王爾德的《溫德米爾夫人的扇子》與《無足輕重的女人》中維多利亞時期之新母親形象

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論. 文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 王爾德的《溫德米爾夫人的扇子》與《無足輕重的女人》中維多利亞時期之新母親形象 The New Mother Image of the Victorian Age in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance. 指導教授：蘇. 子. 中. Advisor: Dr. Tsu-Chung Su 研究生：鄭. 憫. 中華民國一百零六年一月 January 2017.

(2) 摘要十九世紀時，王爾德創造了兩個與眾不同的母親角色：《溫夫人的扇子》中的歐琳太太以及《無足輕重的女人》中的亞伯納太太。在維多利亞時期，「家中的天使」是維多利亞社會中廣為人知的一個完美女性典範。儘管在當代社會中，順從、溫柔且為了家庭犧牲自己的母親角色是大家所熟悉的，王爾德卻選擇寫出了女性的其他面向，展現出獨立自主且勇敢的母親角色。更特別的是，他的這兩個母親角色都是墮落的女人：歐琳太太年輕時拋家棄女，亞伯納太太則是年輕時未婚懷孕。很多評論家認為王爾德筆下的這種狂野且大膽的角色，旨在顛覆整個傳統社會中的家庭價值觀。但是，王爾德是否真的想要顛覆傳統，又或者，他只是嘗試要為女性拓展另一個視野？帶著這樣的問題來思維，本篇論文總共分成五個部分以討論這個議題。除了緒論以及結論，本論文有三個主要章節。第一章探討了維多利亞時期女性的背景，第二章分析劇本中母親與孩子之間的關係，第三章則是研究這兩個母親角色的個人性來深入分析王爾德所創造出的不同於維多利亞時期的新母親形象，並證明他用這兩個母親角色對於當時代根深柢固的家庭結構引起一場微小的革命，為當時代女性提供了一個出口。不單如此，他劇中的角色們，即便挪到了現在這個世代，也依然展現了另類且特別的母親形象。. 關鍵字：維多利亞時期、墮落的女人、女性形象、新母親形象、個人性、自由的追尋、母子關係。 i.

(3) Abstract In the 19th century, Oscar Wilde created two extraordinary mother characters in his two plays: Mrs. Erlynne in Lady Windermere’s Fan and Mrs. Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance. In the Victorian age, “Angel in the house” was a perfect icon and was familiar to the women in the Victorian society. Nevertheless, Oscar Wilde, instead of portraying the Victorian stereotype of mother images that are tender, submissive and self-sacrificing in his works, revealed other dimensions of women that are brave and independent with his two fallen women characters. Many critics consider that Wilde was trying to deconstruct the norm of the society by writing these bold and wild women characters. However, did Wilde really intend to subvert the family structure? Or did he just broaden the horizon of the women in the Victorian age? In order to discuss this question, this thesis is divided into five parts. Excluding introduction and conclusion, there are three main chapters. Chapter One discusses the historical background of the Victorian women, Chapter Two observes the mother-child relationship in the plays and Chapter Three analyzes the mother characters’ individual thoughts to reveal the new mother image that Wilde created in his plays in the hope to prove that Wilde used his mother characters to raise a micro revolution to the conventional family structure, so as to provide an exit for the women not only in his time, but also for today.. Key Words: Victorian age, fallen women, new mother image, individuality, pursuit of freedom, mother-child relationship ii.

(4) Acknowledgement Writing this thesis is never an easy thing to me; therefore, I am grateful that I have a lot of teachers and friends accompanying me in this long journey. I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor Professor Tsu-Chung Su, though I am not a smart student, he has endless patience and kindness to allow me to write anything I want. Without his expertise, guidance and encouragement, I would not be able to finish this thesis. Many thanks go to Professor Hui-Hua Wang and Professor Yi-Ling Chen for providing me a lot of invaluable advices for my thesis. I would like to thank Meng-Yu for being a best friend and providing the shelter when I was homeless, for giving me all the support and courage when I was alone in Taipei struggling with my thesis. Thanks to Jing-Wen, Jin-Cheng and their parents for taking good care of me. I am thankful to Jasmine, she helped me many times as a friend and a sister when I was in troubles. Thanks to my friend Joy, for those countless chats and long talks when I was in bad conditions. Thanks to all the friends in graduate school: Lily, Angel, Annie, Gary, White, Kristy, Vivian, Ingrid, Marshall and Susan. Without them, the life in graduate school would be colorless. Thanks to my friends for all the kind treats and warm talks when I was in hard times, and special thanks to Ivy and Cherry. Thanks to my teachers for giving me confidence and faith when I was in bad moods. I would like to thank Wei-Jie for having a lot of interesting conversations when I was in Taipei. Last, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents, for being so supportive when I studied in graduate school. Too many thanks, so I want to thank Lord Jesus. Without Him, I would not be able to become a graduate student of NTNU, would not be able to attend all the courses and would not be able to write this thesis.. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” ---Matthew 6:13. iii.

(5) Table of Contents. Introduction -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 I.. Literature Review -------------------------------------------------------------------5. II.. Methodology -----------------------------------------------------------------------13. III.. Outline of Chapters ----------------------------------------------------------------18. IV.. Expected Findings -----------------------------------------------------------------21. Chapter One -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------22 The Women Images of the Victorian Age I.. Images of the Victorian Women -------------------------------------------------22. II.. Repression of the Victorian Women ---------------------------------------------25. III.. Wives and Mothers in the Victorian Families ----------------------------------28. IV.. Wilde’s Family and His Mother’s Influence -----------------------------------33. V.. Wilde’s Good Relationship with Women ---------------------------------------36. VI.. Wilde’s Style of Writing Female Characters -----------------------------------37. VII.. Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------41. Chapter Two -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------42 Mother-Child Relationship in Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance I.. Mother and Daughter/Son Relationship ----------------------------------------42. II.. Mrs. Erlynne and Lady Windermere --------------------------------------------42. III.. The Symbols of Fan and Photograph --------------------------------------------50. IV.. Mrs. Arbuthnot and Gerald -------------------------------------------------------53. V.. Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------63 iv.

(6) Chapter Three ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------65 The Individuality of the Mothers in Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance I.. Mother’s Individualities -----------------------------------------------------------65. II.. Mothers’ Pursuit as the Individualists -------------------------------------------66. III.. The Protest to the Patriarchal Norm ---------------------------------------------73. IV.. Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------83. Conclusion -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------85 I.. Wilde’s Breakthrough in the Dramas --------------------------------------------85. II.. The Lack of the Thesis and the Further Research Suggestion ---------------90. Works Cited -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------92. v.

