An Ideal Husband AO3 + AO5 Flashcards
(48 cards)
1
Q
Mrs Cheveley
A
outsider in ‘well-made play’ due to her explicit honest and direct nature
2
Q
2018 Church adaptation
A
- play starts and ends with violin + dancing: cyclical due to forgiveness, lack of change
- Goring and Mabel’s bantering, flirtatious relationship immediately established
- Lady Chiltern stands in white light with crucifix behind her whilst Robert moves around in darker areas
- Robert speaks highly of Mrs Cheveley and only blames his wife
- both Chilterns cry after argument
- Mrs Cheveley is very passionate and less cool and controlled when speaking to Goring
- Goring appears quite earnest
- Robert appears very pained lying to his wife
3
Q
Victorian England
A
- strict moral code with rigid class system
- frequency of scandal for upper classes, these were usually covered up
- 1885 Crawford scandal: Lord Charles Dilke had an affair, his political career was ruined but scandal named after woman he tried to seduce (vilified, unequal)
- play dramatises clash between different systems of values
4
Q
Kaneda
A
Wilde ‘simultaneously supports and subverts the Victorian idealogy’
5
Q
use of letters
A
significant as Lord Alfred Douglas gave a suit to a friend who discovered a love letter from Wilde in its pocket
6
Q
1999 Parker production
A
- Robert can’t argue and speech cut as instantly banished from house
- Lady Chiltern confides in Mabel instead of Goring
- everyone calls to each other in opening scene
7
Q
stock ending and characters
A
- ‘happy ending’: pure and undying love
- Mabel is initially a stock character, innocent and ingenue which progresses into independence due to her wit and epigrammatic language
8
Q
Lady Chiltern
A
- Wilde revises her role as a Puritan wife
- the ‘ideal wife’
- lack of sympathy and remorse parallels God’s treatment in Paradise Lost
9
Q
New Woman
A
educated wife involved in women’s issues and supportive of husband’s political career
10
Q
Victorian melodrama
A
- Wilde uses ironically, subverting what it would accomplish through wit
- featured dark past secrets threatening seemingly stable characters and relationships
- Wilde altered by including the dandy
11
Q
1980 Prowser production
A
final line cut
12
Q
Spheres
A
Private: women
Public: men
13
Q
Varty
A
- ‘the wife is simply bought… transaction’
- ‘Wilde wants to bring about the idea of progressive morality as opposed to moral absolutism’
- ‘advocates for a more realistic philosophy’
- ‘uses the well-made play to provide reason for societal change instead of sticking to static ideals’
- ‘audience can question which way is Mrs Cheveley an outsider due to her many connections’
14
Q
Eltis
A
- ‘Goring relegates Lady Chiltern to a purely supportive role and all women to a purely domestic role’
- ‘the demand for absolute moral probity from both his wife and the wider British public leaves Sir Robert Chiltern open to blackmail’
- ‘it is ultimately love that separates Sir Robert Chiltern from his blackmailer’
- ‘The play reveals the dangers of excluding women from society’s realities’
15
Q
Sloan
A
‘Goring is an androgynous figure combining male and female qualitities’
16
Q
Hall
A
‘through the character of Lord Goring, Wilde expresses his tolerance’
17
Q
Comedy of Manners
A
dramatic genre: realistic, satirical and questions/comments upon manners + societal conventions/attitudes
18
Q
Wilde
A
- affair with Bosie
- homosexuality
- influences by aestheticians Pater and Ruskin during his youth
19
Q
Raisonneur
A
character that delivered morality (LG) and acts as writer’s mouthpiece
20
Q
Canals
A
Suez: 1861-69, Britain bought shares in 1875
Panama: 1881, abandoned in 1889 although ultimately successful
21
Q
Decadence and aestheticism, dandyism
A
- aestheticism: rebellion against mainstream Victorian materialism, morality, conformism and industrialism
- more concerned with self and pure pursuit of beauty and pleasure, ‘art for art’s sake’
- uncertain whether dandy should be viewed as moral figure
