 Ibsen’s female characters seemed threatening to the Victorian values which had
ensconced women firmly in the domestic sphere. Instead of representing motherhood as the
acme of a woman’s experience, “in Ibsen’s plays it is the defining experience of women’s
lives, but rarely fulfilling.”33 The rejection of motherhood is also the central theme in Lady
Windermere’s Fan.
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
33
Mrs Erlynne defies all the expectations the audience has of a fallen woman, but also
contradicts the Victorian definition of womanhood. Unlike the fallen women of conventional
plays, Mrs Erlynne refuses to act as a repentant sinner. Lord Windermere tries to have her
repent by referring to a miniature, reminding her of her former innocent self: “it’s the
miniature of a young innocent-looking girl with beautiful dark hair.” Mrs Erlynne, however,
answers that “Dark hair and an innocent expression were the fashion then, Windermere!”34
She hints that there is no gulf between her former self and who she is now. In this way she
suggests to Lord Windermere that there are not two kinds of women. Apart from the fact that
Mrs Erlynne contradicts conventions by not repenting she also tells Windermere that she will
not reveal her true identity to her daughter:
Oh, don’t imagine I am going to have a pathetic scene with her, weep on her neck and tell her who I am,
and all that kind of thing. I have no ambition to play the part of a mother. Only once in my life have I
known a mother’s feelings. That was last night. They were terrible – they made me suffer – they made
me suffer too much. For twenty years, as you say, I have lived childless – I want to live childless still.35
To Wilde this was the key scene: “the fourth act is to me the psychological act, the act that is
newest, most true.”36 The central theme of Lady Windermere’s Fan, then, seems to be that
motherhood might not be a natural instinct to women. Nassaar explains Mrs Erlynne’s
rejection of motherhood as follows: “Being bad, she finds, is far more comfortable than being
good.”37 However, that this is too simplistic a view is indicated by the stage directions: “Lord
Windermere bites his underlip in anger. Mrs Erlynne looks at him, and her voice and manner
become serious. In her accent as she talks there is a note of deep tragedy. For a moment she
reveals herself.” Lord Windermere’s answer, however, shows that he has not noticed her pain:
“you fill me with horror – with absolute horror.” Mrs Erlynne’s reaction indictates that she
knows what a man like Lord Windermere expects of her, but also mocks the conventional
representations of a fallen woman: “I suppose, Windermere, you would like me to retire into a
convent, or become a hospital nurse, or something of that kind, as people do in silly modern
novels. That is stupid of you, Arthur; in real life we don’t do such things.”38
Mrs Erlynne’s rejection of her daughter was clearly shocking to many conventional minds.
Sos Eltis refers to a review of Lady Windermere’s Fan by the above mentioned Clement
Scott. Scott compares Lady Windermere’s Fan to Sardou’s fallen woman play Odette. Scott
claims that “Odette as guilty, as frivolous, as worldly as any Mrs Erlynne ever painted, was
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
34
still woman enough to choke with suppressed sobs, and on departing into space, unrecognised
and unloved by her daughter, to kiss the fair tresses of her maiden hair.”39 The words “Odette
was still woman enough” illustrates the essentialism inherent in the Victorian image of
women. However, Mrs Erlynne does consider telling her daughter the truth, but before she
makes a decision she asks her some questions:
Mrs Erlynne You are devoted to your mother’s memory, Lady Windermere, your husband tells me.
Lady Windermere We all have ideals in life. At least we all should have. Mine is my mother.
Mrs Erlynne Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they’re better.
Lady Windermere (shaking her head) If I lost my ideals, I should lose everything.
Mrs Erlynne Everything?
Lady Windermere Yes.40
This scene illustrates that Mrs Erlynne does not simply choose for freedom instead of
motherhood. She also decides she will not tell Lady Windermere her true identity, because
she understands that Lady Windermere could not deal with the facts. This scene reveals the
harm done to women raised like Agatha. The truth concerning Lady Windermere’s mother
has been kept from her all her life, which resulted in the fact that she will never know that she
is still alive. Wilde proves that “[i]deals are dangerous things,” indeed.
Interestingly, in the earlier mentioned review by Clement Scott Lady Windermere’s Fan is
described as insulting to women. Scott attempts to reconstruct what Wilde had in mind when
writing Lady Windermere’s Fan. “I will prove to you by my play that the very instinct of
maternity – that holiest and purest instinct with women – is deadened in the breasts of our
English mothers.”41 Scott goes on to say that women themselves do not realize the insult
addressed to them “I tell you that the mothers in society will not consider that I have outraged
their sex or expressed anything else than the truth.”42 It seems that Scott did not understand
the play when he comments on the female protagonists: “You have seen how the good mother
can desert her new-born infant without a pang. You shall see how the worldly mother shall,
having recognised her lost child, part from her as she parts from the atelier of a Bond Street
milliner.” He does not take into consideration the fact that Mrs Erlynne has proven to have
feelings for her daughter and one of the reasons not to tell her the truth is because her
daughter claims she will lose everything if she lost her ideals. Scott further claims that the
audience will not realize that Mrs Erlynne’s behaviour is just not natural: “Amusing they will
consider it, but unnatural – never.”43 This review provides a view on the essentialist position
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
35
many upheld in the nineteenth century. Wilde does not condemn women at all; he merely
shows that there is no monolithic category of “woman” and that not all women are made to be
mothers. He does not suggest that these women are “bad.” In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde
gives a non-judgemental insight that cuts right across contemporary expectations of women.
In the original version of Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde chose not to reveal Mrs Erlynne’s
identity until the end. “He felt that the mystery served to maintain the focus on the
aventurière rather than her daughter.”44 Eltis points out that Wilde feared that Mrs Erlynne
would appear “conventionally hard and debased were her true identity known too early.”45
The reason for altering the play was Wilde’s belief that this “would not undermine but
strengthen the psychology of his drama.”46 Wilde only accepted this version “once he had
been reassured that the originality of Mrs Erlynne’s character was thereby emphasized, not
destroyed.”47 He took various other measures to ensure that she did not come across as a coldhearted woman. Eltis explains that Wilde was instructing George Alexander, the play’s
producer, over small but significant details: “Also, would you remind Lady Plymdale to say
‘That woman!’ not ‘That dreadful woman.’ We must not make Mrs E. look like a cocotte. She
is an adventuress, not a cocotte.”48 These examples illustrate that to Wilde a sympathetic
representation of Mrs Erlynne was important. He wanted to prevent the audience from
concluding that women who reject motherhood are bad.
Unconventionally, Wilde did not punish his fallen woman in the end of his play. According to
Small, Mrs Erlynne “has to live abroad. Her goodness might be apparent to Lady Windermere
and the audience, but it is not allowed to threaten the moral structure of London Society.”49
However, this is not necessarily the case. It seems rather the other way around: Mrs Erlynne
rejects society. In one eventful night she has seen enough of society; she had to suffer the
unjust judgements of her character. Her leaving Britain does not seem to be a punishment.
