Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband

Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband

Oscar Wilde (1845-1903) lived an outrageous and controversial life

which was well publicized and condemned, as his life defied the strict

social mores of the time. He was put into this public position due to

the success of his plays which challenged Victorian earnestness while

being hilariously funny. His plays, in particular An Ideal Husband,

1895 portray Victorian society as viciously hypocritical at it's worst

and laughably pretentious at it's best. Wilde expressed this point of

view in An Ideal Husband through the rich use of plot development,

construction of characters, dramatic irony, hyperbole, witty and

epigrammatic repartee and satire.

The central plot of An Ideal Husband begins with the antagonist, Mrs

Chevely, tries to blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern (one of the

protagonists) with a secret from his past. She has with her an

incriminating letter which proves Robert's involvement in insider

trading in the Suez Canal Scheme, in order to benefit from an

investment. The Suez Canal Scheme was a very important scheme in the

recent history of the time. Wilde's plot of a a man going unpunished

for such a serious crime challenged the earnestness of the Victorian

people. This challenge and insult to earnestness is strongly

emphasised by the characterisation of robert chiltern.

Wilde adds insult to injury by constructing robert as being a very

lucky man in life. He is an attractive man who lives in Grosvenor

sqaure, (an upper class area) with his adoring wife. After finding out

the origin of this wealth, the audience is annoyed as they know (due

to the plays realistic style) that he aquired it all t...

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... and so far have only talked about

trivial things and "people don't talk politics." (hypocritical)

An ideal person is an earnest person, and ideals are another theme of

the play. Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon are two married ladies who,

while talking about their "hopelessly faultless" husbands expose

earnestness (an "admirable" quality) as 'unendurable' and

"tragic".These ladies, through dramatic irony, expose the earnestness

of searching for an ideal husband as laughably pretentious and

hypocritical. This is because many women at the time were searching

for an earnest husband to spend their lives with when there is, as

Mrs. Marchmont puts it "not the smallest element of excitement in

knowing him." Yet they keep searching for an earnest and ideal

husband. It is in these ways Wilde challenges Victorian earnestness.