The document provides a summary of Oscar Wilde's play "An Ideal Husband". It discusses the plot, which involves a politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, being blackmailed over a past financial crime. Sir Robert is threatened with having his past revealed, which could ruin his career and marriage. The summary identifies the main characters, including Sir Robert, his wife Lady Chiltern, the blackmailer Mrs. Cheveley, and their friend Lord Goring. It also provides background on the themes of marriage, politics and gender roles in late Victorian Britain explored in the play.

1. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their
passions a quotation”. Oscar Wilde
“AN IDEAL HUSBAND” Oscar Wilde
When I was trying to pick a up book to read, the title and the tagline of this
book caught my immediate attention, so, guess what?. I started reading
right away and I was invited to a “dinner party”; I went to the party, it was a
big room, brilliantly lighted and full of guests….And Lets check the journey
for this wonderful story, full of anecdotes of politicians, love, flirtatious, and
secrets.
The primary theme of the story is marriage, of course! the Victorian Era,
provided storylines of domestic life, familiar themes: as loyalty, sacrifice,
undying love, forgiveness, devotion, and onward. The protagonist of this
story would predicate marital life on worship, putting her husband on a
pedestal, posing her husband as a pristine ideal, in both public and private,
notably, this love is explicitly gendered as “feminine”. Even if
the title
invites speculation on the ideal husband, different figures of womanliness
appear throughout the play as well.
When I was in the middle of the book, I noticed a lot of melodramatic
speech, such speeches throw back another formal dialogue from the
Victorian popular stage, for example Lady Chiltern plea to Sir Robert at the
end of act 4, and reconciliation in act VI, and also involve innumerable
apostrophes: “Oh my Love” and so on. This melodramatic speech tends to
reaffirm it, serving as vehicle for the play’s pronouncement on love and
marital life. Once again, I justified the fact that I chose this book, I I liked
the title, inside the book is incredibly wonderful. I will hace the pleasure of

2. reading it again and I would enjoy even more. I will recommend this book
to my married friends, those, who overestimate the power of their husbands
and their families.
Talking about the characters, I think, Lady Gertrude Chiltern is an heroine,
embodying the dream of Victorian new womanwood, this new woman is
represented by an educated wife involved in women’s issues and
supporting of her husband political career, a charming woman, and
dignified society wife, but in the other hand she is Mrs Chevelry’s victim. I
wanted to be her, but I would act differently, I don’t like the men’s
domination over women.
The title for this book will be “Brave women and politics”, because the book
involves the position of women in late Victorian Britain, the success of
feminism, and the important role played by the protagonist, her courage,
and self-sacrifice.
When reading the book, I found a passage that caught my attention, was
this: Why can’t you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on
monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but
when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their
follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that
reason”, I like it, because unfaithful men seem to be everywhere nowadays,
infidelity touches all types of people, rich or poor.
Men married with
successful women, have sexual escapades, now we can see fidelity prenuptial agreements are becoming the norm for women with big bank
accounts. Long-term monogamy is difficult for most men, even those that

3. aren’t far away from their lady. Women. Also, they placed them in to a
pedestal, its the right place for her o for him?
Oscar Wilde, is well recognized by his love, passion, and loneliness
combined however to defeat prudence, and discretion.
Wilde received
gratifying reviews from critics, I like his works, specially his comedies of
society as, “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, “A woman of No importance, and of
course “And Ideal Husband”, he criticized the society in its own terms.
PLOT OF “AN IDEAL HUSBAND”
An Ideal Husband opens during a dinner party at the home of Sir Robert
Chiltern in London's fashionable Grosvenor Square. Sir Robert, a
prestigious member of the House of Commons, and his wife, Lady
Gertrude Chiltern, are hosting a gathering that includes his friend Lord
Goring, a dandified bachelor and close friend to the Chilterns, his sister
Mabel Chiltern, and other genteel guests.
During the party, Mrs. Cheveley, an enemy of Lady Chiltern's from their
school days, attempts to blackmail Sir Robert into supporting a fraudulent
scheme to build a canal in Argentina. Apparently, Mrs. Cheveley's dead
mentor, Baron Arnheim, convinced the young Sir Robert many years ago to
sell him a Cabinet secret, a secret that suggested he buy stocks in the
Suez Canal three days before the British government announced its
purchase. Sir Robert made his fortune with that illicit money, and Mrs.
Cheveley has the letter to prove his crime. Fearing both the ruin of career
and marriage, Sir Robert submits to her demands.

4. Sir Robert to renounce his career in politics, but Lord Goring dissuades her
from doing so. When Sir Robert refuses Lord Goring his sister's hand in
marriage, still believing he has taken up with Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Chiltern
is forced to explain last night's events and the true nature of the letter. Sir
Robert relents, and Lord Goring and Mabel are permitted to wed.
CHARACTERS:
Sir Robert Chiltern: Sir Robert is the play's "tragic" hero, a government
official who owes his success and fortune to secret scandal. Extremely
ambitious. Sir Robert suffers from a decidedly nervous and harried
temperament.
Lady Gertrude Chiltern: A woman of grave Greek beauty and twentyseven years of age, Lady Chiltern embodies the Victorian new woman:
upright, virtuous, educated, politically engaged, and active in her husband's
career. Sentimental heroine, worship her ideal husband
Mrs. Cheveley:
One of the play's wittiest and most well dressed
characters, Mrs. Cheveley is the vicious and opportunistic villainess.
Lord Goring: Of impeccable dress and inimitable wit, Lord Goring is the
play's thirty-something dandified philosopher, an idle aristocrat who serves
as a thinly veiled double for Wilde himself. Irreverent, wry, and dangerously
clever.
Mabel Chiltern: An exemplar of English prettiness, Mabel, Sir Robert's
younger sister.

5. Vicomte de Nanjac: Vicomte de Nanjac, attaché at the French Embassy in
London, is a young man famous for his ties and Anglomania.
Mr. Montford: A "perfectly groomed" young dandy and secretary to Sir
Robert. He appears briefly in Act I and escorts Mrs. Marchmont to dinner.

6. “AN IDEAL HUSBAND”
Oscar Wilde
Maria Dolly Giraldo Calle
2012