Content area
Full Text
"London Society," according to Mrs Cheveley in An Ideal Husband (1895) is "entirely made up of dowdies and dandies."' Reported by Mrs Marchmont to Lord Goring, Mrs Cheveley's words have a far greater function than simply making her the centre of attention among this group of gossipy aristocrats and their various hangers-on. Her acute observations of London Society disclose that this particular milieu is dull and yet dazzling. Rather like the interest she manages to generate around her own persona, Mrs Cheveley's insights about this contrastive culture of "dowdies and dandies" have an element of sparkling wit about them while appearing not a little predictable to at least one of their company. For although Lord Goring tells Mrs Marchmont that Mrs Cheveley is in principle "quite right," his dandiacal instincts compel him to qualify how one might affirm this lively view of London Society. "The men are all dowdies," he says, "and the women are all dandies" (152). By this point, Mrs Marchmont is unsure whether or not she ought to agree. "Oh!" she exclaims, after a pause, "do you really think that is what Mrs Cheveley meant?" (152).
I begin with this exchange because it foregrounds at least two of the main issues at stake in Wilde's contentious handling of the late-Victorian Society comedy. The first is that these dramas constantly thrill the audience with their spectacular displays of the wealth enjoyed by these generally idle characters, only to reveal how grayly monotonous their everyday lives truly are. This play, after all, begins with Mrs Marchmont complaining that the Hartlocks give "Horribly tedious parties" (133), a view with which Lady Basildon wholly concurs. "Horribly tedious!" she exclaims. "Never know why I go. Never know why I go anywhere" (133). Yet the repetitious lifestyles of these people are framed by the grandeur of the stage setting which places them in a richly tapestried environment that cannot but impose its aesthetic qualities upon us. The dreary day-to-day rounds of the Season may well make Mrs Marchmont and Lady Basildon look rather bored with their world yet in spite of this -- if not because of it -- the stage directions insist that their "affecration of manner has a delicate cha-nl." For all their superficality, it is...