A Woman of No Importance

The first act of the play establishes the drawing room setting of the play: The play takes place at a party at Lady Hunstanton’s country estate in England. This act also sets up the central conflict of the play, which is the tension between public and private social expectations. Oscar Wilde creates a tone of satiric comedy through the dialogue between the wealthy women who attend the party—their conversation dominates the space. By depicting the high society environment of the time as one of hypocrisy, irony, and superficiality, Wilde mocks the absurdity of his contemporary Victorians.

The conversation between the women of the party introduces the theme of Women and Social Power, indicating how women are both oppressed by patriarchal society but also serve as key enforcers of social rules. Lady Caroline and Hester both lecture one another about appropriate behavior, while Mrs. Allonby mocks their sincerity and conspires with Lord Illingworth to corrupt Hester’s morals through an attempted seduction. Lady Hunstanton’s dialogues emphasize how she, as the host of the party, has selected her guests because she finds them charming and entertaining—not because she finds them worthy of respect or even memorable as people. For example, Lady Hunstanton recounts a story about a man who dies, quipping, “poor Lord Beltin died three days afterwards of joy, or gout. I forget which” (11). Her dialogue shows that she and the high society she represents value superficial beauty and cleverness far more than the morals they preach to others.

The role of women and the Gendered Double Standards of Victorian England are a key attribute of Act 1. Lord Illingworth is openly accepted—and even admired—in high society, despite his reputation as an immoral seducer of women. This shows how men can openly violate social rules as long as they are wealthy and charming. By contrast, Lord Illingworth describes women as “sphinxes without secrets” (37), indicating that women enjoy riddles and concealing the truth even when they have no actual secret to reveal. As a result of the strict social rules governing women’s behavior, women are forced to turn to secrets and concealment of even minor indiscretions in order to be accepted into society; this is what Lord Illingworth mocks, since he believes that the small secrets that many women keep are not even worthy of being hidden. This association between femininity and veiled truth culminates in the letter from Mrs. Arbuthnot at the end of the act. The play will go on to reveal that her private and public morality are entirely at odds: While Lady Hunstanton and the other characters consider Mrs. Arbuthnot to be a paragon of virtue, she in fact had a child out of wedlock, which is a shocking act for the time.