著者

菊池 せつ子 Setsuko KIKUCHI

出版者

武蔵丘短期大学

雑誌

武蔵丘短期大学紀要 (ISSN:13413120)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.13, pp.1-11, 2006-03-31

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An Ideal Husband, one of Oscar Wilde's four 'comedies of manners' was completed early in 1894 and marks a clear advance in Wilde's career as a dramatist. This drama deals with the past fault, the selling of confidential state information, committed by a young man who is now, as Sir Robert Chiltern, an ambitious and wealthy government minister with an adoring, upright wife, Gertrude and a dazzling career before him. In the meantime, the beauty, but vulgar and Machiavellist, Mrs. Cheveley suddenly arrives from Vienna with a compromising letter to blackmail Chiltern into giving public support for an Argentina canal scheme which will secure her fortune. Lord Goring, Wilde's incarnation extricates Sir Robert from Mrs. Cheveley's clutch and persuades the puritanical Lady Chiltern to forgive her husband and allow him to continue in public life. The play concludes with a seat in the cabinet for Sir Robert, a declaration of love from Lady Chiltern. Robert becomes 'an ideal husband' for his wife. Wilde's major achievement is the creation of 'a dandy,' Lord Goring, whom he places on the pinnacle of the hierarchy of wit at London Society of hypocritical Victorian Age in the end of the 19th century. Goring functions as a commentator, an observer, a philosopher and a judge in the play. Morally, intellectually, and aesthetically superior, he stands, as Wilde describes him in immediate relation to modern life. Wilde through Lord Goring carries a critique of the vulgarity in public life, but gives the work a greater unity than he achieved in the previous comedies. Goring, who has 'mental dandyism' and the morality only through sacrifice, is matched in wit and style by Chiltern's sister, Mabel who learns to adopt a less puritanical code and can understand him. Eventually, the witty lovers, who are true dandies lead to a happy ending, an engagement in the play. Finally, Goring is 'an ideal husband' for Mabel.