(7) Introduction During the 19th century, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde achieved yet another success in literature by writing four famous domestic social comedies. In 1892, Oscar Wilde wrote the play Lady Windermere’s Fan and finished A Woman of No Importance in the following year. Just like how the titles of the plays hinted the words “lady” and “woman,” both plays have heavy emphasis on the subject of women1. More importantly, these two plays focus on the significant issue—images of Victorian mothers. In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde depicts the mother-daughter relationship of the courtesan, Mrs. Erlynne, and the naive young woman, Lady Windermere. Wilde’s second play, A Woman of No Importance, depicts another kind of fallen woman: Mrs. Arbuthnot, a single mother who lives with her son Gerald Arbuthnot and hopes to live a peaceful life. In both plays, Wilde uses family components to portray moral issues that Victorian women face. However, in further analysis of these two plays, critics seem to categorize Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot as different types of fallen women, as the plots and the characteristics of the two women differ greatly. Since Wilde creates different styles of women images, most of the critics2 focus on husband and wife issues when they analyze Lady Windermere’s Fan, whilst they focus on the colonial and political3 issues and debates of an ideal man and woman when they analyze A Woman of No Importance. Moreover, most critics often include the representation of the dandies in their critiques. I think the above issues are important Wilde’s other two comedies An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) focus more on men characters. 2 Although critics like Harold Bloom, Kerry Powell, Sos Eltis and Neil Sammells regard the mother issue of these two plays as the important issue, they still focus more on the other obvious issues of the plays in their articles and critiques. 3 Since Hester is an American in the play, she debates with the British aristocrats about the American spirit and living attitude. 1. -1-.

(8) and will definitely lead us to explore further into Wilde’s world; however, I consider it a great loss if we overlook the important mother characters in these two plays. Neglecting mother roles and maternal identity would create an incomplete analysis of Wilde’s works when discussing Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance. It is a pity if we discuss Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot separately, not only because both women are mothers, but also because they both have strong emotions toward their children (daughter/son). Furthermore, the plays are the series of works Wilde created consecutively; he wrote Mrs. Erlynne in his first play and then created Mrs. Arbuthnot in his second play. Both women are mothers with a child. In short, there are two important features about these women—both are considered as “fallen women,” and both are “mothers.” During the Victorian era, people had high standards and demands on women, especially since Victorian women were famous for being “angels in the house.” The Victorian stereotype of women is women need to be tender, obedient and tolerant. Women should be competent in performing household chores and bear a lot of children. Also, given the historical and religious background, Victorians were very strict and had high moral standards and social manners. Women would be accused to be bad, evil or fallen if they ran away from home, gave premarital birth, or abandoned their own child. They should not be sexy, seductive or outgoing in the public; rather, they should be modest and virtuous in social events and occasions. Being a woman during the Victorian age was not easy as one would have to pay attention to countless family and social rules in order to be a proper lady. Being a mother during the Victorian period was even harder since the mother needed to be responsible for the children as well as to do the housework. The identity of being a mother is complex: on the one hand, she is inseparable from her children; but on the other hand, she is an individual. -2-.

(9) Wilde depicts many types of women in Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance: there are single ladies, wives, and mothers. However, the dramatic characters of these two plays are Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot; both are mothers, and both are fallen women. Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot are indispensable and are the souls of the plays. But, it is very interesting that their images completely contradict conventional images of women in the 19th century. Usually, fallen women will receive punishment at the end for plays written at that time, but to the audience’s bewilderment, neither Mrs. Erlynne nor Mrs. Arbuthnot receives punishment in Wilde’s plays. On the contrary, Mrs. Erlynne wins her daughter’s admiration, marries Lord Augustus and formally becomes one of the aristocratic society (Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act IV), while Mrs. Arbuthnot takes revenge upon Lord Illingworth, gets to live with her son and Hester and prepares to move to America to start a new life (A Women of No Importance, Act IV). So far, some of the critics think Wilde tends to subvert societal values by writing these bold, wild and unconventional characters to break the norms of the society. Hence, did Wilde really intend to disrupt the societal structure and did he really want to overthrow the norms and values of the society? If this was his intention, then why did these strong and powerful mothers all want their children to return to the so-called normal patriarchal family4 (which was the symbol of safety and stability at that time), instead of allowing their children to be fluid and free without boundary just like themselves? With these questions in mind, I find it interesting that Wilde does not make total subversion to the Victorian morals; instead, he is rather selective. After observing Wilde’s characters, I think they try to demonstrate a micro-revolution in the. In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Erlynne begs Lady Windermere to think of her own son, and urges her to go back to the family to live with Lord Windermere (Act III). In A Woman of No Importance, Mrs. Arbuthnot tells Gerald with relief that although she can’t give him a father, she brings him a wife–Hester (Act IV). 4. -3-.

(10) society as Wilde creates a new alternative of women images, especially of mother images. There is no doubt that Wilde’s main female characters, Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot, are really different from the female characters of the other plays in his time. Wilde punished neither Mrs. Erlynne nor Mrs. Arbuthnot with the moral standard of the 19th century. Instead, he created good endings for them. They have all more than they want, whether in terms of money, status, or the social position. Most importantly, these two women get the chance to solve the misunderstandings they had with their own children. If Wilde wanted to subvert society, why would he still preserve maternal identity for his characters? Maternal identity represents the structure of family and relates mother and children through strong emotions. If Wilde wanted to depict “new” women who are individualists, why would he emphasize the main female characters’ maternal identity? Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot might be cruel to some extent since one abandons her husband and daughter, and the other escapes from her young lover who is the father of her son. They both decide to abandon some chances of staying in stability. In the plays, they are the mother roles that do not fit the social stereotype. They give up what they already have and seek out a new way on their own to pursue their happiness and freedom, although in a risky and dangerous way. But when they encounter problems regarding their children, both mothers become anxious and worry about them, the emotions of being a mother return. This fact proves that the mothers are bound together with their children for a lifetime. In the past decades, critics tend to dig out identities of the female characters in Wilde’s plays. However, relatively few researches focus on the issue of the mother and son/daughter relationship and the representation of the mother image which Wilde depicts in his plays. Thus, I think it is important to explore Wilde’s characters Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot together as they represent a new form of mother image. I -4-.

(11) not only explore the mother-child relationship they have with their children, and how their relationships with their children affect their decisions; but also develop the context of the mother characters being individuals to pursue their desires and happiness.. I.. Literature Review. In order to analyze Wilde’s works profoundly, I organize some critics’ viewpoints in chronical order and divide them into several categories. In this way, I can understand the trend and the changes of analyzing Wilde’s two plays in past decades, as well as attain abundant perspectives to reframe my arguments with these significant research results. It is no doubt that critics in different periods have different points of views regarding women in Wilde’s works. The main reason is due to the women’s movements, since women’s social position has progressed from the 19th century to the 21st century. During Wilde’s time, people regarded fallen women as imperfect women, but as time passed by, some critics started to view these fallen women differently, claiming that these women were trying to be unconventional, or even radical. Recently, the researches on Wilde also prove that his works always include some hidden messages to fight against the society and the norm. Among the variety of critiques critiquing Wilde’s plays, I have decided to review William Tydeman, Kerry Powell, Sos Eltis, Ian Small, Neil Sammells and Margaret Diane Stetz’s works, because their works are specifically dedicated to Wilde’s plays Lady Windermere Fan and A Woman of No Importance in depth. In addition, their works also offer plentiful analysis of the women characters in Wilde’s plays. 1.. Fallen women are imperfect women Lady Windermere’s Fan is actually not the first play which inscribes the story of. -5-.