- Caversham’s distaste on Goring’s dandy lifestyle reflects societal disapproval of aestheticism
- alarmed traditionalist norms and values - threatened culture in society
22
Q
Becoming an MP
A
wealth required for a seat in parliament
23
Q
Symons
A
decadence in literature as a ‘new and beautiful and interesting disease’
24
Q
Bose
A
- ‘her (Mrs Cheveley’s) wrongdoing is obvious: she invades male power’
- ‘Chiltern is a slave to his wife’s ideals’
25
Wilde's parents
academic and strong, intellectual mother
26
Moore
- Goring and Mrs Cheveley have a 'somewhat flexible attitude to morality'
- 'Robert is a rebel working within the existing political framework'
- 'the ideal butler, an ironic counterpart to the ideal husband. a hollow man who functions only to serve his rich master'
27
women
- no vote or representation
- men still largely controlled women’s finances, although campaigning for universal suffrage had begun
- considered more moral than men
28
Canby
Lady Chiltern ‘is far more dangerous than the scheming Mrs Cheveley’
29
Meany
Lord Goring is ‘wearing just as many masks as Sir Robert’
30
Woodcock
- ‘Goring acts as Wilde’s personal voice’
- 'in a circle where all are guilty, Chiltern is able to escape without punishment'
31
Boucher’s artwork
Wilde publicly criticised it as ‘artificial’ and ‘shallow’
32
Lord Caversham
emblematic of Victorian traditions: in favour of marriage as a societal construction to uphold patriarchy
32
Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’ 1881
similar critique of idealism in society
33
Lady Windermere’s Fan 1893
‘ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better’
34
Szanter
through Mabel’s character Wilde ‘grappled with questions of the private versus the public self’
35
Fin de siècle 19th century
decadence, anxiety, social change, aestheticism, morality explored in literature
36
Lord Goring
- hedonistic, like Eve
- quintessential dandy
- ultimately the hero, so is Wilde being egotistical?
37
Schnitzer
- ‘sounds more like a seduction… the young, naive Chiltern was initiated into forbidden pleasures’
- ‘a plea for understanding’
38
Billington
'unmistakably an attack on late-Victorian values’ after seeing Posner 2010 production
39
Wareham
'Wilde sets up impossible ideals for both genders'
40
Danson
'Mabel is a New Woman posing as an ingenue'
41
Walkley
'Wilde is practically of the same mind as his audience, and gets his reward'
42
Kohl
the ideal husband as 'a sort of plaything at the mercy of his wife's every whim'
43
Nethercot
Mrs Cheveley is a 'villainess'
44
Wilde quotes
- 'man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth'
- 'selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live'
- 'the one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it'
45
farce
use of highly exaggerated and improbable events to create comedy e.g rooms in Goring's house
46
fallen women
- umbrella term for any woman who had sex out of marriage, with no equivalent term for men
- misogynistic and very vague, often featured in Victorian lit and politics
47
1969 Cartier adaptation
- Lord Goring breaks 4th wall in buttonhole scene as he looks straight at camera (mirror)
- Lady Chiltern turns her back on Robert after finding out his secret and won't even look at him
- Robert appears less angry at his wife and more upset/hurt
- Lord Goring smiles when he realises Mrs Cheveley is in his drawing room instead of Lady Chiltern
- Lord Goring kisses Mabel after she says real wife line, looks transfixed
- Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern agree that he will step away from politics: no Lord Caversham intervention
- no initial opposition from Sir Robert to Goring and Mabel marriage despite Robert seeing Mrs Cheveley as he thinks Goring was negotiating, Robert tells Goring he's sure he'll be 'an ideal husband' to Mabel
- ends after real wife line: no final lines about the Chilterns' love but all characters still seem happy at end