The point Eltis makes about Mrs Erlynne’s happy ending seems to be a more accurate one:
She is not expelled at the end of the play as a dangerously corrupting influence, but turns her back on
the narrow-minded and hypocritical confines of society, having won for herself a potentially happy
marriage – the one prize conventionally denied to the fallen woman. 50
In addition, Mrs Erlynne chooses to leave London, because she fears that she will be
constantly reminded of the pain she felt when she experienced her motherly instinct. She tells
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
36
her daughter that she is “going to live abroad again. The English climate doesn’t suit me. My
– heart is affected here, and that I don’t like.”51
Conclusion
By contradicting the conventional expectations, Wilde offers a sympathetic approach to fallen
women in Lady Windermere’s Fan. He emphasises the injustice suffered by fallen women and
illustrates how Victorian society perpetuated this situation. Wilde presented his fallen woman
in an unconventional manner: Mrs Erlynne moves from being an object for gossip to a
superior subject position. She proves to be the most tolerant and intelligent character in the
play. In fact, most sympathy lies with her, not with the protective husband or the innocent
girl. Eltis points out that, in this way, Wilde has reversed the traditional hierarchy in the fallen
woman play.52 What is more, Wilde lets her have a happy ending, which was unusual in the
conventional fallen woman plays. Wilde proves that “[i]t is absurd to divide people into good
and bad,”53 based on their sexual behaviour. In the first instance, Wilde deliberately misled
the audience into believing that the subtitle referred to Lady Windermere. However, the
subsequent events of the play render the subtitle ambiguous. Not only Lady Windermere had
to adjust her hard and fast rules, even calling Mrs Erlynne in the end “a very good woman,”54
the audience, too, learns to reflect on the dichotomy of the two women.
Even more radical than subverting the conventions of the fallen woman in his play, Wilde
also questions the sacred status of motherhood. For Mrs Erlynne maternity is not fulfilling,
which distinguishes her sharply from traditional models of femininity in the nineteenth
century, when motherhood was regarded as the emotional goal of all women. By suggesting
that motherhood is not a natural instinct, Wilde, then, deconstruct the definition of femininity.
Furthermore, Wilde shows that women who reject the role of mother are not necessarily bad:
Mrs Erlynne has proven that she has a heart. In Lady Windermere’s Fan, then, Wilde not only
subverts the conventions of the “fallen woman,” but also contradicts the Victorian definition
of “woman.” The notion of the fallen woman kept fascinating Wilde and it inspired him in
writing his next play.
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
37
Notes
1
Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987), 343.
Sos Eltis, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the plays of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), 61.
3
George Watt, The Fallen Woman in the 19th- Century Novel (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 7.
4
Ibid., 8.
5
Ibid.
6
Peter Raby, “Explanatory Notes to Lady Windermere’s Fan,” Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play
about a Good Woman, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby (Oxford: Oxford UP,
1998), 113. (All subsequent references to Lady Windermere’s Fan refer to this edition.)
7
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 7.
8
Ibid.
9
Raby, notes, 113.
10
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 13.
11
Ibid., 14.
12
Ibid., 25.
13
Joel H. Kaplan and Sheila Stowell, Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1994), 15-17.
14
Ellmann, 344.
15
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 13.
16
Ibid., 15.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 14.
19
Ibid., 15.
20
Raby, notes, 315.
21
Lady Windermere’s Fan,16.
22
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 28.
23
Ibid., 53.
24
Ibid., 48.
25
Ibid., 49.
26
Ibid., 50.
27
Eltis, 82.
28
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 50.
29
Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849), ch..7. Quoted in: Gail Cunningham, The New Woman and the Victorian
Novel (London: Macmillan, 1978), 42.
30
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 52.
31
Ibid., 50.
32
Clement Scott, “A Doll’s House,” Theatre 14 (July 1889), 19. Quoted in: Sally Ledger, “Ibsen, the New
Woman and the Actress,” in The New Woman in Fiction and Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms, ed. Angelique
Richardson and Chris Willis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Publishers, 2001), 81.
33
Ledger, 86.
34
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 49.
35
Ibid., 54.
36
Letters, 331-2. Quoted in Richard Ellmann, 344.
37
Christopher S. Nassaar, Into the Demon Universe: A Literary Exploration of Oscar Wilde (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1974), 79.
38
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 54.
39
Clement Scott, Illustrated London News, 100 (27 Feb. 1892), 278. Quoted in Eltis Sos, 74.
40
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 55-6.
41
Clement Scott, in: Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage, ed. Karl Beckson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970), 125.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
Eltis, 77.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid., 78.
47
Ibid.
48
To George Alexander, More Letters, 113. Quoted in Sos Eltis, 77.
2
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
38
Ian Small, “Introduction,” Oscar Wilde. Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play about a Good Woman, ed. Ian Small
(London: The New Mermaids, 1980), xxvii.
50
Eltis, 58.
51
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 51.
52
Eltis., 58.
53
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 10.
54
Ibid., 59.
49
4
A Woman of No Importance
Ellmann described A Woman of No Importance as the weakest of the plays Wilde wrote in the
1890s. Notwithstanding, he claims that “it does more than offer the stale theme of the
Victorian fallen woman, and her defiance of her seducer.”1 Wilde, too, suggested that the
audience should look beyond the plot of the play. On several occasions he stressed that the
story was not original in itself. After being complimented on the plot’s development, for
example, Wilde declared that “[p]lots are tedious. Anyone can invent them. Life is full of
them… I took the plot of this play from The Family Herald, which took it – wisely, I feel –
from my novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.”2 The Family Herald, a weekly downmarket
domestic magazine, suggests that it is indeed not the plot of A Woman of No Importance that
matters. This supports Eltis’ claim that with a melodramatic and unoriginal plot Wilde
disguised the more controversial concerns of A Woman of No Importance.3 The fallen woman
is once more the centre of Wilde’s play. In the case of A Woman of No Importance, he used
the conventions of the fallen woman play to draw attention to punishment and judgement of
sexual behaviour.
Like in Lady Windermere’s Fan, the notion of social respectability and acceptability is central
to A Woman of No Importance, which is introduced in the beginning of the first act by Lady
Caroline, who claims that “dear Lady Hunstanton is sometimes a little lax about the people
she asks down here.” Although she considers Lord Illingworth “a man of high distinction,”
she believes that “Mrs Allonby is hardly a very suitable person.”4 However, when Hester
answers that she dislikes Mrs Allonby, Lady Caroline asserts that “Mrs Allonby is very well
born.”5 This dialogue establishes Hester as truthful and a contrast to the hypocritical
assumptions of the English. Hester is also very open about her sympathy for Gerald
Arbuthnot, but Lady Caroline reproaches her for it: “It is not customary in England, Miss
Worsley, for a young lady to speak with such enthusiasm of any person of the opposite sex.
