Tea and Scandal

Mr Wilde’s fans

Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde

This is not the best of Oscar Wilde’s comedies. And it’s not, heaven forfend, my favourite. But the reader cannot deny it has something. What precisely does it have?

We here find some of the lines that people eagerly quote, and have quoted for more than a century. Out of their original context, of course. You’ll know them when you see them so there’s no reason for me to include them here. We have some of the same poses as The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had appeared a handful of years before: the devilish young man, for instance, who is nonetheless attractive. We have, also, a prototype — at least at first blush — of Mrs Cheveley, the designing woman who would later appear in An Ideal Husband.

And we have the themes that Wilde’s comedies so often touched upon: false names, assumed identities, one spouse feeling either worried by the other’s apparent duplicity or awed and humbled in the face of their supposed, and false, perfection.

For there is no perfection in this life, and fickle fortune oversees all, as Wilde is so determined to tell us at all times.

Lady Windermere is, at least as we first see her, a specimen of human perfection. She is young; she is beautiful. Her marriage is fresh and true. She has a son, a charming toddler that we the audience never see, but whom everyone else ever praises. Her husband is an accomplished man, a man who seems to love her very much. In short, everything’s wonderful.

And yet even paradise has its serpents. One of them, as it happens, is Lord Darlington, a man of superficial charm and the reputation for mephistophelism; he tells Lady Windermere that when all is said and done, she will need a friend. And another is a society lady who’s brought her daughter around in advance of Lady Windermere’s gathering that evening. The society lady, the Duchess of Berwick, is mostly interested in spreading scandal about another lady, Mrs Erlynne, who is said to be quite the homewrecker.

The number of scandals associated with her, my dear, you would not believe it. And of course, it is such a sad thing that your husband appears to enjoy her company so much and so consistently.

Lady Windermere denies this. Her husband would not be seen with a designing woman. And yet he is. And, more than that, in prying open his secondary bank book, she discovers that he has been paying out, to Mrs Erlynne, decent amounts of money. Regular payments — almost as regular, she infers, as his visits.

Now Lady Windermere cannot believe this. Her husband, when he is confronted about it, fails to set her mind at rest.

The duchess earlier insisted, quite jauntily, that all men do this; that all men are evil, quite naturally, and that their eyes begin to wander practically at the breakfast table the morning after the wedding; and that all Lady Windermere needs is to take her husband out of the country.

A short holiday in Hamburg or Oslo, she says. A short holiday and all will be well. Keep this wicked Mrs Erlynne from your mind, my dear!

And now, after her husband has failed satisfactorily to deny it, Lady Windermere’s world collapses. And when he asks that she invite Mrs Erlynne to their party this evening (and invites the lady himself when his wife refuses to do so), it’s all too much. It is all too much.

Two things happen next. Lady Windermere insists that if the other woman arrives at her party, she will publicly insult her. Cut her dead, perhaps, or strike her — with a new fan, bought for Lady Windermere by her husband as a birthday gift. And she also thinks, in her newly devious, spiralling mind, that she might need a friend, as Lord Darlington had told her she would.

I don’t need to tell you everything. The party and the terrible bizarreness of all its scenes and manoeuvres. That Mrs Erlynne arrives and causes a stir and, quite contrary to their hostile gossiping about her, manages to charm almost everyone.

Everyone except Lady Windermere, of course, who does not strike her or insult her but does act flintily towards the other woman all evening. And her husband, whose every action and reaction, beneath his gentility, seems somewhat strained.

Many modern readers expecting pure comedy will be surprised by how heart-rending and bittersweet parts of this play can get. The mooted collapse of a marriage can be played for laughs, but here it isn’t. Instead, the marriage of the Windermeres is a sacred thing — something the audience dearly hopes to salvage and to sustain. The idea that anyone would disgrace Lady Windermere is upsetting. The clear frustration of her husband, who feels wronged and placed under histrionic, unjustified suspicion, is almost as bad.

But I will end, if I may, with some jokes.

I like very much the character of Lady Agatha Carlisle, daughter of the duchess, who manages to appear on stage quite a few times, to dance with an Australian millionaire, and to get herself engaged, all while saying only ‘Yes, mamma’ a handful of times.

She is instructed to look at a sunset and obediently does so.

For is not Nature, per the duchess, such a healthy thing for a daughter to enjoy?

Such a chatterbox that girl is, the duchess at one point avers.

Perhaps I like Lady Agatha because she, unlike the other characters of this play, does not appear to have hidden motives. She does not connive and use her wits to ruin others’ lives. Instead, she wants to do as she is told without complaint, and to marry a rich man. A good, honest ambition in a fallen world.

And is that not better than scandal and intrigue?

‘Yes, mamma’ it is, indeed.