In An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Lady Chiltern lives to please her husband, even though he is not the “ideal” that she once esteemed him to be. The passage above is an almost verbatim passage that Lord Goring said to Lady Chiltern in his effort to persuade her to allow her husband, Robert Chiltern, to accept his Cabinet position. Here, she should say these words with a convincing tone because she has just been chastised by Lord Goring and feels strongly enough to reiterate what he said to her. When she says the lines, “Our lives revolve in curves of emotions” (l. 443-4), she should grab her hair with a look of frustration since women often manipulate their hair in a subconscious way to show their emotions. The background music should be played softly and have an echo of a wailing woman to show Lady Chiltern’s frail emotional state. At the end of her speech, she should raise her voice and be more emphatic to show that she is resolute and serious about convincing Robert Chiltern to accept the position.
This passage illustrates that Lady Chiltern is an easily manipulated character who engages other characters in actions that will suit her husband or benefit her own position. She has little regard for the implications of her decisions if it does not affect either her or her husband. For instance, when Lord Goring chastises her for not agreeing to persuade her husband to accept the seat in the Cabinet and he points out that a woman “who can keep a man’s love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women” (Wilde, 264), she immediately changes her mind and tries to persuade Robert Chiltern to accept the position. Prior to Lord Goring’s chastisement, Lady Chiltern did not want her husband to accept another political position, one that he earned from his strong moral character by revealing the inadequacy of the canal construction. Though he earned the offer through moral means (as opposed to revealing sensitive government information for money in his youth), Lady Chiltern almost robbed him of a chance to help society, as society would have benefitted from having a politician with a strong sense of moral character.