Englishwomen conceal their feelings till after they are married. They show them then.”6 In
this respect, Hester does not act according to the Victorian standard. Gorham explains that
“[t]he advice literature warned girls that they must learn to control impetuous and unregulated
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
40
feelings.”7 This point is also made in contemporary fiction. In the New Woman novel A
Superfluous Woman by Emma Frances Brooke the protagonist contemplates that “[s]he had
been instructed…into the duty of a girl to repress feeling,” and that “passion, she had been
taught, was unladylike...”8 Hester, then, shows that in some ways she is more modern than she
is assumed to be by the other characters. However, she does hold very strict opinions on the
punishment of sexual transgressions and is therefore labelled a puritan by Mrs Allonby. Wilde
does indeed establish Hester as a representative of Puritanism. Hester seems to be influenced
by the ideals of purity of the strand of New Women discussed in the first chapter. She fiercely
opposes the double standard upheld in Victorian society, when she draws attention to the
victims of the infamous Lord Henry Weston: “What of those whose ruin is due to him? They
are outcasts. They are nameless.”9 However, she does consider it right that women are
punished for their sins: “I don’t complain of their punishment. Let all women who have
sinned be punished.”10 Hester points out that not only women should have to bear the
consequences of a sexual trespass:
…don’t let them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and a woman have sinned, let them both go forth
into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on
each, but don’t punish one and let the other go free. Don’t have one law for men and another for
women. You are unjust to women in England. 11
Her feminism, then, is defined by puritanical morality. According to her, the double standard
should not be ended by loosening the sexual restraints, but by raising the standards of conduct
for men. Wilde’s characterization of the feminism of social purity, however, slides into
caricature when Mrs Arbuthnot asks Hester if the children should be punished too: Hester
answers affirmatively: “Yes, it is right that the sins of the parents should be visited on the
children. It is a just law. It is God’s law.”12 Wilde seemed to ridicule this type of New
Woman, because he did not agree with their ideas of reconfiguring masculinity. By having
Mrs Allonby claim that she will not forgive her husband’s premarital chastity, Wilde
provokes laughter at the expense of the social purity feminists.
Although Mrs Allonby is not one of the main characters, it is interesting to include her in my
analysis of A Woman of No Importance. Her refusal to be governed by notions of the
supposed non-existent sexuality of women, results in a resemblance to the more radical, or
“neurotic” type of New Woman. Mrs Allonby’s flirtatious behaviour and the allusions she
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
41
makes to her “playing with fire” make her the antithesis of Hester. After Lady Stutfield’s
remark that “[t]he world was made for men and not for women,” Mrs Allonby answers “Oh,
don’t say that, Lady Stutfield. We have a much better time than they have. There are far more
things forbidden to us than are forbidden to them.”13As Worth points out “[t]hat double
standard which was the source of so much misery in Lady Windermere’s Fan, is to her no
more than an extra titillation in the sexual game.”14 The contrast between Mrs Allonby and
Hester seems to be captured strikingly in the argument between the pure and the neurotic
heroine in Grundey’s satiric drama The New Woman:
Enid And I say that a man, reeking with infamy, ought not to be allowed to marry a pure girl –
Victoria Certainly not! She ought to reek with infamy as well.15
When Lady Stutfield invites Mrs Allonby to describe the Ideal Man, it is clear that she
considers the stereotyped assumptions of femininity as empowering:
The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were children. He should refuse all our
serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and
forbid us to have missions...He should never believe that we know the use of things. That would be
unforgivable.
Eltis points out that according to Mrs Allonby “[t]he man’s duty is to perpetuate the myth of
female weakness and incapacity.” Wilde portrays her as an intelligent woman who exploits
“the classic picture of female frailty and incompetence” so “the man is little more than a
slave, at the mercy of woman’s every whim.”16 According to Eltis this makes her portrayal
very original, because in more conventional plays female power is limited to “the
unscrupulous use of sexual wiles” or is shown to be dependent on money. 17
As opposed to Mrs Allonby’s attitude toward her sexuality, Mrs Arbuthnot, who has “sinned”
once in her life, has excluded herself from society. Initially, Mrs Arbuthnot is positioned as
the Other in the play. She is dismissed as “a woman of no importance”18 by her former lover
Lord Illingworth. Furthermore, Lady Hunstanton is surprised when she sees Mrs Arbuthnot at
the party. Conventionally, her arrival would have been announced by a servant. This draws
attention to Mrs Arbuthnot’s self image. She does not think she is worthy to come through the
front door and have her name announced, so she “came straight in from the terrace.”19 In
addition, Mrs Arbuthnot only speaks when spoken to, and remains in the background. Lady
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
42
Hunstanton tells Hester that “I am sorry to say Mrs Arbuthnot comes very rarely to me. But
that is not my fault.”20 Clearly, her exclusion from society is, at least partially, her own
choice. After her secret has been revealed, she explains to Gerald “you thought I didn’t care
for the pleasant things of life. I tell you I longed for them, but did not dare to touch them,
feeling I had no right.”21 Her own puritan standard, then, has ruined her life. Mrs Arbuthnot
proves to be very much unlike Wilde’s first fallen woman Mrs Erlynne, who has never lost
her self-respect and mocks the conventions. As Eltis points out, Mrs Arbuthnot “performs all
the acts of repentance that her predecessor eschewed: she conscientiously attends church,
visits the poor and the sick, and leads a life of secluded virtue.”22 However, Mrs Arbuthnot’s
appearance suggests an ambiguity. Kaplan and Stowell point out that, on the one hand, a
black dress is the quintessential costume of the fallen woman:
‘two severe looking gowns, both black,’ worn by Wilde’s penitent, were, as Florence reminded Sketch
readers, ‘appropriate to a betrayed woman’- or at least, appropriate to the manner in which such figures
were presented on popular stages. 23
However, Kaplan and Stowell point out that “early references to Mrs Arbuthnot as a shabby
and unbecomingly dressed ex-seamstress were deleted by Wilde who came to substitute for
mere sobriety what fashion historian Anne Hollander has called ‘conspicuously consumed
emotional black’”24 According to Kaplan and Stowell the result was that the dress
“incorporated a smart eroticism.” One might conclude from this that Wilde seems to point out
that although Mrs Arbuthnot tries to repress her sexuality, her outward appearance suggest
that she does not succeed entirely in doing so.
Eltis points out that “Mrs Arbuthnot takes on the role of wronged innocent, thereby seeking to
place the entire burden of responsibility upon Lord Illingworth and to keep Gerald for
herself.”25 When Lord Illingworth says that he wants to have his son with him, Mrs Arbuthnot
asks him: “[a]re you talking of the child you abandoned? Of the child who, as far as you are
concerned, might have died of hunger and want?” Lord Illingworth, however, reminds Mrs
Arbuthnot that she left him and that his mother offered her six hundred a year. Lord
Illingworth tries to persuade Mrs Arbuthnot to have Gerald accept his offer by telling her that
he considers “Gerald’s future considerably more important than your past.”26 However, Mrs
Arbuthnot wants sole possession of her son and puts her own desires before the wishes of her
child. Eltis points out that Mrs Arbuthnot “rejects the standard association of maternity and
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
43
self-sacrifice.”27 It must also be noted, however, that aside from her possessiveness, she is
also afraid of Lord Illingworth’s influence and not without reason: he does put her in a bad
light. Although he calls Mrs Arbuthnot a “thoroughly good woman,” he tells Gerald that
“good women have such limited views of life, their horizon is so small, their interests are so
petty, aren’t they?”28 After Lord Illingworth’s speech Gerald considers his mother now to be
annoyingly unworldly and tells her that “[y]ou have been wrong in all that you taught me,
mother, quite wrong. Lord Illingworth is a successful man. He is a fashionable man. He is a
man who lives in the world and for it. Well, I would give anything to be just like Lord
Illingworth.”29 Indeed, Gerald proves to be influenced swiftly by Lord Illingworth. Mrs
Arbuthnot cannot explain to Gerald her reasons for not wanting him to take up the position
offered by Lord Illingworth by telling the truth, because she knows that he will condemn her
for it. Lord Illingworth warns Mrs Arbuthnot that “[y]ou have educated him to be your judge
if he ever finds you out.”30 Gerald does indeed judge her after she has told her story in the
third person: “I dare say that the girl was just as much to blame as Lord Illingworth was. –
after all, would a really nice girl, a girl with any nice feelings at all, go away from her home
with a man to whom she was not married, and live with him as his wife? No nice girl would.”
