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.Although he seems to be an ideal and loyal model he conceals (esconde) a blemished past.
Sir Robert is a fairly static character, undergoing little development and ultimately receiving salvationthrough the machinations of Lord Goring. He does, however, give way to one major outburst once the balancing act between his secret past and ideal persona 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, because of her worship he could not descend his pedestal, so to speak, and admit his crimesto 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 the theme of marriage. Like his wife, his is largely a melodramatic voice, theconventional 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 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, shemelodramatically delivers a speech to Sir Robert that introduces the idea of the "ideal husband" and establishes 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 hisduplicity nor the justification of his dishonesty as necessary compromise.
She will 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 continuehis career despite its ill-gotten beginnings.
Mrs. Cheveley
The play describes her as the product of "horrid combinations," evoking her dangerous deceitfulness.Cheveley appears as a "lamia-like" villainess—that is, part woman and part snake. Whereas Lady Chiltern is pure and undivided, Mrs. Cheveley is defined by deception, artifice, and falsehood.
With this in mind, Mrs. Cheveley's undoing inAct III avenges her crimes against the conjugal household. Called to account for a past crime, she finds herself trapped for a stolen wedding gift—the diamond brooch—by her ex-fiancé. The poetic justice in her arrest is clear. Moreover, this undoing also unmasks her as a monster. Once trapped by Lord Goring, Cheveley dissolves into a "paroxysm of rage" her loss of speech giving way to an agony ofterror that distorts her face. For a moment, a "mask has fallen," and Cheveley is "dreadful to look at." Her veneer of wit and beauty thus give way to the hidden beast.
Lord Goring
As the stage notes from Act III indicate, he is in "immediate relation" to modern life, making and mastering it. He thus serves as bearer of Wilde's aestheticist creed stressing amorality, youth, pleasure, distinction,idleness, and onward in rebellion against Victorian ideals. An Ideal Husband emphasizes Goring's modernity by posing him in a number of comic dialogues with his father, Lord Caversham—in which the former urges his son to marry and claim responsibility while the latter outwits him with his repartee.
Thus he extols the importance of forgiveness and charity in married life, reconciling the...