(12) fallen woman. In fact, Wilde consulted many other plays in his time to reorganize the plot and his characters5. Unlike other playwrights who gave their fallen mothers miserable endings, Wilde gave Mrs. Erlynne a husband, and he reconciled Mrs. Erlynne and Lady Windermere’s misunderstanding (even though Lady Windermere still does not know the truth that Mrs. Erlynne is her real mother) in the end of the play. Even though Lady Windermere’s Fan shared the similar plot with many other plays, critics in the 19th century seemed to show interest towards this play. However, many of the professional critics in the 19th century viewed Wilde’s work as a mixture of “charlatan and clown” (Tydeman 11) and even thought Wilde molded his plays into a distinct genre to make money. Regardless, they all agreed that the discovery of Mrs. Erlynne and Lady Windermere’s relationship was truly the climax. Still, the critics had very different opinions about Mrs. Erlynne and Lady Windermere. It is very interesting that the critics in Wilde’s time seldom talked about Mrs. Erlynne; instead, they focused more on Lady Windermere’s growth process. They focused on how Lady Windermere transformed from a naïve young lady into a mature lady who understands her responsibility, and they praised her for her decision of returning back to her family. Since the play was called “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” most of the 19th century critics6 regarded the relationship between Lady Windermere and Lord Windermere more important than the relationship between Mrs. Erlynne and Lady Windermere. Therefore, they only mentioned Mrs. Erlynne briefly in the critiques. As a result, Mrs. Erlynne’s identity as a mother is barely discussed during that period of time; but, it is. 5. In his research, Kerry Powell lists a lot of plays and theatrical contexts which have the similar situation of the fallen women and the unmotherly mothers who abandon their children when they are young, just like Mrs. Erlynne does. (see Kerry Powell’s article “Lady Windermere’s Fan and the Unmotherly Mother” in his book Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s.) 6 William Tydeman collected many 19th century critics’ critiques whether on the newspapers or the magazines in his book. As many critiques of the 19 th century were hard to find due to the time period, his book provides many fruitful sources of the 19th century critiques of Wilde’s plays. Tydeman arranged these critiques in the chronical order, and separated them according to the different names of Wilde’s plays. -6-.

(13) an issue which can be discovered. Similarly, Mrs. Arbuthnot did not receive many positive critiques either. As a critic in Wilde’s time, William Archer gave his comments about Mrs. Arbuthnot in the magazine World, on April 26, 1893. He applauded the “natural and dignified revenge [Mrs. Arbuthnot] takes in declining to marry [Lord Illingworth]” (qtd. in Tydeman 55). However, Archer also doubted why Wilde created his character with such “emphatic personage,” and with such agony and hatred (qtd. in Tydeman 55). Following his train of thought, it is not hard to notice that many critics like William Archer in the Victorian age thought women should not be too emotional despite being in great pains or even when experiencing the betrayal of their love. Most of the 19th century critics criticized Wilde’s writing style of the plays; moreover, they criticized how women reacted in the plays. They seemed to have stricter standards when discussing the female roles of being a daughter, a wife and a mother. Victorians were uncompromising when it came to the stereotypes about women because they had the doctrines on how to be a woman: as a lady, as a wife and as a mother. During Wilde’s time, Mrs. Erlynne was not the subject of critics’ discussion compared to other characters in the play, but she definitely caught the audience’s attention—as a woman and as an unmotherly mother. On the other hand, Mrs. Arbuthnot seemed to fail as a woman and as a mother as well in the audience’s sight. She failed her duties as a mother, and she failed to be tender to her son and ex-lover as a woman. Both women were not perfect in the eyes of the 19th century critics. 2.. Fallen woman as unconventional mother Kerry Powell states in Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s that Mrs.. Erlynne is an unmotherly mother. Using “a mother does not abandon her children” (qtd. in Powell 14) as an epilogue from The Cross of Honour (1892), a play by Arthur. -7-.

(14) Shirley and Maurice Gally; Powell compares Mrs. Erlynne to mother characters in other plays during the 19th century. Powell tries to prove that Mrs. Erlynne is not the only character who has that improper and challengeable behavior. Like mother characters in other plays during the Victorian age, the playwrights tried to create mothers that were delinquent and had abandoned or neglected their children, just like Mrs. Erlynne; therefore, Mrs. Erlynne was apparently not the first “bad mother.” However, as Wilde strongly emphasizes the issue of people being “good” and “bad” in the play, Lady Windermere did come to the conclusion that Mrs. Erlynne was a good woman, in which she only “marginally more informed than her earlier opinion that she was ‘bad’” (26). Still, Powell considers that Wilde has something new to say in the play but uncovering it would mean “extravagant and even damaging concessions to sentiment, self-sacrifice, and all the other mangled values of a society that worshipped at the shrine of Victorian motherhood” (31). Therefore, Wilde chose not to reveal it. On the other hand, Powell states that the last scene of Mrs. Arbuthnot striking Lord Illingworth with the glove and claiming that he is “a man of no importance” (Act IV) was a threadbare material to the critics, and the ending scene was not like Wilde’s style of writing because this play was “morally innocuous” (66). Nevertheless, “Mrs. Arbuthnot revolts against the ideal of womanhood which the nineteenth century enforced, one which demanded she marry the man whose son she gave birth to” (67). Mrs. Arbuthnot refuses to repent because she thinks that if she does, she will have to admit that giving birth to her son is a sin; however, she considers giving birth and having her son is the most wonderful thing in the world. Thus, Powell claims that she is a “defiant and unconventional woman, but there are moments—critical ones—in which Mrs. Arbuthnot seems as if suddenly possessed by one of the queens of melodrama who preceded her” (69). That means, “[h]er independent point of views on -8-.

(15) marriage and maidenhood are incompatible” (69) and would not be accepted in the Victorian age. 3.. Radical Wilde with radical women In her book Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde,. Sos Eltis explores how Wilde tries to loosen social and family structure during his time. Through his plays, Wilde intends to make a move and to change some of the rigid structures of 19th century society, which Eltis calls him an anarchist, socialist and feminist. Although there are proofs that Wilde uses some elements of the former plays in his time, Eltis thinks Wilde “drew his play further and further from its origins” (60) and he “carefully [altered] characters and dialogue to undermine the assumptions on which the more traditional dramas were based” (60). However, it was impossible to “challenge society’s sexual mores openly on the Victorian public stage” (61) and Wilde’s “subtlety and circumspection were as much a necessity as an artistic indulgence” (61). Eltis thinks the ending scene of Mrs. Erlynne is a reward for her, as Mrs. Erlynne “breaks every rule, for she scorns repentance, rejects motherhood as demanding too great a sacrifice of self, and yet, in spite of all this, ends the play triumphantly in possession of a husband” (80). On the other hand, Eltis comments on how Mrs. Arbuthnot is a “passionate woman whose strict moral sense is constantly at war with her own deepest emotions” (106). She, unlike Mrs. Erlynne, “does not reject the morality which condemns her but rather continues to wrestle with laws too restrictive to allow room for her own natural passions” (107). Eltis thinks both women in the plays are radical, but the mother-child relationships were not analyzed in detail. However, I believe we can extend this idea further, that Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot are radical women not only because of their identity of being women but also due to their identity of being mothers.. -9-.

