A Woman of No Importance program from 1930

A Woman of No Importance book cover, New Mermaids edition (softback)

A Woman of No Importance is a play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. The play, published in 1893 and first performed at London's Haymarket Theatre in the same year, is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of dark comedy. It looks in particular at English upper class society and has been reproduced on stages in Europe and North America since his death in 1900. A film based on this play is in production and is due to be released in 2008. Image File history File links Awoniperformance. ... Image File history File links Awoniperformance. ... Image File history File links Awoni. ... Image File history File links Awoni. ... Template:Unsourced A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is someone who writes dramatic literature or drama. ... Oscar Fingal OFlahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, short story writer and Freemason. ... 1893 (MDCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Comedy has a classical meaning (comical theatre) and a popular one (the use of humour with an intent to provoke laughter in general). ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Europe at its furthest extent, reaching to the Urals. ... World map showing North America A satellite composite image of North America. ... 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, but a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. ...

Plot

The scene is set in an English country house - Hunstanton (Lady Hunstanton's property). The curtains open to the terrace where we are introduced to Lady Caroline who are engaging in conversation with their American Puritan guest Hester Worsley. The discussion is joined by the powerful, charming and charismatic gentleman, Lord Illingworth who has offered the post of secretary to the fortunate Gerald Arbuthnot. Gerald's mother is invited to join the party, after arrival she realises this offer is more complicated than it seems, as Illingworth is the father of her illegitimate son, Gerald, who refused marriage all those years ago. The tension mounts when Mrs. Arbuthnot is caught between telling her son the truth or allowing him to go with the man who spoilt her life. Gerald finds out about his mother's past in a spectacularly Wildean moment of melodrama - after trying to kill Lord Illingworth for kissing Hester Worsley - a woman with whom he is very much in love.

The play concludes with Gerald, Hester and Mrs. Arbuthnot leaving England for America to live in a society where she will not be judged so harshly.

Summary of Acts

ACT I

Introduces the society characters and sets up the underlying relationships and themes.

• Lady Caroline patronises Hester Worsely and Hester's preference of Gerald Arbuthnot.
• Lord Illingworth's job offer to Gerald; which, in turn, causes Lady Hunstanton to write to Gerald's mother, Mrs. Arbuthnot and invite her to the Hunstanton.
• Wilde aslo introduces several "running gags" like Lady Caroline's insistance of referring to Mr. Kelvil as "Kettle" and her constant nagging of Sir John.
• Mr. Kelvil is not a necessary character (In terms of plot) but is used to show up both the hypocrisy of the public middle class man, while also providing opportunities for the upper class to reveal their complacent prejudice and ignorance.
• The audience is made aware of the relationship between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby, when he accepts her challenge to kiss the puritan, Hester. Their flirtatious exchange culminates in his reading of Mrs. Arbuthnot's letter and being reminded of someone he once knew, whom he dismisses as "a woman of no importance."

ACT II

Beginning of Act II shows the ladies on their own, which gives the audience an opportunity to observe their relationships and their attitudes to men.

• Interesting difference in opinion between Lady Caroline , who says that any man in love with a married woman "should be married off in a week to some plain, respectable girl, in order to teach them not to meddle with other people's property" and Mrs. Allonby, who contradicts her, saying that women should not "be spoken of as other people's property."
• Wilde puts the socially conventional view into the mouth of a woman who bullies her husband (Lady Caroline), while Mrs. Allonby gives herself away as a female predator, while masquerading as a frivolous wit.
• This section of the play also provides the audience with Hester's views on the superioty of the American way of life, where "true American society concsists simply of all the good women and good men we have in our country." The obvious unlikelihood of this suggests her youth and naiveté, and her views on "fallen women" coincide dramatically with Mrs. Arbuthnot's unannounced appearance behind her. [An appearance mirrored in Act IV, by Hester's own unannounced appearance during Mrs. Arbuthnot's speech on marriage.]
• When the gentlemen return, Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Arbuthnot meet, followed by the confrontation wherein the audience learns of their past history. The Act ends dramatically after Lord Illingworth challenges Mrs. Arbuthnot to give Gerald the reason he cannot accept the post he has been offered. Then father and son go off, leaving her alone.

ACT III

The start of Act III gives the audience an opportunity to see Lord Illingworth and Gerald together and form and opinion of what kind of father he would be.

