Themes (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
Themes
Introduction to themes in An Ideal Husband
Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband explores fundamental and often universal ideas that were central to Victorian society. The play engages with three major themes: marriage, womanliness and the feminine, and aestheticism. Whilst the play adopts conventional Victorian theatrical motifs, it simultaneously mocks, parodies and ironises them through its more decadent and dandified characters. This creates a rich interplay between traditional values and Wildean wit.
Understanding these themes is essential for analysing how Wilde both conforms to and subverts the expectations of Victorian popular theatre.
Marriage
Victorian melodrama and conventional expectations
Marriage serves as the primary theme of An Ideal Husband, which is fitting given its prominence in Victorian melodramas of the period. The conventional Victorian popular theatre typically presented stock storylines of domestic life that would, after various crises, culminate in the reaffirmation of familiar values:
- Loyalty and devotion
- Sacrifice and undying love
- Forgiveness and compassion
- Re-establishment of the conjugal household (married home)
Wilde adopts these motifs but also challenges them through the contrasting perspectives of different characters.
Lady Chiltern's idealising love
Lady Chiltern represents an extreme form of marital devotion based on worship and impossible ideals. Her approach to marriage can be characterised as:
- Viewing her husband as a pristine ideal in both public and private life
- Maintaining morally rigid standards
- Explicitly gendered as "feminine" love
As the play progresses, Lady Chiltern's perspective is revealed to be problematic. Her love appears unreasonable and, once Sir Robert's secret sin is exposed, potentially dangerous to the health of the domestic household. This idealistic approach leaves no room for human imperfection or forgiveness.
Masculine versus feminine models of love
The play establishes a binary opposition between what it terms "masculine" and "feminine" approaches to marital love:
Feminine love (Lady Chiltern's model):
- Based on worship of an impossible ideal
- Morally rigid and unforgiving
- Cannot accommodate human fault or weakness
Masculine love (Sir Robert and Lord Goring's model):
- Accepts and loves human imperfections
- Includes charity and forgiveness
- More flexible and pragmatic
The play ultimately calls for the tempering of the woman's overly idealising love. Paradoxically, it assigns the role of pardoner to the woman, with Lord Goring stating in Act IV that "Pardon, not punishment, is [women's] mission" in love. This resolution, whilst conventional for Victorian theatre, reinforces problematic gender politics where women must forgive men's transgressions.
The play thus follows a typical Victorian narrative arc: the ideal husband is symbolically "ruined" only to win forgiveness from his virtuous wife, thereby re-establishing the conjugal household.
Mrs Cheveley as the mercenary obstacle
Mrs Cheveley represents a complete corruption of marital ideals, reducing marriage to mercenary transactions. Her attitude towards marriage is shaped by Baron Arnheim's philosophy that privileges power and wealth above all else. Her crimes against marriage include:
- Blackmailing Sir Robert and threatening to destroy his conjugal bliss for financial gain
- Engineering a false courtship with Lord Goring in their youth to swindle him
- Offering to exchange her evidence against Sir Robert for Goring's hand in marriage
Lord Goring roundly condemns her for defiling proper notions of love. Symbolically, her ultimate capture by a stolen wedding present (the diamond brooch) represents revenge for her crimes against marriage.
Mabel and Goring as playful foils
In contrast to both the earnest Chilterns and the villainous Mrs Cheveley, Mabel Chiltern and Lord Goring offer a more playful, amoral perspective on marriage. Their approach is characterised by:
- Banter and apparently frivolous speech
- Mockery of conventional moral thematics
- Disparaging the demands of duty
- Ironising social convention
Significantly, when Mabel accepts Goring's proposal in the penultimate lines of the play, she rejects the entire concept of the "ideal husband": "An ideal husband! Oh, I don't think I should like that. It sounds like something in the next world." She wants Goring to be what he wants whilst she would be a "real wife". This playful rejection of moral idealism provides an alternative to the more serious treatment of marriage elsewhere in the play.