(16) 4.. Female victims under morality In his introductions, Small analyzes the women in Lady Windermere’s Fan and A. Woman of No Importance. He claims that “Mrs. Erlynne, disgraced and excluded as she is, now becomes a scapegoat, and her reputation is ‘sacrificed’ to save Lady Windermere’s honour” (LWF, xxv). This means that Mrs. Erlynne, “the stereotypical villainess, is ultimately judged to be as good as the nominally ‘pure’ Lady Windermere” (xxv). Based on this observation, Small believes that this play breaks the definition of good or bad during the 19th century, telling people that it cannot be defined narrowly. Also, Small compares the first draft and the revised edition of the play, and discovers that as “Mrs Erlynne is revealed to be a mother, so the scene takes on a character much more usual in Victorian melodrama—that of a parent protecting a child” (xxv). A parent protecting a child is the scene which turns the whole play into a surprise. “As a consequence, rather than evoke sympathy for the social outcast or the social victim (a theme common in Wilde’s short fiction) the play becomes more guarded in its social criticism” (xxv). Therefore, Small also points out that the revised play “does set the selflessness of parental love against the selfish and destructive nature of sexual love” (xxviii), that these too are familiar themes in Wilde’s other works, “and the change has the effect of making individual behavior as much a moral as a social issue” (xxviii). Moreover, Small thinks Oscar Wilde gives Mrs. Erlynne the “dubious reward of a marriage to Lord Augustus” (xxxii) but is still condemned for the same fault—her heroic sacrifice, since everyone thinks it is extremely improper for her to visit a man’s house especially deep in the night. On the one hand, Lady Windermere’s honor is preserved; but on the other hand, “Wilde refuses to stereotype the ‘fallen’ women as the repentant sinner” (xxxii). That is to say, Wilde does not change her into a conventional “good” woman or mother; instead, he keeps her personality as a woman who pursues her desires. Mrs. Erlynne refuses to be a mother - 10 -.

(17) because she thinks parenting is just not her style of living. She tells Lord Windermere that she doesn’t think being a mother suits her. As a result, Mrs. Erlynne cannot live in London because Oscar Wilde does not make her a saint. “Her goodness might be apparent to Lady Windermere and to the audience, but it is not allowed to threaten the stability of London Society” (xxxii). Hence, Small thinks that Wilde makes a comical ending in which “his characters are all allowed a second chance to make amends for past mistakes; it is also satiric in the sense that it inverts the theatrical conventions with which he was working but it is far from optimistic” (xxxii). It means that Wilde did think about inverting the conventional traditions during his time, but he also had other considerations in which he kept his unique Mrs. Erlynne away from London society to decrease the harsh judgement from the audience. Small is also concerned that in A Woman of No Importance, Wilde tries to reveal the image of woman with a past. For example, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Erlynne has a secret past, while in A Woman of No Importance, Mrs. Arbuthnot also has a secret past. Moreover, “on both occasions that past involves an illegitimate child whose future would be compromised were the facts of its parentage to be revealed. Both plays treat this topic of sexual ‘sin’ sympathetically but realistically” (AWON, xxvi). Therefore, due to their past revelation, both women decide to leave the country, Mrs. Erlynne moves to the Continent with Lord Augustus while Mrs. Arbuthnot moves to United States with her son and Hester. Hence, Small brings up the issue that there is a domestic conflict of the unequal treatment between men and women in A Woman of No Importance in the matter of sexual morality. Wilde provides elements of seduction, extra-marital sexual relationships and illegitimacy in the play to reveal the “gross discrepancy of Victorian society’s double standard” (xxvi). That is, “both Hester and Mrs Arbuthnot are victims of social hypocrisy” (xxvii), but this leads to “Lord Illingworth’s continued social celebrity, despite his sexual philandering in the - 11 -.

(18) past” and the phenomenon illustrates “the perverse nature of Victorian society’s values” (xxvii). Small concludes that this serious plot is “profoundly realistic in that it refuses to offer the victimized woman any redress or even solace” (xxvii). 5.. Wilde and his purpose of fighting against the society In his book Wilde Style: The Plays and Prose of Oscar Wilde, Sammells directly. states that Wilde’s plays actually contain more issues than they reveal. Thus, Wilde’s plays always mix many elements together. Therefore, he thinks Wilde tends to convey important topics which do not appear on the surface of the plays. In her article “Oscar Wilde and Feminist Criticism,” Margaret Diane Stetz explores a very interesting point that if the feminists embrace Wilde so late, they can blame it on Virginia Woolf because it was Woolf who did not speak for Wilde and created the trends that allow others to believe that Wilde was not one of the feminist critics. Since Woolf was a key figure in feminist movements and feminist criticism, she had power in her writing and comments; however, her comments on Wilde were few and brief. “She treated him as a minor phenomenon and relegated him to a place on a list of past oddities” (225). However, Wilde liked strong women and was attracted by their heroism (232). Stetz thinks Wilde actually spoke for women since he was familiar with many women activists and kept good relationships with them. This fact proves that Wilde was not an anti-feminist. The reason that he did not approve of women so outwardly was because there was still the pressure coming from the society. After reviewing the critiques of Wilde’s two plays, it is clear that the Wildean critics change viewpoints from time to time: from viewing the mothers as imperfect women to the radical women, from regarding them as the victims under the morality to the women fighting against the society. Although Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot are fallen women who do not follow conventional doctrine during the 19th century in. - 12 -.

(19) most critics’ eyes, it is undeniable that they are the women who bravely step out of the frame of being stereotypical Victorian women, and they boldly pursue their happiness. Moreover, they still maintain their mother identity and teach their children the value of life. I think the previous research of Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance neglected the mother-child relationships. I would like to extend the critics’ perspectives to carefully examine the mother identity and the mother-child relationships. Only by taking account the issue of maternal identity will the research regarding Wilde’s plays be more complete.. II. Methodology To support my argument that mother characters are crucial in Wilde’s writing, I turn to Nancy Chodorow’s theory about women’s mothering7. Nancy Chodorow wrote her book The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender in 1978 to discuss women’s mothering. She thinks feminists rarely analyze mothering despite its profound influence in family structure (3), also in “relations between the sexes, and sexual inequality both inside the family and in the nonfamilial world” (3). She considers that providing a theoretical account about women having primary responsibility for child care in families is very important. “Being a mother, then, is not only bearing a child—it is being a person who socializes and nurtures. It is being a primary parent or caretaker” (11). Being a mother means one has the responsibility to teach children the mental and physical aspects of life so they can survive. Thus, the role of a mother is very important, and Nancy Chodorow analyzes in detail about the mother’s familial functions in the family. Chodorow’s analysis is In Nancy Chodorow’s book The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, she uses the word “mother” as a verb to illustrate that women not only bear children, but also take care of the children mentally and physically. She writes: “Women mother” (3) and “women’s mothering” (13) in her book. 7. - 13 -.