After this, Mrs Arbuthnot accepts that her son will go away with Lord Illingworth. In the last
act, however, the tables are turned; Mrs Arbuthnot finds herself in a strong subject position,
whereas Lord Illingworth is dismissed as an outsider. She triumphs in the end by winning her
son back and refusing Lord Illingworth’s proposal. The situation is completely reversed: he is
the Other now. This is even further emphasised when she refers to him as “a man of no
importance.”
An interesting view on A Woman of No Importance is offered by Nassaar. He claims that
“[t]he main theme of A Woman of No Importance is that, despite apparent differences, human
beings are basically alike – that is, totally corrupt.”31 According to Nassaar, the essential
similarity among human beings is indicated in the following conversation:
Lady Hunstanton What did Sir John talk to you about, dear Mrs Allonby?
Mrs Allonby About Patagonia.
Lady Hunstanton Really? What a remote topic! But very improving I have no doubt.
Mrs Allonby He has been very interesting on the subject of Patagonia. Savages seem to have quite the
same views as cultured people on almost all subjects. They are excessively advanced.
Lady Hunstanton What do they do?
Mrs Allonby Apparently everything.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
44
Lady Hunstanton Well it is very gratifying, dear Archdeacon, is it not, to find that Human Nature is
permanently one. – On the whole, the world is the same world is it not?
Nassaar further explains that
The sexual practices of the Patagonian savages were far from what the Victorians would have
considered proper. Mrs Allonby …says that they do “apparently everything,” and finds them very close
to cultured people. Lady Hunstanton, without understanding her, is gratified “that Human Nature is
permanently one” and amusingly expresses her gratification to none other than the archdeacon. The
main theme of A Woman of No Importance is that lust, in its hundred different manifestations, is the
hallmark of human nature, the one thread that binds them together. 32
For a large part I agree with Nassaar’s point of view. However, I think that Wilde accepts lust
to be a part of human nature and does not consider this particular characteristic as corrupt.
Wilde seems to point out that the laws trying to inhibit sexual behaviour make people behave
corruptly.
In A Woman of No Importance, Wilde also presents his views on marriage, which seem to be
interwoven with his point about the futility of attempting to inhibit people’s sexuality. Peter
Raby suggests that
Wilde’s ironic commentary on the ideals of married life is conveyed adroitly by the pattern of
relationships: Lady Caroline is the only woman we see with her husband. Not only is he her fourth, but
he is forever pursuing other women. Mrs Allonby has an absent husband; the other women are widowed
or unmarried, while the off-stage wife of the Archdeacon is a chronic invalid and ‘happiest alone.’ 33
Furthermore, Wilde uses his dandies as mouthpieces to voice his views on marriage. First of
all, Lord Illingworth educates Gerald about marriage; in answer to Gerald’s question whether
Lord Illingworth was ever married, he tells him that “[m]en marry because they are tired;
women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.”34 Gerald wants to know if “one can
be happy when one is married.” Lord Illingworth answers that “the happiness of a married
man, my dear Gerald, depends on the people he has not married.”35 This answer seems to
imply that the happiness of a marriage depends on extramarital affairs. Finally, Gerald
enquires: “but if one is in love?” The dandy tells him that “one should always be in love. That
is the reason one should never marry.” Lord Illingworth’s answer indicates that love is
impossible within the institution of marriage. This bleak view of marriage is also a recurrent
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
45
theme in New Woman novels. The marriage question was central to the New Woman debate.
Several New Woman novelists commented on marriage as an unsatisfactory aspect of life. As
Mona Caird has put it: “as if any two people, when they are beginning to form their
characters, could possibly be sure of their sentiments for the rest of their days.”36 Cunningham
points out that New Woman writers dissected “the whole structure of marriage as a way of
regulating sexual relationships.”37 One novelist claimed: “I think very few would be married
if it were not for the flattery and triumph and the fuss of the wedding-day, and if there were
anything else to do.”38 Cunningham also points out that “the inevitable sexual sacrifice was
one of the commonest causes of complaint.” One of George Egerton’s protagonists asserts
that “man demands from a wife as a right, what he must sue from a mistress as a favour, until
marriage becomes for many women a legal prostitution, a nightly degradation.”39 This point is
also taken up by Wilde, who has Mrs Allonby say: “Ah, my husband is a sort of promissory
note; I am tired of meeting him.”40 Raby explains that a promissory note is “a legal document
which obliges someone to pay a sum of money on a stated day,” but he also suggests that it
could be “a suppressed reference to sexual obligation.”41 Wilde is even quite directly polemic
in his views on marriage in the women’s discussion about husbands. When Mrs Allonby is
asked what her “conception of the Ideal Husband” is, she responds “[t]he Ideal Husband?
There couldn’t be such a thing. The institution is wrong.”42 By having both his male and
female dandy display negative views on marriage, Wilde suggests that marriage is an
unsatisfactory institution for both sexes.
Finally, as pointed out by several critics, Wilde clearly links A Woman of No Importance to
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. This is for example emphasised by the fact that the puritan
Hester bears the same name as the protagonist of the novel, and comes from Boston, the
centre of Puritan tradition. Another intertextual reference is the fact that the illegitimate child
in The Scarlet Letter is called Pearl and Mrs Arbuthnot refers to Gerald as “the pearl of
price.”43 Eltis comments on this link as follows:
The Scarlet Letter portrays precisely the moral community that Hester Worsley recommends: the father
and the illegitimate child are condemned along with the errant woman, and the result is shown by
Hawthorne to be that man, woman, and child are all destroyed by the burden of guilt – suffering which
Hawthorne suggests is essentially unnecessary. 44
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
46
The link between Hawthorne’s novel and Wilde’s play, then, seems to underline the fact that
people should not be judged if they act upon their instinct.
Conclusion
Many of Wilde’s contemporaries accepted A Woman of No Importance as a conventional
play. One reviewer remarked that the play disappointed him, because “the story… has been
often told before.”45 After a closer look, however, the play seems to offer an interesting
insight into Wilde’s thoughts on the Woman Question. As Wilde himself indicated, the
audience should look beyond the plot to fully understand A Woman of No Importance.