Womanliness and the feminine
The virtuous versus the demonic
The play relies on a stark opposition between two principal female characters, though notably the villainous character is rendered far more pleasurable and interesting:
Lady Chiltern represents the model Victorian new woman:
- Morally upstanding and highly educated
- Actively supportive of her husband's political career
- Eventually emerges in the role of forgiver and caretaker
- Embodies both progressive ("new woman") and conventional Victorian womanhood
She stands in contrast to Lady Markby, who represents an older, more old-fashioned generation of society wives.
Mrs Cheveley as duplicitous femininity
Mrs Cheveley serves as Lady Chiltern's primary foil and is described as "lamia-like" (half-snake, half-female). Her character is defined by:
- Wit and ambition
- Duplicitous femininity
- A dangerous combination of genius and beauty
- Capacity for manipulation
In Act III, the play dramatically unmasks her as monstrous. When trapped by Lord Goring, she dissolves into a "paroxysm of rage, with inarticulate sounds". Her loss of speech gives way to terror that distorts her face. In this moment, "a mask has fallen" and she becomes "dreadful to look at". Her veneer of wit and beauty reveals the hidden beast beneath.
The connection to dandyism
Importantly, the play relates Mrs Cheveley's duplicity to the artifices of the dandy, Lord Goring. Both characters share similar traits:
- Artificial and amoral behaviour
- Cunning and irrational qualities
- Traits associated with the feminine
- Flamboyant dress and wit
As the two great wits and most elaborately dressed characters, Goring and Cheveley function as doubles for each other. Their confrontation represents something of a climax. Goring proves to be Mrs Cheveley's only match because he can play her game of wiles, whilst the earnest Chilterns are doomed to be her victims. Sir Robert even briefly concludes that they must be co-conspirators.
Dandyism and effeminate masculinity
One might note that Goring shares an unnatural or monstrous femininity with Cheveley. The dandy is often considered the paragon of the effeminate male. The crucial difference, however, lies in Mrs Cheveley's unmasking. Whilst Mrs Cheveley's mask is ultimately torn aside (echoing perhaps Dorian Gray) to reveal her cruelty and ambition, Goring largely maintains his dandified pose throughout the play.
Aestheticism and the art of living
Life as fine art
Throughout the play, various characters comment on what Mrs Cheveley describes as the "fine art" of living. This concept centres on treating life itself as an aesthetic performance rather than a moral duty.
Lord Goring as aesthetic exemplar
The dandified Lord Goring exemplifies this stylisation of life as art. His philosophy emphasises:
- The beauty of youth and artifice
- The importance of idleness over industriousness
- Fashion and social theatricality
- The ironisation of existing social conventions
- Superficial appearances and performance
Art versus Victorian morality
The aesthetic approach to living stands in stark opposition to the somber respectability and moral strictures of the Victorian age. Where Victorian society demands earnestness, duty and moral rigour, aestheticism celebrates beauty, pleasure and the rejection of conventional morality. This tension runs throughout the play, with different characters embodying different positions along this spectrum.
Exam tip: When analysing themes in An Ideal Husband, consider how Wilde uses character pairings and contrasts to explore different perspectives. The play rarely presents a single, unified view but instead dramatises conflicting approaches to marriage, gender and morality.
Remember!
Key Points to Remember:
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Marriage is explored through multiple competing models: Lady Chiltern's idealising worship, the masculine model of forgiveness, Mrs Cheveley's mercenary transactions, and Mabel and Goring's playful rejection of ideals.
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Gender politics in the play are problematic, ultimately assigning women the role of pardoner whilst men are forgiven for their faults. The play reinforces the idea that "Pardon, not punishment, is [women's] mission".
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Womanliness is presented through stark contrasts: the virtuous, earnest Lady Chiltern versus the duplicitous, "lamia-like" Mrs Cheveley. Both represent different types of femininity in Victorian society.
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Dandyism connects Mrs Cheveley and Lord Goring through their shared artifice, wit and amoral perspective. The key difference is that Cheveley is ultimately unmasked whilst Goring maintains his pose.
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Aestheticism offers an alternative to Victorian moral rigour, treating life as fine art and valuing beauty, idleness and irony over duty and earnestness.