(20) useful to better understand the position of women in the family and in the society. Furthermore, she points out the significant relations of women’s mothering in connection with the society which most sociological theorists have ignored: Women’s mothering is central to the sexual division of labor. Women’s maternal role has profound effects on women’s lives, on ideology about women, on the reproduction of masculinity and sexual inequality, and on the reproduction of particular forms of labor power. (11) Chodorow not only provides mother-child relationships in her book but also delicately separates the cases of girls and boys. She thinks girls and boys have different points of view due to different developments regarding preoedipal and oedipal complex. Chodorow states that “[w]omen, as mothers, produce daughters with mothering capacities and the desire to mother” (7). Women will create a new circle of mother reproduction in the growth. The mothering capacities and the needs are built into and will also grow out of the mother-daughter relationship itself. Yet, by contrast, “women as mothers (and men as not-mothers) produce sons whose nurturant capacities and needs have been systematically curtailed and repressed.” As a result, men will be prepared “for their less affective later family role, and for primary participation in the impersonal extra-familial world of work and public life” (7). Chodorow’s concept provides careful details about how women are “trained” to be mothers, how they interact with their children, and how they help their children to adapt the society. She also strengthens the fact that women mother to explain that women and men are biologically different and will not experience the same growth process. In addition, children will have different attitudes towards their mothers in different families. Chodorow also defines the idea of parenting: A concern with parenting, then, must direct attention beyond behavior. This is because parenting is not simply a set of behaviors, but participation in an - 14 -.

(21) interpersonal, diffuse, affective relationship. Parenting is an eminently psychological role in a way that many other roles and activities are not. “Good-enough mothering” (“good-enough” to socialize a nonpsychotic child) requires certain relational capacities which are embedded in personality and a sense of self-in-relationship. (33) Chodorow not only claims the essence of parenting, but also considers that good mothering has something to do with a mother’s capacities to relate with people. A mother needs to be sensitive in order to help a child to be socialized. When a woman becomes a mother, she begins to care for a particular child, and the process of mothering includes gratification and frustration for both the child and the mother. “Emotionally, the child’s primary love for its mother, characterized by naïve egoism, must usually give way to a different kind of love, which recognizes her as a separate person with separate interests” (72). A child wants to remain as one with the mother, but then discovers that the mother has a separated interest. Therefore, the child will learn to deal with this loss, and learn to search for another object to occupy his or her desire. Mothers have an overwhelming significance to children’s psychological development, “in their sense of self, and in their basic relational stance. It reveals that becoming a person is the same thing as becoming a person in relationship and in social context” (76). In short, being a person is related to every other relationship that one encounters in society. The growing process of an individual may affect personality and how he/she interacts with other people as these characteristics may be formed at a young age. Also, an individual’s relationship with his or her mother will also influence the development in the psychological layer as oedipal identification works in different stages. “A girl’s oedipal identification with her mother, for instance, is continuous with her earliest primary identification (and also in the context of her early - 15 -.

(22) dependence and attachment)” (174). While the boy’s oedipal crisis “is supposed to enable him to shift in favor of an identification with his father. He gives up, in addition to his oedipal and preoedipal attachment to his mother, his primary identification with her” (174). Therefore, when a boy attempts to develop masculine gender identification and to learn the masculine role, he turns to his father: This positional identification occurs both psychologically and sociologically. Psychologically, as is clear from descriptions of the masculine Oedipus complex, boys appropriate those specific components of the masculinity of their father that they fear will be otherwise used against them, but do not as much identify diffusely with him as a person. Sociologically, boys in father-absent and normally father-remote families develop a sense of what it is to be masculine through identification with cultural images of masculinity and men chosen as masculine models. (176) Chodorow’s theory helps elaborate Wilde’s characters in the plays: Mrs. Erlynne and Lady Windermere as mother and daughter, and Mrs. Arbuthnot and Gerald as mother and son. Chodorow’s perspectives not only deal with mother-child relationships, but also analyze how children react to their mother’s love and care. In the 1949, Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex and she discussed that a mother “is divided against herself” (490) in her work. The mother’s “natural tendency can well be to have the baby whose birth she is undertaking to prevent; even if she has no positive desire for maternity, she still feels uneasy about the dubious act she is engaged in” (490). Simone de Beauvoir points out that mother will devote her life to the child, because “[the] child is in possession of no values, he can bestow none, with him the woman remains alone; she expects no return for what she gives, it is for her to justify it herself” (513). Simone de Beauvoir also thinks that as the child grows older, “he enters a world of interests and values from which his mother is excluded; often - 16 -.

(23) enough he scorns her on the account” (516) and then the boy would be proud of his “masculine prerogatives, laughs at order from a woman” (516). But when the mother still tries to join his life and to help him, the boy would begin to reject her assistance. Therefore, the mother needs to cope with the inner conflicts because she would have high expectation for her son to be a hero in the future, but still treat him like a baby. Barbara Katz Rothman defines in Recreating Motherhood that the old definition regarded motherhood as a status. Therefore, “[w]omen were mothers. Mothering was not something women did, it was something women were” (7). However, mothering is not just an activity, such as service or work. Rothman continues that “the intimate, joyous, terrifying, life-affirming experience that is motherhood” (7); therefore, we cannot reduce the function of motherhood as labor. Rothman states that “[h]aving a child is a lot like owning something. It’s more complicated than the sense of possession of a pretty little object, a vase or a painting” (46). Mothers want the opportunity to be a part and participate in the lives of their children, and to help them when they grow. Regardless of whether the child is facing a good time or a bad time, mothers want to be there “psychologically, physically, financially for a kid who needs them” (46). Beside the theories of mother/mothering, in order to analyze the behaviors of Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot, it is impossible to ignore the ideas of individualism. Crittenden points out in Beyond Individualism: Reconstituting the Liberal Self that a condition to have autonomy is that “individuals do not need and are not expected to accept the principles or values of others” (77) because it is an “invigorating freedom” and the person may choose his own way of life “independent of any relationships—personal, social, societal—that he does not choose to enter voluntarily.” In addition, because he is autonomous, “he is free of his sodality and is no longer defined by his relationships in or to it. Now he possesses relationships and a - 17 -.

(24) self to share, if he chooses, in them.” And then the society “becomes the background to the rights and interests of individuals” (77). Crittenden claims that each person has his or her “own goals and interests and enters into contractual relationships to pursue and achieve those goals and interests,” while obligations are “established by freely contracting with others, a method, as Kant pointed out, that enables each person to make himself reciprocally a means to another’s ends without violating either person’s freedom” (77). With the concepts above, I hope to establish and stretch the structure of the research in detail with more clues to analyze the mother characters in Wilde’s plays.. III. Outline of Chapters This thesis is divided into five parts. Excluding introduction and conclusion, there are three main chapters. The introduction clarifies the topic and issue of my thesis, including my motivation, the content of Literature Review, Methodology and Expected Findings. In Chapter One, I sketch the historical background of family relationships and the motherhood during the Victorian age, including Wilde’s family background and his relationship with his mother. Wilde’s mother was an Irish activist and was involved in many social movements when Wilde was young. She also wrote many articles and was famous among the upper society because of her talents. Borne into a doctor’s family, Wilde was well educated; his parents were great influencers in his life, especially his mother, as he learned social etiquette from her when he observed her interacting with the people from the upper class. After analyzing the historical background of women during the Victorian age, I examine the correlation of the Victorian mother images and Wilde’s mother characters. In Wilde’s plays, there are. - 18 -.

