An Ideal Husband Critics Flashcards
“Goring… acts as Wilde’s personal voice”
George Woodcock
“Wilde recultivated an eroding sexual stereotype of the victorian era that women are intellectually the inferiors of men”
Kerry Powell
“Women were creatures of vast feeling but scant intellect”
Kerry Powell
“The Ideal husband is caricatured as a sort of plaything at the mercy of his wife’s every whim”
Norbert Kohl
“Women… were technically powerless… at the same time, the plays were really about them, and everything the men did was designed to win their love, admiration or forgiveness”
Roger Ebert
“As long as everyone plays by the rules in public, they can be broken in private”
Roger Ebert
“Lady Chiltern loves her husband but loves his upright character even more”
Roger Ebert
“characters regard each other as ‘pure’ representations”
Harold Bloom
“R.C’s machiavellian justification for his own reckless ambition for power and wealth”
Harold Bloom
“Reveals the gap between moral posturing and the reality of public power”
Peter Raby
“Insincere society that refuses to acknowledge its reliance on secrecy and public masks”
K. Neal
“An Ideal Husband hints at social and political corruption but withdraws into conventional ideology about the respective worth of men and women”
Philip Cohen
“[the upper class] did not give a damn about conventional morality”
Pearsall
“[Lady C is] priggish and naive”
Katherine Worth
“In AIH… Wilde proved he could glitter and say something at the same time”
Alvin Klein
“He wanted… to render a true portrait of English society’s follies”
Alvin Klein
“[Chiltern is] a spokeperson for every man who is presumed, and pressured, to be more than he is”
Alvin Klein
“Wilde’s.. astringent observations of women’s tendency to create impossible standards for men and live vicariously through their reflected glory”
Helen Meany
“Lord Goring is the play’s moral barometer”
Helen Meany
“Wilde’s wit masked a vision of life”
Michael Billington
“Sir Robert represents the hollow sham of public life”
Michael Billington
“[Mrs Cheveley is] a dubious predator… an instrument of truth”
Michael Billington
“The fundamental flavour of Wilde’s works is happiness”
Borges
“The play is unquestionably very poor”
H.G Wells (contempory)
“[RC] is man enough to to brave it rather than commit a second and greater treachery”
William Archer (contemporary)
“[RC] licks the dust before [Mrs C] and is quite prepared to involve his country in a second Panama catastrophe in order to save his own skin”
William Archer (contemporary)
“Sir Robert Chiltern proves himself to be one of those gentlemen who can be honest as long as it is absolutely convenient, and no longer”
William Archer (contemporary)
“several scenes in which the dialogue is heavily overburdened with witticisms”
William Archer (contemporary)
“All the literary dignity of the play, all the imperturbable good sense and good manners”
George Bernard Shaw (contemporary)
“so unapproachably playful… the delight of every playgoer”
George Bernard Shaw (contemporary)
“a play which has no thesis… a play and nothing else”
George Bernard Shaw (contemporary)
“Sir Robert Chiltern’s assertion of the individuality and courage of his wrongdoing as against the mechanical idealism of his stupidly good wife”
George Bernard Shaw (contemporary)
“[Wilde’s] catch and whimsicality of the dialogue tickle the public”
Clement Scott (contemporary)
“A strepitous, polychromatic, scintillating affair”
AB Walkley (contemporary)
“Mr Wilde is practically of the same mind as his audience, and gets his reward”
AB Walkley (contemporary)
“[Wilde] is far from being a realist”
AB Walkley (contemporary)
“Mr Wilde flatters the public, presents it with a false picture of life”
AB Walkley (contemporary)
“[politicians wouldn’t] refuse seats in the cabinet because their wives bid them”
AB Walkley (contemporary)
“The whole play is designed to fill us with joy over the escape of a sinner from the penalty of his sin through the trick of a diamond bracelet”
AB Walkley (contemporary)
“[AIH] seemed to me so helpless, so crude, so bad, so clumsy, feeble and vulgar”
Henry James (contemporary)
“[AIH] is not only an excellent piece of art, but an excellent piece of sense”
William Dean Howells (contemporary)
“[Mrs Cheveley is] a sulphourous female”
William Dean Howells (contemporary)
“Lady Chiltern’s unlikely word-for-word parroting of Goring’s advice tends not to validate his words but rather teeter on the edge of absurdity”
Sos Eltis
“it is crucially unclear whether Lady Chiltern ends the play cowed, politically sidelined, coldly pragmatic, or educated in a more humane and charitable understanding of others’ frailty”
Sos Eltis”
“Sir Robert varies his moral standpoint according to circumstances”
Sos Eltis
