A Woman of no Importance

A Woman of no Importance

 

 

Brief Synopsis:

A Woman of no Importance follows a group of upper class English people, satirising their views and behaviour. The main storyline follows Mrs Arbuthnot, a single mother. Gerald, her son, is offered a job by Lord Illingworth who is, unbeknownst to Gerald, his father. Lord Illingworth is an scandalous, immoral man who left Mrs Arbuthnot after promising to marry her. The play explores mocks the attitudes towards marriage, gender, love and society.

 

Context:

Published in 1894, A Woman of no Importance challenges Victorian notions of gender, love, marriage and society.

 

Form and structure:

 Act I introduces the characters, their relationships and the main themes. The act ends with Lord Illingworth's line 'No one in particular. A woman of no importance', using foreshadowing and dramatic irony to allude to Mrs Arbuthnot and her relationship with Lord Illingworth.

 

The beginning of Act II shows the women on their own (as the stage directions state [Ladies seated on sofas]), discussing their opinions. Wilde juxtaposes the opinions of Lady Caroline and Mrs Allonby. Lady Caroline represents traditional Victorian attitudes towards gender: calling wives their husbands 'property', stating a man's 'proper place' is 'looking after their wives and saying 'a law should be passed to compel [bachelors] to marry within twelve months. In contrast, Mrs Allonby is positioned as a predatory sexist woman; stating 'I don't think we should ever be spoken of as other people's property. That is the only true definition of what married women's property really is. But we don't belong to any one.'

 

By attributing the conventional beliefs to Lady Caroline, a character used to satirise upper class women (domineering over her husband), undermines these beliefs and ridicules those who possess those opinions.

 

Mrs Arbuthnot enters on Hester's line 'Let all women who have sinned be punished'. This is mirrored in Act IV, when Hester enters during Mrs Arbuthnot's speech on marriage, leading Hester to change her puritan views on sin, or at least branding Mrs Arbuthnot as an exception.

 

Act II ends dramatically with Mrs Arbuthnot unable to give Gerald a reason why he should not take the job with Lord Illingworth. The stage directions state '[Lord Illingworth] exits with Gerald. Mrs Arbuthnot is left alone. She stands immobile with a look of unutterable sorrow on her face'. This is used to reflect a woman's position, left helpless after being maltreated by a man, due to society's view of her.

 

The play ends with the line 'a man of no importance', spoken by Mrs Arbuthnot. This marks the revenge on Lord Illingworth and the inversion of gender roles in 1894's society.

 

 Key quotations:

Love

‘When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself’ - Lord Illingworth

‘Nothing is serious except passion’ - Lord Illingworth

‘The secret of life is to never have an emotion that is unbecoming’ - Mrs Allonby

 One love could have kept you alive. One love can keep anyone alive’ - Mrs Arbuthnot

‘How could I repent of my sin when you, my love, were its fruit! Even now that you are bitter to me I cannot repent. I do not. You are more to me than innocence’ - Mrs Arbuthnot

‘Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow – oh, sorrow cannot break it’ – Hester

‘God’s law is only Love’ - Hester

Marriage

‘I have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men’ – Lady Stutfield

‘Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious: both are disappointed’ – Lord Illingworth

‘This marriage, this necessary marriage’  ‘It is a duty that you owe, not merely to yourself, but to all other women –yes: to all the other women in the world, lest he betray more’ – Gerald on Mrs Arbuthnot and Lord Illingworth

‘Marriage is a sacrament for those who love each other’ – Mrs Arbuthnot

Interaction between Lady Caroline and Sir John:
LC: John, do you have your overshoes on?
SJ: Yes, my love.
LC: I think you better come over here, John. It is more sheltered.
SJ: I am quite comfortable, Caroline.
LC: I think not, John. You had better sit beside me. [SJ rises and goes across]

'She implored him for the child's sake to marry her, that the child might have a name, that her sin might not be visited on the child, who was innocent'

Gender

‘Women are always on the side of morality, public or private – Kelvil

‘Lord Illingworth regards woman simply as a toy’ - Kelvil

‘Femininity is the quality I admire most in women’ - Lady Caroline

‘Women kneel so gracefully; men don’t’ - Lord Illingworth

‘The thing to do is keep men in their proper place’ - Lady Caroline

‘All men are married women’s property’ – Mrs Allonby

‘Men always want to be a woman’s first love…What we like is to be a man’s last romance’ – Mrs Allonby

‘[The Ideal man] is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments’ – Lady Caroline

‘If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded’ ‘Don’t have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to women in England’ – Hester

 ‘What a typical woman you are! You talk so sentimentally, and you are thoroughly selfish the whole time’ – Lord Illingworth

‘If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him’ - Lord Illingworth

‘No man has any real success in this world unless he has got women to back him, and women rule society’. - Lord Illingworth

‘Women are pictures. Men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means – which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do – look at her, don’t listen to her’ - Lord Illingworth

‘Women represent the triumph of matter over mind – just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals’ - Lord Illingworth

‘I don’t believe in women thinking too much. Women should think in moderation, as they should do all things in moderation’ – Lady Hunstanton

‘She is a woman who drags a chain like a guilty thing’ – Mrs Arbuthnot on losing her virginity without being married.

‘Well men are different from women, mother. It is natural that they should have different views’ - Gerald

 ‘But mothers are so weak’ ‘We are all heart, all heart’ - Lady Hunstanton

'But we are disgraced. We rank among the outcasts. Gerald is nameless' - Mrs Arbuthnot

‘Ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free’ - Mrs Arbuthnot

 

Society

‘To be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays’ - Lord Illingworth

‘To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy. Society is a necessary thing.’ - Lord Illingworth

‘Only two kinds in society: the plain and the coloured’ - Lord Illingworth