(25) various types of mothers—there is the typical and conventional type of mother, as well as the fashionable and unconventional type of mother. A close examination of the Victorian mothers would allow us to gain an in-depth understanding of Wilde’s plays to see what changes he made towards the Victorian mother images. In Chapter Two, I analyze the mother-child relationships in Wilde’s two plays. Following the previous chapter, I intend to reveal the mothers’ emotions towards their children in Wilde’s plays. Mothers have strong emotions attached to children, such as constantly worrying about them. Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot are independent and headstrong, they do not compromise to the society’s value and the social structure (the conventional or traditional mother roles). But, as two strong women, they both want their children to have a normal family instead of being alone like they are. Mrs. Erlynne is a courtesan who gets what she wants by all means, while Mrs. Arbuthnot is a single mother who takes care of her son by herself. They are strong and independent women; however, when they are with their children, they express their inner feelings of love towards them. In this chapter, I interpret the mothers’ feelings and how these feelings influence their decisions when they confront problems with their children. The importance of motherhood is what makes the relevant connection between two people, physically and mentally. Therefore, I examine the processes of Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot’s changes of feelings, and how their individualistic decision making abilities are ultimately impeded by their love for their children. In Chapter Three, I analyze the mother characters’ individuality and their individual thoughts. The individual thoughts of mothers and the relationship they have with their children influence how Mrs. Erlynne and Mrs. Arbuthnot think when confronting problems. When mothers are by themselves, they can do whatever they want, but when things are related to their children, mothers’ misgiving will lead to a completely different circumstance. In addition, mothers also have their own desires. - 19 -.

(26) In Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance, mothers have their own thoughts and want to retain their freedom even after having kids. Although they express these thoughts in the different forms of words and behaviors, the needs of the personal space and individual freedom are the same. Mrs. Erlynne abandons her family—husband and daughter in order to pursue her desire (youth, freedom and love), and this behavior leads her to rebel against the societal structure. She even rejects her maternal identity in the end of the play. On the other hand, Mrs. Arbuthnot does not want to be constrained by the conventional rules; therefore, she would rather be an unmarried mother to preserve her dignity without being bribed by the money. She insists on staying single rather than to marry her son’s father. At that time, this kind of thought was very avant-garde, and most people thought a family consists of father, mother and child(ren). However, Mrs. Arbuthnot defies this value, and even takes the chance to revenge upon Lord Illingworth’s assault. Therefore; in this chapter, I reveal that the mother characters of Wilde’s plays have unconventional values: they do whatever they want, they choose not to be bound by the social rules or values, they are fashionable and they are free. Despite the strong motherly bond, the two mothers in Wilde’s plays all hold the belief that even though they willingly make sacrifices for their children, they are still free to make their own decisions in their lives. That means, the mothers refuse to be manipulated and to let their love towards their children affect their decisions. The last part concludes the thesis. After analyzing the historical background and the family of the Victorian age, the relationship between the mother and the children and the individual thoughts of mothers, these results lead to a sharper and more concrete perspective regarding mother characters in Wilde’s plays and their relation to modern-day women. Providing us novel perspectives of mother characters in the Victorian era, Wilde’s new mother image may still be influential to our life. - 20 -.

(27) IV. Expected Findings In my thesis, I aim to discover a new image of mothers that Wilde invents in the Victorian age: women who are brave, independent, and able to pursue what they want in life. They do not place children as the center of their life; they love their children, but they don’t rely on them. These mothers are tender and passionate to light up the spiritual education of their children, even if it means that they risk being misunderstood by their children. There are some aspects that I discover after doing this research. First of all, I argue that Wilde does not intend to deny all the social structures; rather, he uses his characters’ unique and novel characteristics (compared to his time) to loosen up the social structure in the 19th century, as well as to raise a micro-revolution to fight against the society. In his plays, he uses satire and ridicules the moral standards of society through his characters and his witty words. Secondly, I identify the importance of relationship between mothers and children, and how this relationship influences mothers to make decisions. In the plays, the mothers all suffer because of their children; although the mothers are strong and independent individuals, when danger occurs, the mother and children’s bond allows them to have natural connection. Last but not least, I examine the new types of mother Wilde creates in his plays that extend to the next generation, or even to this century—his creation still has powerful influence today. To sum up, I think it is important to dig out the clues that Wilde’s mother characters have a connection with the women images in our modern society today. Thus, I believe my methods and research would allow us to gain a deeper understanding and to better situate the literary position of Wilde’s mother characters in literature.. - 21 -.

(28) Chapter One The Women Images of the Victorian Age. I.. Images of the Victorian Women In order to compare the difference between Wilde’s mother characters and the. women in the Victorian age, this chapter discusses about the image of the Victorian women to reveal women’s repression in the 19th century. After observing how wives and mothers functioned in the families, we can then closely turn to know more about Wilde’s family, especially Wilde’s mother played an important role in Wilde’s life. With the historical knowledge, we can get to know Wilde’s idea deeper. During the Victorian age, women were regarded as the subordinate to men. They were not financially independent and frequently needed to rely on the men to raise their social status. Victorian women had low status in the society and needed to fulfill the expectations of the family and the society, so that the “happy” and “wonderful” family could be sustained. Therefore, the images of the Victorian women, according to the historical documents, are basically all tender, helpful and effective in doing housework. A perfect woman is a role model for her children in the family. Generally speaking, women would be viewed as evil and irresponsible if they abandoned their children, husband or family. Some writers in the Victorian age claimed how men and women should behave in the family and in the society; for instance, one of the leading English art critics of the Victorian age, John Ruskin suggested that “women were best equipped for the private or domestic realm; and men were naturally suited to the active, aggressive and intellectual domains of public life, including commerce, government and the professions” (Moran 35). What Ruskin brought out was the gender ideology, which also complied with the expectation of the society towards both men and women. Moran indicates that in the 19th century, “[t]heories about - 22 -.

(29) women’s bodies, innocence, emotional (rather than rational) temperament and maternal, self-sacrificing instincts underpinned the concept of the Victorian female presence as spiritually inspiring” (35). The Victorian preferred women to behave as “angel in the house8,” which was a famous and favorite metaphor being used in the Victorian age. “Angel in the house” conveyed the message that a married woman in Victorian age should be “husband’s helpmate and inspirer, soul of the home, and mother of a family” (Basch 26), this three-in-one image was the essence of the Victorian women, and this became the only way to live out their deepest nature and dignity. However, there were some inconsistent standards in the different social classes. Although all the Victorian women suffered from some legal restraints, the social class separated two kinds life style when it came to the issue of being a woman in the Victorian age. Generally speaking, upper-class women had the chance to enjoy more freedom than the lower class women. “At the lower levels the key role of wife and mother, and the emotional dependence of husband and children, often amounted to matriarchy within the home and sometimes beyond it” (Perkin 76). Moreover, the Victorians held two diverging perspectives towards the “gilded cage of bourgeois marriage”: it was “approved by those who idealized its comfort and security, but hated by those who found it claustrophobic and frustrating” (76) because of the differentiated treatments towards women in the different classes. Usually, the upper-class women were protected from the harshness of the law after they were married. This assumed that “all husbands were kind, wise, caring, responsible, hard-working and fair—and conversely, that all women were childlike or imbeciles” (76). There were also two. Angel in the house: According to Moran’s book Victorian Literature and Culture, it is “a phrase adopted from the poetic sequence of the name (1854-61) by Coventry Patmore (1823-96)” (36). “The Angel in the House” is a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore, first published in 1854 (the year of Wilde’s birth) and expanded until 1862. 8. - 23 -.

