Powell: Masculinity, Femininity, and "A Woman of No Importance"

Question 1

Major claims

Answer 1

1. Wilde was on common grounds with feminist movement:
   - getting rid of a double standard
   - opposing traditional gender roles
2. But he did not entirely agree with the idea of social purity:
   - same expectations for men and women
   - men are impure by nature
3. He proofs his claim by analysing parts of “A Woman of No Importance”, in which Wilde expresses his very own idea of gender equality

Question 2

Fin de siècle feminists vs. Oscar Wilde’s ideas of gender equality

Answer 2

• feminism in the later Victorian period defined by a puritanical morality
• Wilde was an ally of the fin de siècle feminists: Opposed to the enforcement of traditional codes of gender
• Wilde was their adversary, too: Opposed to their reconfiguration of masculinity
• Both sides agreed on the need for a radical change of normative masculinity
• But they clashed in their prescriptions of what should replace it

Question 3

Why is it the idea of natural impurtiy that shapes Wilde’s life tremendously?

Answer 3

• Wilde was punished for “gross indecency” based on the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which declared it to be a crime if men had sexual intercourse
• This law only effected homosexual men but not women because the idea of natural impurity was ascribed to the male sex

Question 4

What led to the demand of fin de siècle feminists for “social purity”?

Answer 4

• Belief that the purification of society was the only way to end the double standard of morality and the sexual control of women by men
• Victorian feminist’s demand for “social purity” was a response to the Contagious Diseases Acts (1862)
• CDA empowered police to lock up suspected prostitutes in lock hospitals and force them to get medical treatment
• The goal was to control the spread of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases
• One of the leading figures of Victorian feministm, Josephine Butler said that the CDA put women’s reputation, their freedom, and their persons in the power of the police
• She and other Victorian feminists criticized heavily that it was only women who were punished, but men were leaved unpunished
• Millicent Fawcett and her campaign, the National Vigilance Association, advocated for women’s suffrage and social purity to end the double standard and the sexual exploitation of women by insisting upon purity for men as well as for women
• They formed their attacks on the belief that men were naturally corrupt and unchaste

Question 5

Wilde’s idea of gender equality and social purity in “A Woman of No Importance”

Answer 5

• Wilde is formulating new ratios between the puritan morality of many Victorian feminists on the one hand, and his tendency to the amoral aestheticism embodied in Lord Illingworth
• A Woman of No Importance challenges the double standard by applying the same morality to men that had always been expected by women: “Don’t have one law for men and another for women” (Hester Worsley)
• Lord Illingworth is presented as an obvious target of the moral-purity type of feminists: “a bad man, who is indispensable at dinner parties and widely admired”
• She modifies her views on purity and on the punishment of sin and embraces Mrs. Arbuthnot
• Hester’s change of view can be seen as the desired change of direction of feminists supporting the purification of society