• Lord Illingworth begins by praising Mrs. Arbuthnot as a "thoroughly sensible woman", but then later undermines her by saying that a mother's love can be "curiously selfish."
• There is considerable dramatic irony in the exchange where Gerald's father is discussed, "I sometimes think she must have married beneath her." Gerald means this in the sense of social class, but it can be taken to mean morally, in which case he's right.
• He and Lord Illingworth discuss society, women and love, but the conversation mainly consists of Gerald asking questions and Lord Illingworth giving witty answers.
• Following this, the company seems to have divided itself into couples, symbolic of the way they behave in private, with the partners changing discretely at intervals.
• In order to give Hester time to talk to Mrs. Arbuthnot, Wilde ensures that Gerald first takes his leave of Lord Illingworth. Hester says, "You are so different from the other women here... somehow you brought with you a sense of what is good and pure in life."In one sense this is dramatic irony, since the society she is part of would consider Mrs. Arbuthnot to be a "fallen woman", but in the eal moral sense, she is good.
• Later, Gerald re-appears leading to a conversation about the job opportunity - which ends in Gerald being allowed to go whenever he wishes. Just at the point where he has what he wants, he learns the truth about the man he admires. He saves Hesters from Lord Illingworths unwanted advances, and the Act ends on the melodramatic line from Mrs. Arbuthnot, "Stop, Gerald, Stop! He is your own father."

ACT IV

Act IV takes place the following morning at Mrs. Arbuthnot's house. The audience is aware of Hester's puritan views about sinners and are presumably wondering what Gerald is going to do.

• The delay at the start of Act IV comes from Lady Hunstanton and Mrs. Allonby who are unaware of the dramatic events at the end of Act III.
• The exit of Lady Hunsatnton and Mrs. Allonby coincides with Mrs. Arbuthnots entrance which then leads to her argument with Gerald about marrying Lord Illingworth.
• This subject allows Mrs. Arbuthnot to make her passionate speech about marriage and about mother-love, which Hester is brought to overhear. The two women are brought together by mutual feelings as well as their love for Gerald.
• Only when their future is settled, does Wilde bring Lord Illingworth into the scene for a final confrontation. His desire to help his son and to take him with him is denied by Mrs. Arbuthnot, even after his offer of marriage.
• Lord Illingworth leaves on one final melodramatic flourish as Mrs. Arbuthnot strikes him with his glove. (Interesting as it had been discussed between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby in Act I, only with Hester doing the striking).
• The two "mirrored" situations in the play are both concerned with Mrs. Arbuthnot and Hester - reinforces their similarity.
• The play ends with Hester wanting to be Mrs. Arbuthnot's daughter and the final line about "a woman of no importance" as revenge is complete.

Burnt Face Man 11:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Characters of the Play

• Lord Illingworth

He is a man of about 45 and a bachelor. He is witty and clever and a practised flirt, who knows how to make himself agreeable to women. He is Mrs. Arbuthnot's former lover and seducer and the father of Gerald Arbuthnot. Also, he has a promising diplomatic career and is shortly to become Ambassador to Vienna. He enjoys the company of Mrs. Allonby, who has a similar witty and amoral outlook to his own, and who also engages in flirting.His accidental acquaintance with Gerald, to whom he offers the post of private secretary, sets in motion the chain of events that form the main plot of the play.

• Mrs. Arbuthnot

Apparently a respectable widow who does good work among the poor and is a regular churchgoe. She declines invitations to dinner parties and other social amusements, although she does visit the upper class characters at Lady Hunstanton's, since they all appear to know her and her son, Gerald. However, the audience soon realise that she has a secret past with Lord Illingworth who is the father of her son, Gerald.

• Gerald Arbuthnot
• Miss Hester Worsely
• Lady Jane Hunstanton
• Mrs. Allonby
• Lady Caroline Pontefract
• The Ven. Archdeacon Daubeny, D.D.
• Lady Stutfield
• Mr. Kelvil, M.P.
• Lord Alfred Rufford
• Sir John Pontefract

• Farquhar, Butler
• Francis, Footman
• Alice, Maid

External links

• A Woman of No Importance, available at Project Gutenberg.
• A Woman of No Importance at IBDB
• A Woman of No Importance at IMDB