(30) different ideals in the issue of “perfect wife” and “true womanhood” in the middle class. Men fantasied their wives to be perfect in the house, yet the women hoped to reveal the womanhood. As the time passed by, most of the women performed as the women that the men wished them to be; but at the same time, the women tended to develop their own identities. Men’s ideal woman was “a decoratively idle, sexually passive woman, pure of heart, religious and self-sacrificing” (Perkin 86) and it was this popular image “angel in the house” or the “ivy-like wife” which also represented a caring and responsible mother but chose to cling onto her husband dependently. Vicinus additionally mentiones that the Victorian women were like modeling in the frame of femininity. In short, they had to be the “perfect lady.” In the beginning of the 19th century, the “perfect lady” concept extended to the “perfect wife.” The perfect wife had to be “an active participant in the family, fulfilling a number of vital tasks, the first of which was childbearing” (ix). However, the ideal demand and the standard of the women varied from class to class. If one was a woman in the lower class, she needed to contribute to the income of the family in order to maintain the family; yet, if she was from the middle-class, she needed to provide indirect economic support by taking care of her children, purchasing and preparing the food or making the clothes. In the upper-middle-class family, the woman would be protected firstly by the father and mother when she was a young lady. She would be sexually ignorant and perfectly innocent. After the marriage, she would then be protected by the husband. She would have servants so she did not need to work. When she became a mother, times would not be too difficult for her because she could still leave her children to nannies and governesses. Her social life was only confined to the family and the close friends. “Her status was totally dependent upon the economic position of her father and then her husband” (ix) and in her most perfect form, “the lady combined total sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption and the worship of her family hearth” (ix). In - 24 -.

(31) Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lady Windermere and Lady Agatha fit this upper-class image: young, pure, tender and submissive. On the other hand, they are also innocent and ignorant. Lady Windermere is protected by her father, then by her husband Lord Windermere, while Lady Agatha is protected meticulously by her mother the Duchess of Berwick all the time. As a result, the woman image in the Victorian age was always “sweet, passive and long-suffering, waited patiently for the return of her husband” (Roberts 48). Even in the late Victorian age, the woman image was still petty and low. As Thane points out, the late Victorian woman images were fixed images of passivity and the women as the victims in the society and family. They often appeared in series of “striking images” such as: “the ladylike ‘angel in the house,’ the overworked skivvy, the desperate prostitute, the sexually passive wife, the ‘sweated’ worker, the dependent housewife” (175). The public assumed women should be passive and dependent in the male-dominated society.. II. Repression of the Victorian Women Since the women in the Victorian age received the straight and direct pressure and were restricted in a frame of a well-set femininity, they lost the opportunity to develop other female qualities. They could only be tender, sweet and pure rather than brave, independent and mature. Women were treated as the objects instead of individuals that possessed their own thoughts and opinions. Women were protected, idolized and oppressed in the Victorian culture (Moran 35). The image that the public approved was the only single version which had ignored the other possibilities, opportunities and experiences that women owned differentially. Women were repressed by being shaped as one typical model instead of being allowed to develop the other personalities and feminine charms. They were not allowed to pursue their - 25 -.

(32) own happiness, but to maintain the coherence of the family. Women would be protected by the family at home and subordinated to the males. They were repressed by fathers and brothers when they were single and by husbands when they were married. As Moran elaborates on the issue of women’s rights in the Victorian age: Even in this “natural” environment, women lacked rights. When the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 made divorce more easily obtainable, the burden of proof needed by a woman against her husband was more extensive than that required by the husband against his wife. In the event of separation, a mother had few rights over her children. (35) Until the 1870s, this phenomenon did not change for a better way. A married woman before that time “had no legal claims over her earnings or inheritance acquired after marriage” (35). As a result, women were still submitted to their husbands’ authority. A woman “gained rights over property and money she possessed prior to marriage only in 1882” (35). The Victorian society not only deprived women of their economic rights, but also sexual freedom. They would punish women for erotic experience outside marriage but would forgive or even allow men to have fun. The sexual double standards locked the women up in their houses and created continuously the images of women being passive and being repressed without any power or energy. The Victorian women would be judged by their reputations. If a middle-class woman had a sexual affair with other man outside the marriage, she would be excluded by her fiancé or husband, and even her children. She would also be rejected by her own family, friends and the public. “In matters of sexual conduct and social customs particularly, deviation was not permitted” (37). In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Erlynne worries that her daughter would be isolated by the society if she runs away from home. She strongly pulls her daughter away from the dangerous zone not only for love but also due to the reason that she judges her - 26 -.

(33) daughter is not tough enough to confront these difficulties and discrimination by the public. Mrs. Erlynne’s judgment of her daughter as a mother and an experienced woman is absolutely accurate because Lady Windermere still hesitates whether she should return to Lord Windermere after she arrives at Lord Darlington’s house. She is shocked and stunned by all the sudden changes and she even doubts her decision. Wilde used Lady Windermere to illustrate how men in the Victorian age had their unpractical fantasies towards women but ignored the possibilities and individuality of women. Therefore, a fallen woman in the Victorian age might work in the prostitution as it would be a way to survive and to escape from starvation. Women who stepped outside the social conventions received criticism and discrimination. They would be regarded as foolish, mad, wicked, ridiculous and ungrateful because they did not follow the high principles which could promote the harmony of society. Victorians would view them as destroyers of the culture, while the female anti-feminists hated their absence of tenderness as they thought the fallen women diminished the women’s cultural influence. At that time, the “most popular alternative to vacuity for the middle classes was charity. Trained to be loving and emotional, without sexuality, young ladies threw themselves into church work, or perhaps with less uniform ardor, the serving of the family” (Vicinus, xi) as it could be a suitable and comfortable way to give out their passions and transform their sexual desire to the spirit of serving the others. In A Woman of No Importance, Mrs. Arbuthnot works in the charity because she has nowhere to go and she considers only churches welcome sinners. The Victorian women had few opportunities to enter public life or receive from higher education. The working-class women were being treated in a worse condition. On the one hand, working-class women needed to work hard necessarily in order to support their family no matter they were “in factories, in the field, in service, or struggling with - 27 -.