The reviewer for the Illustrated London News called Wilde’s play a thesis “on behalf of the
‘women’s revolt.’”46 In a sense this is true, though not in the way it appears to be on the
surface. Wilde does indeed draw attention to the double sexual standard, illustrating the
injustice of Mrs Arbuthnot’s outsider position. Furthermore, he pointed out the hypocrisy of
these Victorian values. As Gagnier indicates: “[a]lthough Mrs Arbuthnot’s was the acceptable
moral code, Illingworth’s practicality was much closer to the audience’s own practice.”47
What is more, Mrs Arbuthnot and Hester triumph over Lord Illingworth; in the end he is the
one that is being punished. So the problem of the double morality is resolved in the way the
purity strand of New Woman proposed: not only the woman has paid her dues, the man has to
suffer too. However, the fact that Lord Illingworth is never to see his son again is a harsh
punishment; the seemingly happy ending is actually a rather bleak one, and does not at all
convey Wilde’s message of forgiveness that we found in the previously discussed play Lady
Windermere’s Fan.
Although Wilde agreed on the injustice of the double standard, to him puritan values were not
the answer. With the tragic ending, emphasized by the connection to The Scarlet Letter,
Wilde conveys not the message that both men and women should be punished, but that both
should be forgiven. He wanted sexual equality, but opposed the solution of the puritan
feminists; it leads to unnecessary suffering and is also unrealistic. Wilde tries to point out in A
Woman of No Importance that sexuality is an inevitable part of human nature. There is no
point in penalising people for acting upon it. He wanted his audience to reconsider the code,
rather than punish the offender. In A Woman of No Importance, then, it is not only the double
standard Wilde attacks, but all laws that try to inhibit human nature.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
47
Notes
1
Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987), 355.
Ellmann, 359.
3
Sos Eltis, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the plays of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), 96.
4
Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), 99.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid., 100.
7
Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 112.
8
Emma Frances Brooke, A Superfluous Woman. Quoted in: Cunningham, 69.
9
A Woman of No Importance, 120.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., 139.
13
A Woman of No Importance, 103.
14
Worth, 102.
15
Sydney Grundy, The New Woman (London, 1894), 27. Quoted in: Gail Cunningham, The New Woman and the
Victorian Novel (London: Macmillan, 1978), 51.
16
Eltis, 125.
17
Eltis, 127.
18
A Woman of No Importance, 112.
19
Ibid., 120.
20
A Woman of No Importance, 121.
21
A Woman of No Importance, 150.
22
Eltis, 94.
23
Kaplan and Stowell, 25.
24
Ibid.
25
Eltis, 116.
26
A Woman of No Importance, 127.
27
Eltis, 106.
28
Ibid., 132.
29
A Woman of No Importance, 141.
30
Ibid., 128.
31
Christopher Nassaar, Into the Demon Universe: A Literary Exploration of Oscar Wilde (New Haven: Yale UP,
1974), 110.
32
Nassaar, 110-11.
33
Peter Raby, Notes to A Woman of No Importance, 336-7.
34
A Woman of No Importance, 133.
35
Ibid., 133.
36
Mona Caird, The Daughters of Denaus. Quoted in: Cunningham, 48
37
Cunningham, 33.
38
Emma Frances Brooke, A Superfluous Woman. Quoted in: Cunningham, 48.
39
George Egerton, Discords. Quoted in: Cunningham, 48.
40
A Woman of No Importance, 114.
41
Raby, 336.
42
Ibid., 116.
43
A Woman of No Importance, 149.
44
Eltis, 121.
45
Unsigned review, Westminster Review (June 1893). Quoted in: Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage, ed. Karl
Beckson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 160.
46
Quoted in: Katherine Worth, Oscar Wilde (London: The Macmillan Press, 1983), 124.
47
Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Stanford: Stanford UP,
1986),125.
2
5
An Ideal Husband
“The Ideal Husband? There couldn’t be such a thing.” 1
The existence of an ideal husband was already questioned by Mrs Allonby in A Woman of No
Importance. With this concept, Wilde concerns himself again, and more centrally, in An Ideal
Husband. Again, Wilde challenged the ideals of marriage and relations between the sexes.
However, in this play Wilde not only focuses on issues of private morality, but also examines
the dangers of ideals in public life. In addition, contrasting to Wilde’s previous plays, the
guilty secret is centred upon the male protagonist.
The central character of An Ideal Husband is the Puritan woman Lady Chiltern. In the
beginning of the play she is a naïve idealist who is convinced that her husband “is as
incapable of doing a foolish as he is of doing a wrong thing.”2 After she finds out that her
husband is not as perfect as she imagined him to be, she is shocked and wants him to turn
down the Cabinet position he has been offered. Lord Goring does not want Lady Chiltern to
ruin her husband’s career and lectures her on the importance of forgiveness:
Women are not meant to judge us, but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment
is their mission… A man’s life is of more value that a woman’s. It has larger issues, wider scope,
greater ambitions. A woman’s life revolves in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a
man’s life progress. Don’t make a terrible mistake, Lady Chiltern. A woman who can keep a man’s
love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them. 3
That An Ideal Husband is considered anti-feminist, is mainly the result of this speech. Some
critics consider Lord Goring’s words as Wilde’s own view. According to Nassaar’s
biographical explanation, for example, the speech is a reflection of Wilde’s own marriage:
Lady Chiltern’s development probably reflects Wilde’s wish that his wife Constance would develop in
the same direction... The misogyny would then, perhaps, reflect his irritation with Constance for
remaining innocent and unaware of the dark side of life. 4
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
49
Worth sees Lord Goring’s speech as “Wilde’s own philosophy, of moderation and charity …
though one must say, in regrettably chauvinistic terms.”5 She does, however, excuse the
speech by claiming that “it is the right sort of sermon for Lady Chiltern,” because “[s]he is not
a subtle person.”6 According to Worth, then, these words were necessary to make Lady
Chiltern realise that she “set him up too high.” Powell, however, takes the speech as the
keynote and interprets the play as a rejection of feminists’ demands for greater male purity,
and therefore as a reversal of Wilde’s previous sympathy with women’s developing role.
