An Ideal Husband

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

Analysis of Major Characters
Sir Robert Chiltern: The play's "tragic" hero, Sir Robert Chiltern is an accomplished government official, considered by all as an ideal husband and model politician. As described in the stage notes, Sir Robert has effected a violent separation of thought and emotion in his personality; moreover, he suffers from divided loyalties. Though aportrait of distinction and good breeding, Sir Robert conceals a blemished past. Extremely ambitious, he succumbed to the nefarious advice of his mentor, Baron Arnheim, in his youth, coming to hold power over others as life's primary pleasure and wealth as the age's weapon toward winning it. To some extent, Sir Robert holds wealth and power in similar esteem today. At the same time, Sir Robert has had toconceal his past from his wife in hopes of keeping her love. As detailed below, Lady Chiltern's love is predicated on the worship of his perfect image; so desperate is Sir Robert to remain in her esteem that he will even agree to resign from government in Act IV. Torn between his true and ideal selves, Sir Robert suffers from a nervous temperament throughout the play.
Sir Robert is a fairlystatic character, undergoing little development and ultimately receiving salvation through the machinations of Lord Goring. He does, however, give way to one major outburst once the balancing act between his secret past and ideal person becomes untenable. Unmasked by Mrs. Cheveley at the end of Act II, he curses Lady Chiltern's impossibly worshipful love as causing their ruin: in other words, becauseof her worship he could not descend his pedestal, so to speak, and admit his crimes to her earlier. Sir Robert considers himself a victim of what he identifies as "feminine" adoration. In contrast, he loves in a "masculine" fashion—that he can love his lover's human imperfections and then forgive her faults. Sir Robert thus becomes the vehicle of one of the play's primary pronouncements on thetheme of marriage. Like his wife, his is largely a melodramatic voice, the conventional nature of his speech—that is, conventional in terms of the popular Victorian stage—reflecting the conventional nature of its content.

Lady Gertrude Chiltern: Lady Chiltern is the play's upright and earnest heroine, embodying the ideal of Victorian new womanhood Wilde elaborated while editor of the Women's Worldmagazine in the late 1880s. This new woman was best represented by an educated wife involved in women's issues and supportive of her husband's political career. Lady Chiltern certainly embodied these characteristics, and unlike Sir Robert, Lady Chiltern is not self-divided, but perfectly virtuous. Though a poised, charming, and dignified society wife, Lady Chiltern is naïve when it comes to themachinations around her. In this sense, she is Mrs. Cheveley's ready victim. Lady Chiltern undergoes a rather simple development through the course of the play, specifically with respect to the theme of marriage and, more precisely, the question of how women should love. Toward the end of Act I, she melodramatically delivers a speech to Sir Robert that introduces the idea of the "ideal husband" andestablishes the nature of her love, a love described from the outset as "feminine." As a woman, Lady Chiltern loves in the worship of an ideal mate, a mate who serves as model for both her and society at large. Thus she rejects Sir Robert upon the revelation of his secret past, unable to brook neither his duplicity nor the justification of his dishonesty as necessary compromise.
Ultimately shewill learn from her counselor, Lord Goring, that the loving woman should not so much idealize the lover as forgive him his faults. Goring will also teach her that Sir Robert—as a man—lives by his intellect and requires a successful public life. Thus Lady Chiltern will forgo her rigid morals and allow her husband to continue his career despite its ill-gotten beginnings.

Mrs. Cheveley: Foil to...