(34) piecework” (Moran 36). Indeed, the social pressure restricted middle-class women to enter to the domestic employment such as being a governess or teaching. On the other hand, they still had the responsibility to manage the family as wives and mothers. In short, Women in the middle class were labors, and were deprived of the rights of freedom that they should have had in the Victorian age. They not only maintained the family financially, but also needed to handle all the house works and took care of the children after they finished working. Mrs. Arbuthnot seemed to be categorized to the middle-class woman, as Gerald was introduced to work as Lord Illingworth’s secretary by Lady Hunstanton. Gerald considers working for Lord Illingworth is definitely a chance to achieve success.. III. Wives and Mothers in the Victorian Families When a woman was disapproved in the masculine world, she became weak and fragile. Her only function was being a wife and a mother in the family (Basch 5). “Family” is a very important issue in the Victorian age. The reason that the Victorian principles and doctrines could operate continuously was because of the family construction. Family was the inner powerful structure of the society and home-life was the mainstay of the moral system in England (A Woman of No Importance Act I, p.81). Family life constructs “with family ties, with patterns of intimacy, neglect, love, duty, the delegation of authority and responsibility, the nurture of ideals and codes of conduct and with the effect of these upon society as a whole” (Wohl 15). The Victorian family was a “self-sufficient unit, an inner world of mutual dependencies that almost precluded contact with outside society” (15). In addition, Victorian family also established the protective atmosphere and provided the essential preparation for the young people to enter and influence the society at the same time. “Thus the Victorian family [emerged] as both a refuge and a springboard” (15). The reason that - 28 -.

(35) the Victorian family could remain as the cornerstone of the Victorian society was due to the women—the invisible but significant factor. Although women were regarded as the subordinate to the males as their social status was lower than men, they were the key subjects who kept the family function working. Vicinus proclaimed that “the perfect lady’s role function was marriage and procreation” (x) and usually these two stages in life were considered as one. “All her education was to bring out her ‘natural’ submission to authority and innate maternal instincts” (x). Moreover, “young ladies were trained to have no opinions lest they seem too formed and too definite for a young man’s taste, and thereby unmarketable as a commodity” (x). The model of the perfect lady was established by the Victorian society. As women were educated to believe that they were indeed morally superior but inferior to men in their lives because of their lack of the sexual drive and their weaker natures, the chaste women seemed to be exerting an “all-pervasive moral influence” (xiv) at home. Women who violated the moral code would be viewed as the fallen women, they threatened to overthrow the society with the identities of prostitute, adulterer and divorcee. The most dangerous women were adulterous women. They would be labeled as lustful women and would not be accepted by the society and the public. Thane also supplied another statement that women in the Victorian age would rather constantly and passively be oppressed in the family because they could not remain living independently without the family’s economic support. No matter what kind of cruel realities and hazards they had to encounter, Victorian women still thought the goal for a female was marriage and motherhood as they were taught to put all their effort to become the typical and trained women which fit the stereotype and the taste of the patriarchal society (Thane 182). Most of the Victorian women dreamed of being a wife and a mother, rather than to have a larger dream as to achieve success or to contribute to the nation or the - 29 -.

(36) society, as this “prominent achievement and profession” could only be fulfilled and executed by the male in the patriarchal societal structure. Women’s job in the family was to maintain the family function. To the Victorian empire, the motherhood could “promote the raising of the healthier national stock” (Thane 183) among the lower-class family because earlier in the century, good mothering was proposed as the contribution of the women to firm up the rapidly changing British society. The Victorians were convinced that a stable home could produce cautious and responsible citizens. Its additional purpose was to help to broaden Britain’s international position. The relationship between men and women in the Victorian family was more or less universally patriarchal. The Victorians believed that women were sexually dormant until their passions were aroused by the men. It seemed that when it came to protecting the family structure the society would leave the burden to women. The women held the key influence towards the family because they were responsible for the children’s care and the household chores but they were treated by the society unfairly. They did not own any authority and economic power in the family; instead, they needed to fit themselves to play the roles of a tender wife and competent mother. But, Mrs. Erlynne does not play the roles in Lady Windermere’s Fan, while Mrs. Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance holds her belief and sticks to her own choice rather than sacrificing herself to submit to the patriarchal family construction. “When it came to love and marriage, the Victorians were a curious mix of romance and realism” (Kerr-Jarrett 14), Kerr-Jarrett declared that the Victorians viewed family with some forces to balance with all of the elements of romance and realism, sentiment and hard common sense. The Victorians regarded the family as one unity, but if the mother parted with the sons and daughters, the family would fall into disgrace and stressful as they not only lost one of the family member, but also lost the reputation around the neighborhood. Therefore, neither Mrs. Erlynne nor Lord - 30 -.

(37) Windermere wants Lady Windermere to know the true identity of Mrs. Erlynne—the birth mother of Lady Windermere—because this will be too overwhelming to Lady Windermere. Both of them aim to protect Lady Windermere from any harm. Victorian families in general also developed a very clear social purpose. “It was the family, after all, that ‘civilised’ the individual human being, that—on a very practical level—made him or her a worthier, more useful member of the larger family of society” (Kerr-Jarrett 14-15). Therefore, the Victorians honored the family functions. Of course the Victorian family raised the position of the men in the family due to the patriarchal society that the men needed to be the “revered head, earning his family’s living and directing its relations with the outside world” (15). But the women’s status was certainly subordinate and limited. They could only stay at home, because home was all-important, and it would be a place for them to operate their functions as women, especially the function to influence their children. The Victorians thought that a perfect woman needed to be a wife and a mother because this “profession” was not only the center of the family, but also the magnet that could nurture and educate a man to become a civilized being and a social Christian. Therefore, the wife was definitely the light of the home (15). The basic level of the family life was marriage, therefore; on this subject, many young men and women respected marriage as a way to raise their economic and social position. Consequently, they looked forward to their ambitious parents to arrange their life for them, as marriage was a general means of “increasing one’s credit and one’s fortune and of ensuring one’s success in the world” (16). But, the middle-class Victorians in particular would put more emphasis on love in the marriage rather than the jump board of the financial and social status. Realistically, although many Victorians also supported that a successful and balanced marriage should be combined with love, they still considered about the material circumstances. In addition, they also considered - 31 -.

(38) that between fortunes and ages of both, there should be a rough parity to aviod that the wealth and possession would be advantaged to only one side. If not, the one who had better-established social status should offset all the possession. The Victorian young girls took love as an important subject in the marriage; but more significantly, their prior life business was looking for the right husband. Therefore, most of them entered marriage with ignorance and innocence. But for the men, being married “was always a sure badge of respectability” (17). Man was the head of the woman. A man was the “protector, chief breadwinner and head of the household” (Perkin 73) and could take charge of the wife and children, with them being obedient and submissive to his principles and rules. Perkin argues that “[m]arriage sanctified by religion was a sacrament, binding two people together for life” (73). By marriage, two became one person in law, but the men took the power over the women. Perkin continued to declare that the husband possessed the authentic authority: He had almost complete control over her body, and their children belonged to him. Unless a marriage settlement arranged things differently, the husband was entitled to all his wife’s property, and he could claim any money she earned. Indeed, as soon as a woman accepted a proposal of marriage, her property belonged entirely to the man. It was argued that ‘were she permitted to give away, or otherwise settle her property, he might be disappointed of the wealth he looked to in making the offer.’ The ironic thing was that in the Church of England marriage service a man promised to endow his wife with all his worldly goods, yet in practice it was the wife who forfeited her property to him. (73-74) To some extent, the Victorian women’s status and positions were pathetic and miserable; no matter being a wife or a mother, as men took charge in the family. That was how the patriarchal family was regarded as the essential and fundamental basis of - 32 -.