Oscar Wildes An Ideal Husband Essay -- Oscar Wilde Papers

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... ... 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.