According to Powell, Wilde wants to foreclose “collaboration between the political and the
domestic – male and female.”7 He explains that:
To defend his politician against radical demands for male purity, Wilde recultivated an eroding sexual
stereotype of the Victorian era – that women are intellectually the inferiors of men, but well-suited for
homelike virtues of mercy and love.8
Powell suggests that in order to protect men from purity, Wilde wanted to remind feminist
reformers like Lady Chiltern that women have their own place. He calls attention to the fact
that it is improbable in the context of the time that Lady Chiltern would be quickly persuaded
to discard a key element of her feminism – the insistence on male purity. Powell claims that
“instead of converting the lapsed husband into an ideal of the man – a usual outcome in plays
of this type – Wilde turns the tables and unconverts the wife just before the curtain drops.”9
The fact that she renounces her principles and tears up the letter of resignation leads Powell to
call this “an awkward and unconvincing scene.”10 According to him, An Ideal Husband
“seeks to dismantle and to preserve the double standard as it applies to women.”11 Powell
indicates that the idea of empowering women politically and so bringing the family ideal into
politics no longer attracts Wilde; “it is what he fears rather than hopes.”12 Powell claims that
To stop the feminisation of man, he is prepared to embrace the Victorian ideal of women as creatures of
vast feeling, but scant intellect, properly confined to the domestic sphere and the expression of that
womanly love which bonds marriage and families. 13
Lord Goring’s speech leads Bristow, too, to the conclusion that An Ideal Husband is
enmeshed in the system of value it tries to subvert.14
Eltis, however, believes that An Ideal Husband is as radical as Wilde’s other writings. She
indicates that Lord Goring’s words are often taken to be Wilde’s own, because Lord Goring is
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
50
viewed as his most perfect dandy However, Eltis claims that a tracing of the character’s
development reveals him to be less omniscient than he appears to be in the final version. Eltis
explains that “[i]n the first manuscript version there is scarcely a hint of his dandyesque
wit.”15 The first Lord Goring is an entirely conventional man, whose “witticisms are a light
disguise for his thoroughly traditional morality.”16 He deliberately tempts Lady Chiltern into
sin and when she falls, delivers a speech in which he divides women into good and bad. In
addition, “he treats Mabel like a child, sending her out of the room and protecting her from
any harmful knowledge of the world.”17 In subsequent drafts he transforms from an older
conventional man into the dandy of the final version. However, Eltis indicates that “his role as
wise and witty commentator is undermined by constant challenges from his manservant, his
father, and his fiancée.”18
Another indication which seems to suggest that Lord Goring’s words reflect Wilde’s own
point of view, is the stage direction, describing him as “the philosopher that underlies the
dandy.”19 However, Eltis remarks that this comment was added in the published version of An
Ideal Husband, which appeared after the scandal and his release from prison. She points out
that “these stage directions were only added to the very final draft of An Ideal Husband when
he was preparing it for publication in 1898-9. This grooming of the dandy as an infallible
figure may thus have been an attempt by Wilde, destitute and shunned, to present the
impeccable dandy as an idealised version of himself before the fall.”20 Eltis, then, also
explains the speech biographically: she points out that
in the intervening years after his trial, Wilde found himself financially dependent on the forgiveness of
his wife. The validation which the stage directions give to Lord Goring’s speech could be the result of
bitter personal experience breeding the wish for a perfect and unconditionally charitable wife. 21
The point, then, is not to consider the play as misogynistic on the basis of Lord Goring’s
speech. Eltis concludes that
The development of Goring’s character and the care that Wilde takes in preventing him from reigning
as an unchallenged wit in the play, however, suggests that he is not necessarily taken as Wilde’s own
representative, nor is his word gospel.22
Lord Goring does, however, teach Lady Chiltern the importance of forgiveness and she
abandons her demand for perfection. However, Lady Chiltern is not the only one idolising her
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
51
partner; Sir Robert’s definition of feminine love as idol-worship based on uncompromising
absolutes comes to be seen in a different, ironic light when he himself starts idealising his
wife. He cannot possibly imagine that his innocent wife would go astray. When Lady Chiltern
confesses that she was afraid to tell him the truth about the letter, she replies: “What! Had I
fallen so low in your eyes that you thought that even for a moment I could have doubted your
goodness? Gertrude, Gertrude, you are to me the white image of all good things, and sin can
never touch you.”23 This speech Sir Robert delivers on his wife’s perfection has an ironic
undertone, not because his wife is less perfect than he imagines, but because he himself
describes her as such. Sir Robert is making an idol of his wife, an action he attributed
exclusively to women in his earlier denunciation of Gertrude Chiltern’s idealistic morality:
“Why can’t you women love us faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous
pedestals?”24 Male love, which is “wider, larger, more human than a woman’s, ”25 according
to Lord Chiltern, seems to be based on illusions of perfection just as much as his wife’s love.
An interesting aspect of Mrs Chevely’s character, the female dandy of the play, is that she is
not at all interested in fulfilling the ideal of the pure innocent woman. She works in Vienna
and is in London to blackmail Lord Chiltern so he will pass the canal scheme. She is an
associate of Baron Arnheim, the man who Lord Chiltern once sold a cabinet secret to, but she
is also Lord Goring’s former fiancé and an old enemy of Lady Chiltern’s from their
schooldays. When Lady Markby asks Lady Chiltern if Lord Chiltern is as devoted as her own
husband to government reports, the so-called Blue Books, Mrs Chevely asserts “I have never
read a Blue Book. I prefer books… in yellow covers.”26 These are French novels, which were
known for their sexually explicit contents. Her attitude indicates that she is impervious to
scandal. This also becomes clear when Lord Chiltern wants to “fight her with her weapons”27
and decides to “send a cipher telegram to the Embassy at Vienna, to enquire if there is
anything known against her.”28 Lord Chiltern thinks he will find a “secret scandal she might
be afraid of,”29 because he considers her to look “like a woman with a past.”30 Lord Goring,
however, recognizes that it is impossible to use the concept of a “fallen woman” against her.
He informs Lord Chiltern
Oh, I should fancy Mrs Chevely is one of those very modern women of our time who find a new
scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the park every afternoon at five-thirty. I am
sure she adores scandals, and that the sorrow of her life at present is that she can’t manage to have
enough of them.31
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
52
Dellamora, however, indicates that although Mrs Chevely is indifferent to the ideals of purity,
she is incapable of realizing her plans without men:
In contrast to Lady Chiltern, Mrs Chevely’s pursuit of individuality is unabashed. This quest, however,
is compromised by the fact that she accepts without question the values – wealth, social notoriety,
sexual success – of the demimonde. Moreover, she continues to be subject to the same limitation that
attends other women in the play, all of whom achieve their goals only through roles as wives or
mistresses.32
However, when compared to contemporary plays, Mrs Chevely is an unconventional female
character. Eltis suggests that the character of Mrs Chevely is partly based on the Countess
Zicka in Sardou’s Dora. She points out that
[b]oth have as mentor a corrupt baron…yet, while Zicka is a prostitute rescued from the gutter by her
baron and subsequently employed as his minion, Mrs Chevely is clearly an independent operator, who
found in Arnheim an associate, not a master. 33
Yet Mrs Chevely does need a man to enter London society. She seems to consider a marriage
to Lord Goring as a possibility to re-establish herself in society. She introduces her proposal
as follows:
I am tired of living abroad. I want to come back to London. I want to have a charming house here. I
want to have a salon… Besides, I have arrived at the romantic stage. When I saw you last night at the
Chilterns’, I knew you were the only person I had ever cared for, if I ever have cared for anybody,
Arthur. And so, on the morning of the day you marry me, I will give you Robert Chiltern’s letter. That
is my offer. I will give it to you now, if you promise to marry me. 34
This speech is also an indication of Mrs Chevely’s thoughts on love. The fact that Lord
Goring means something to her comes second in her speech. For her, marriage is just a means
to an end. As Mrs Chevely herself indicates, “[r]omance should never begin with sentiment. It
should begin with science and end with a settlement.”35
Mrs Chevely plays an important part in An Ideal Husband, not only because her actions
instigate processes of psychological change in Lady Chiltern and her husband, but also
because she attacks the hypocrisy of society. As Worth points out,
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
53
[Ii]t is the first time on Wilde’s stage that a powerful Establishment male figure has been confronted by
so formidable and ruthless an adversary. Wilde cannot have liked her (anymore than we do) but he must
surely have found satisfaction in letting her loose on the hypocritical self-righteousness of the “pillars of
society.”36
Although Mrs Chevely is not a sympathetic character, her cynical views are often right. She
explains to Lord Chiltern how Puritanism can only lead to hypocrisy:
In old days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbours. In fact, to be a bit better than one’s
neighbour was considered excessively vulgar and middle-class. Nowadays, with our modern mania for
morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly
virtues – and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins one after the other.37
In addition, Mrs Chevely tells Lord Chiltern that their morality is more alike than he would
like to admit. When Lord Chiltern tries to excuse his behaviour in the past, Mrs Chevely
answers, “It was a swindle, Sir Robert. Let us call things by their proper names. It makes
everything simpler.”38 With this speech she turns his words back to him and presents him as a
mirror image of herself. She also tells Lady Chiltern that “[i]n this world like meets with like.
