Explore Wilde’s Presentation of Women in “A Woman of No Importance”

A woman of no importance was written late in the Victorian period and was first published in 1893. This was a time of change in traditional English society, the class system, that has stood in place for so many years, was brought into question, a long with the role of women in society with early ideas of gender equality and ‘women’s suffrage’ campaigns. In ‘A woman of no importance’ Wilde explores these changing views and offers several, contrasting presentations of women that existed in Upper Class Victorian society, which I will explore in this essay.
One presentation, which some may perceive as the most obvious one, is that women are weak, feeble creatures who need male influence in their lives in order to be able to function. There are several examples of women being presented this way throughout the play; firstly, the way in which Mrs Arbuthnot is shown to be completely dependent on the males in her life throughout the play, firstly on George Harford, and then on Gerald. In the passionate speech she makes to Gerald at the end of act 3 she tells him, in the third person, of her undying love for George she felt at the age of eighteen, ‘he made her love him so much that she left her father’s house’, for her to leave her home and ‘(to break her) father’s heart’, Rachel must have felt that she could not live without George, showing her total devotion and dependence on him.
Earlier in the play, we see how dependent Mrs Arbuthnot later becomes, on her son, Gerald when she begs Lord Illingworth to ‘leave (her) the walled-in garden and the well of water; the ewe-lamb God sent (her)’, the repetition of the phrase ‘leave me’ in this section emphasises Mrs Arbuthnot’s desperation, suggesting, again, her total dependence on the man in her life. We can also see how she is shown to be fragile and in