'An Ideal Husband', by Oscar Wilde: Critical Interpretations

Question 1

Recall 4 critical interpretations relating to the play itself. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 1

• The conservative rendering of women in the play suggests a subservience to the conventionality that Wilde mocks elsewhere.’ - Sarika Bose
• ‘Deliciously absurd, morally serious, profoundly sentimental, and wickedly melodramatic, it is primarily a comedy of manners about political corruption, and love.’ - Barbara Belford
• ‘an open attack on the social system’ - George Woodcock
• ‘The sentimental plot resolution that Goring orchestrates seems a knowing test of the audience’s credulity: if we believe this, we will believe anything.’ - Helen Meany
• ‘a society bound by inflexible rules and social inhibitions’ - Roger Ebert (on the 1999 film version)
• ‘neither Wilde nor his audience cared a fig about the letter, the bribe, the blackmail or the romance. They were all just cogs in a complicated wind-up mechanism to keep several charming people onstage for three hours, and provide them with an excuse for saying witty things.’ - Roger Ebert
• ‘a play that advocates acceptance of a man’s imperfection’ - S. Cohen

Question 2

Recall 3 critical interpretations relating to Mabel Chiltern. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 2

• ‘Mabel is a new woman posing as an ingenue.’ - Lawrence Danson
• ‘Mabel seems more like a sweet childhood playmate than a lover.’ - Helen Meany
• ‘Mabel may speak the language of the Dandy but her naturalness remains unsullied’ - Sarika Bose
• ‘Mabel is the follower who attempts more to please [Lord Goring]’ - Yanting Zhang
• ‘Mabel seems to be the only female character with no flaw. She is innocent, lively, and brave for love. It seems that she is a role model the author sets for the female audience.’ - Yanting Zhang

Question 3

Recall 3 critical interpretations relating to Mrs Laura Cheveley. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 3

• ‘Mrs. Cheveley’s wrongdoing is obvious: she invades male power. It is noteworthy that she is not the only outsider in this social world but the only one utterly rejected.’ - Sarika Bose
• ‘an entire society is threatened by the willingness of one character to act as she should not.’ - Roger Ebert (on the 1999 film version)
• ‘her charm of manner attempt to conceal the decay of her morals’ - Sarika Bose
• ‘Mrs. Cheveley is intelligent and independent, but behaves viciously by framing others for her own benefits’ - Yanting Zhang
• ‘Mrs. Cheveley is classified into the type of “modern women” who are infamous in their behaviors’ - Yanting Zhang
• ‘the male characters hated her because they are also afraid of being defeated by women like her.’ - Yanting Zhang

Question 4

Recall 5 critical interpretations relating to Robert Chiltern. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 4

• ‘after yielding for a moment to save himself from exposure, he is rescued by his wife, who entreats him to be as ideal to the world as he has been to her.’ - The Liverpool Mercury Newspaper publication of January 5th 1895
• ‘The cynicism or optimism of the play’s ending depends entirely upon each audience member’s figuring of Sir Robert’s ‘inner’ character and his future relation to his humanised, educated, or silenced wife.’ - Sos Eltis
• ‘[Like Lord Goring, Sir Robert] is [a] rebel working within the existing political framework.’ - Jackie Moore
• ‘It may be a mistake to hold a man disabled by his past from doing service to the State; but this man is disabled by his present. The excellent Sir Robert proves himself one of those gentlemen who can be honest so long as it is absolutely convenient, and no longer.’ - William Archer
• ‘In a circle where all are guilty, Chiltern… is able to escape without punishment.’ - George Woodcock
• ‘Robert [is] a spokesman for every man who is presumed, and pressured, to be more than he is.’ -Alvin Klein
• ‘the ‘ideal husband” is caricatured as a sort of plaything at the mercy of his wife’s every whim.’ - Norbert Kohl
• ‘it’s structured around a criminal, and sympathy with a criminal’ - Sos Eltis
• ‘Chiltern is a slave to his wife’s ideals’ - Sarika Bose

Question 5

Recall 3 critical interpretations relating to Lady Gertrude Chiltern. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 5

• ‘the completion of the plot is the success of the wife in preserving her ideal husband’s honour’ - The Liverpool Mercury Newspaper publication of January 5th 1895
• ‘stupidly good wife’ - George Bernard Shaw
• ‘Women in the plays of a century ago were technically powerless… [but] at the same time, the plays were really about them, and everything the men did was designed to win their love, admiration or forgiveness.’ - Roger Ebert
• ‘Lady Chiltern’s abandonment of her principles is the erasure of the feminine perspective, not it’s broadening’ - Sarika Bose
• ‘performing her duty as a perfect wife more than an independent person’ - Yanting Zhang

Question 6

Recall 3 critical interpretations relating to Lord Arthur Goring. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 6

• ‘Wilde presents Lord Goring as the moral arbiter of his society.’ - Jackie Moore
• ‘Goring… acts in this play as Wilde’s personal voice.’ - George Woodcock
• ‘bisexual dandy’ - Rodney Shewan
• ‘tired to death of the pontificating role that he—as dandy, wit, and aesthete, no less—is unreasonably required to play’ - Julia Prewitt Brown
• ‘Through the character of Lord Goring, Wilde expresses his tolerance.’ - P. Hall

Question 7

Recall 4 critical interpretations relating to Oscar Wilde himself. Recall the name of the critic too.

Answer 7

• ‘its clever creator possess that rare combinative originality and daring which must some day place him at the top of the tree, and keep him there.’ - South Wales Daily News, 12th Jan 1895
• ‘Mr Wilde, touching what he reveres, is absolutely the most sentimental dramatist of the day.’ - George Bernard Shaw
• ‘Mr Wilde’s ideals are as commonplace as his atmosphere.’ - A. B. Walkley
• ‘a remorseless debunker of the high-toned gravitas of Victorian England’ -T. Eagleton
• ‘Wilde mocks society’s confinement of women, fallen or not, into prescribed roles and undercuts customary morality but fears self-determining women’s disruptive power’ - Sarika Bose
• ‘both a proto-feminist writer and misogyny advocator’ - Yanting Zhang
• ‘he believes that female participation in politics should not influence the masculine power’ - Yanting Zhang