Marriage Flashcards
Marriage is just for the looks of it
“Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It is most fashionable.”
- Lady Markby
Mrs. Marchmont foreshadows Lady Chiltern’s painful discovery that marrying what you believe is the “perfect” husband will only lead to disappointment.
“Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others for that!”
Lady Chiltern traps Sir Robert in her love, which is by no means unconditional.
There’s almost a latent threat in this line: if you are not worthy of love, I will not love you always.
It is clear, however, that she fully expects Sir Robert to live up to her impossible expectations.
“I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.”
Sir Robert’s fear drives him further and further away from the ideal of the honest, forthright husband.
He gets to the point where he no longer knows how to be a husband to his wife, ideal or not.
“Arthur, I couldn’t tell my wife.”
Most of the women in the play reinforce the image of Sir Robert as the perfect husband. Maybe that pressure makes it harder for Lady Chiltern to accept the truth.
“Ah, I forgot, your husband is an exception. Mine is the general rule, and nothing ages a woman so rapidly as having married the general rule.”
Sir Robert recognizes his wife as an equal in their “modern” marriage, but still makes big generalizations about the way the sexes love each other.
“We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses”
Women at this time were getting out more, getting more involved, making their voices heard on a range of political and ethical topics. Lord Goring seems to regret the growing complexity, and eventually chooses a wife who rejects it.
“It is the growth of the moral sense in women that makes marriage such a hopeless, one-sided institution.”
Lord Caversham is unnerved by the transition from marriage as an economically driven institution to marriage as a matter of personal preference.
“There is property at stake. It is not a matter for affection. Affection comes later on in married life.”