It is because your husband is himself fraudulent and dishonest that we pair so well
together.”39 However, for a moment she loses her beauty and her wit. When Lord Goring
traps her with the brooch/bracelet she once stole, she is unable to keep up her dandy mask. In
the stage directions Wilde describes Mrs Chevely as “in an agony of physical terror. Her face
is distorted. Her mouth awry. A mask has fallen from her. She is, for the moment, dreadful to
look at.”
Although Mrs Chevely has pointed out to Lady Chiltern about her husband that “the same sin
binds us,”40 she is the only one punished for it. Gagnier points out that
the audience took the sentimental view of the play: that Mrs Chevely was rightly exposed and that
Lady Chiltern rightly forgave her husband and encouraged him to accept the Cabinet position with a
clear conscience. Whereas women were wrong to go to any lengths for money and power, politicians
were right to do so.41
Yet although they did commit the same crime, their characters differ in one important respect:
Mrs Chevely did not only break the law, but she also intentionally wants to hurt people.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
54
Whereas Lord Chiltern decides not to give in to Mrs Chevely’s blackmail out of love for his
wife and rejects the canal scheme without knowing whether the incriminating letter has been
destroyed, Mrs Chevely, on the other hand, wants to ruin Lord Chiltern’s marriage, because
her plan to blackmail him failed. As Eltis points out
a distinction is here introduced between the statesman and the adventuress: Mrs Chevely is condemned
not for breaking the law, but for her malice…Sir Robert is no more scrupulous than she is, but he is
saved because he has a heart.42
Although her character functions merely as the Other who enables the psychological
development of the central character and undergoes no development herself, she is displayed
as a clever, self-sufficient woman, who is indifferent to female virtues of self-sacrifice and
purity and sees through the hypocrisy of society.
The final female character of importance to the message An Ideal Husband wants to convey is
Lord Chiltern’s sister Mabel. She turns conventional behaviour and morality on its head, even
literally so in a tableau which represents The Triumph of Love. This is particularly noticeable
in her contact with Lord Goring. She even tells Lord Goring: “Well, I delight in your bad
qualities. I wouldn’t have you part with one of them.”43 She is not afraid to show her feelings
for Lord Goring and does not wait passively until Lord Goring makes the first move. She
playfully scorns him for not following her to supper: “Pursuit would only have been polite.”44
When he asserts that he likes her “immensely” she informs him: “Well, I wish you’d show it
in a more marked way!”45 In addition, she takes the initiative in the marriage proposal. When
Lord Goring lets Mabel know that he wants to ask her something she is quick to respond with:
“Oh, is it a proposal?”46 Mabel and Lord Goring represent the kind of love that should
triumph, the kind that takes weakness into account. As Worth indicates: “[w]e may see this
couple as embodying Wilde’s idea on how to live for the best.”47 When Lord Caversham
instructs his son to make Mabel an ideal husband, she exclaims “An ideal husband! Oh, I
don’t think I should like that. It sounds like something in the next world.”48 Goring is to be
what he wants while Mabel would only be a “real wife.”49 In this sense, Mabel and Goring
playfully reject Victorian morals, unconcerned with the question of what a man and a wife
should be ideally.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
55
Conclusion
An Ideal Husband seems to be the most ambiguous play in Wilde’s oeuvre with respect to
women’s roles. The traditional gender ideology proclaimed by Lord Goring contrasts with
Wilde’s other writings. The message of the play seems to be that men are more important
members of society than women. As Eltis pointed out, however, Goring’s words should not
be taken to be Wilde’s own. In earlier manuscript versions he proves to be a conventional
man who upholds the dichotomy of the two kinds of women and acts in a superior manner
toward Mabel. Although in the final version Lord Goring is a more likeable dandy, he still
retained some of his conventional characteristics. Besides, his wit is constantly challenged by
several other characters in the play, which undermines his role as wise commentator.
An Ideal Husband discusses the Victorian demand for absolute purity, which was often a
façade covering up a double standard. The puritan feminists challenged the traditional rule
that only women should attain a pure standard of morality. Lady Chiltern’s demand that her
husband ought to be “pure” and “unstained,” seems to be a reflection upon the puritan side of
New Womanism. Wilde shows that these ideals of purity are unrealistic and therefore a cause
for marital unhappiness. As the Duchess of Berwick proclaimed in Lady Windermere’s Fan:
“Men become old, but they never become good.”50 The arguments against purity on a political
level, then, enforce Wilde’s thoughts on ideals and seem to be a displaced protest against
ethical restraints upon men in the private sphere.
Instead of a marriage based on false illusions, Wilde proposes to free women from the
expectation of angelic purity. To enforce this point, he used Mabel as a foil to Lady Chiltern;
she is a witty and self-assured woman with a much more realistic view of marriage: Mabel not
only accepts Lord Goring’s faults, but even admires his flaws. In this respect, their
relationship presents an inversed image of the Chiltern household. In his last society comedy,
Wilde expresses the view that an ideal husband is a phenomenon whose very existence may
be doubted and who, even if obtainable, is hardly desirable. According to Lady Marchmont,
to have an ideal husband is an absolute bore, “My Reginald is quite hopelessly faultless. He is
really endurably so, at times! There’s not the smallest element of excitement in knowing
him.”51
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
56
Notes
1
Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), 116.
2
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1998), 199.
3
Ibid., 241-42.
4
Christopher Nassaar, Into the Demon Universe: A Literary Exploration of Oscar Wilde (New Haven: Yale UP,
1974), 129.
5
Katherine Worth, Oscar Wilde (London: The Macmillan Press, 1983), 148.
6
Ibid., 148.
7
Kerry Powell, Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s ( Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990), 99.
8
Powell, 101.
9
Ibid., 106.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., 106-7.
