An Ideal Husband: Annotated version of An Ideal Husband with in-depth literary analysis

Fluent in epigrammatic language and imbued with witticism, An Ideal Husband is the third of Wilde's society comedies; an exceptional piece which combines melodrama, humor, scandal, and satire. Like The Picture of Dorian Gray, the play is concerned with the secret life of a man whose reputation is spotless. To his wife, friends, and acquaintances, Robert Chiltren is an ideal husband, a promising politician, and a generous friend. But just like Dorian Gray, his private and secret life bears a blemish of which he is overprotective and jealous. Thus, when Mrs. Cheveley had arrived at his doorstep to dine at his own table with nothing but threats on her lips, Mr. Chiltren spared no opportunity to hide the scandal of the cabinet secret which he had sold few years previously, striving thus to maintain his social persona as an ideal husband and a paragon of goodness. In this capacity, the play supplies an interesting study of the clash between shadow and persona, and traces the boundaries between a healthy balance of the two, and a lopsided plunge towards one at the expense of the other. In addition to such existential and psychological interests, the paly dwells as well on a set of controversial ideas and ideals of late-Victorian England. Lord Goring, for one, is a representative of the dandy's lifestyle which Wide himself had adopted at the time. The difference of opinion between Lord Goring and his father Lord Caversham in regard to idleness and luxury represents the gradual changes which modernity was inflicting on the old Victorian regime, for the latter was no longer capable of regulating the lives of the younger generation.