14
Joseph Bristow, “Dowdies and Dandies: Oscar Wilde’s Refashioning of Society Comedy,” Modern Drama
37:1 (1994): 66.
15
Sos Eltis, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the plays of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996),
161.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 162.
19
An Ideal Husband, 241.
20
Eltis, 162.
21
Ibid., 162-3.
22
Ibid., 163.
23
An Ideal Husband, 244.
24
Ibid., 211.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid., 206.
27
Ibid., 197.
28
Ibid., 196.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., 197.
31
Ibid., 196.
32
Richard Dellamora, “Oscar Wilde, Social Purity, and An Ideal Husband,” Modern Drama 37:1 (1994): 129.
33
Eltis, 153.
34
An Ideal Husband, 224 - 225.
35
Ibid., 217.
36
Ibid., 133.
37
Ibid., 180.
38
Ibid., 179.
39
Ibid., 209.
40
Ibid.
41
Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Stanford: Stanford UP,
1986), 130.
42
Eltis, 141.
43
An Ideal Husband, 172.
44
Ibid., 176.
45
Ibid., 176.
46
Ibid., 235.
47
Worth, 149.
48
An Ideal Husband, 245.
49
Ibid.
50
Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby (Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1998), 15.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
51
Ibid., 174.
57
Conclusion
“A misanthrope I can understand – a womanthrope, never!”1
In Wilde’s own time, he was accused of having invented the New Woman himself; as one
contemporary critic has put it: “The new criticism, the new poetry, even the new woman, are
all, more or less, the creatures of Mr Oscar Wilde’s fancy.”2 However, although the dandy
and some of the feminist writers, who could be considered New Women, were repeatedly
linked in the periodical press of the 1890s, they did not consider themselves to be natural
allies. In fact, there was considerable antagonism between these two radical groups. Wilde,
too, seems to have had problems with the New Woman, some of which are figured in his
plays. Yet, Wilde does show sympathy with the aims of feminism and seems to stress the
possibility for a collaboration with the New Woman.
Wilde demonstrated in Salomé that a representation of a femme fatale need not indicate a
misogynistic discourse. He used the myth in an innovative manner: by reversing the typical
femme fatale plot, he exposed the double sexual standard of Victorian society. So Wilde
simultaneously defied the predominant ideology which insisted that women had little sexual
feeling at all, and showed the repression of female sexuality. Although Salomé commits a
murder, it is impossible to categorise her simply as an evil woman; she goes through a
development, realising, in the end, the value of love. In addition, Wilde’s sympathy for his
character Salomé is also shown in his portrayal of her as an intelligent woman, who is able to
use her position as sex object to her advantage. His play, then, seems to have less in common
with the decadent writers who used the stereotypical femme fatale as an antagonistic reaction
against the New Woman, than with the radical New Woman writers who integrated their
exploration of female sexuality with feminist themes.
Lady Windermere’s Fan offers a sympathetic approach to the fallen woman. In contemporary
plays, the fallen woman was a stain on society and had to be punished, either by intolerable
pangs of conscience or by death – preferably both. Even dramatists who took the rather
advanced line in these kinds of plays and portrayed the woman as victim, could not dispense
with final retribution. Wilde, however, portrays Mrs Erlynne as a woman who is not
interested in repentance at all; she even exploits her position as fallen woman to blackmail her
CONCLUSION
59
son in law and still manages to have the audience sympathize with her. Lady Windermere
represents the ideas of the purity school of New Women and defines the categories of good
and bad with respect to sexual ethics. However, she learns to renounce her simplistic rules by
realizing that all people, including herself, are capable of transgressing the boundaries. In this
play, then, Wilde shows the inadequacy of the two categories of women. Even more radical in
Lady Windermere’s Fan is Wilde’s rejection of the view that women have a special vocation
as mothers. Although Wilde denounces the puritan views of nineteenth-century feminism, he
is sympathetic toward the aims of the neurotic school of New Women.
In A Woman of No Importance Wilde again concerns himself with the double moral standard.
While Lord Illingworth enjoys himself at society parties, Mrs Arbuthnot feels that she does
not belong there. Wilde also portrays a New Woman of the puritan strand, Hester, who is
appalled by the injustice of the double standard and wants to abolish it by having men
punished in the same way as women are. Although Hester forgives Mrs Arbuthnot, Lord
Illingworth is banned from their lives and will never see his son again. So victory is for the
women of the play, but the seemingly happy ending of the play is overshadowed by the rather
harsh punishment for the man. This ending suggests that punishment for both sexes may not
be the solution after all. In A Woman of No Importance, Wilde indicates that restraints upon
human behaviour are ineffective and an unnecessary cause for unhappiness. Like the New
Women, Wilde argues for an abolishment of the double standard but proposes another
solution: a loosening of sexual restraints for both sexes.
An Ideal Husband, finally, also focuses on a New Woman of the purity school, Lady Chiltern.
She learns the importance of forgiveness and gives up her demand for ideals, which will
increase her marital happiness. Wilde, however, also presents another emancipated woman,
Mabel. She does not act according to the Victorian conventions and is not interested in purity
or ideals. Most likely, her marriage to the dandy Goring will succeed, because of their
realistic attitude toward each other. Their union is exemplary of what a relationship be like,
according to Wilde.
By considering the historical discourses, it becomes clear that Wilde’s plays relate to a large
contemporary discussion, the Woman Question. In my study of the representation of Wilde’s
female characters, it has become apparent that he was responding to fin de siècle feminist
thinking. He criticised the conservative strand of New Women for their demand for purity
CONCLUSION
60
which is at the expense of their individuality. Instead of rejecting the stereotyped womanly
virtues of chastity and maternal love, they sought to foist these same values on men. The
purity school was less concerned with female sexuality than with male sexuality. Applying
the same high standard to men was, according to Wilde, not a realistic solution. As one of
Wilde’s dandies has put it: “what on earth should we men do going about with purity and
innocence?”3
Wilde’s denouncement of the ideals of the purity school of the New Woman seems to be the
cause for the perceived misogyny in his work. Wilde’s plays, however, have points of contact
with the more radical feminist writing of the time. Like the neurotic school of New Women,
Wilde rejected the ideological construction of female purity and portrayed women who were
an antithesis to the Victorian feminine ideal. His plays reveal the inadequacy of conventional
assumptions about women by undermining stereotyped notions of feminine roles. Wilde does
not portray women simply as victims of social and sexual conventions, but portrays female
characters who are able to turn their marginal positions into strong subject positions. In this
sense, Wilde’s representation of women deviates from the normative constructions of women
that were produced by hegemonic discourses and social practices. Wilde’s plays show his
interest in feminist themes: he explicitly condemns the double standard, explores female
sexual desire and questions gender roles. In addition, he sympathetically represents distinctly
emancipated women in his plays. In this respect, his plays can be considered as a challenging
feminist critique of Victorian sexual ideology.
CONCLUSION
Notes
1
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, in: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed.
Peter Raby (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), 276.
2
The Speaker, 1895. Quoted in: Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the fin de siècle
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 94.
3
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), 44.
61
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