Thursday, December 16, 2010

Lady Windermere's Fan: by Oscar Wilde.

With a name like that you would expect a delightful comedy, and you would be wrong - this one begins to break heart right from the word go. There is the very young Lady Windermere with her new husband she is very much in love with and the friend of the couple who is in love with her, and the whole society buzzing with the woman of disrepute new in town who the said husband has recently taken up with, including paying her very expensive bills; she even almost blackmails him to give her more money, and he is unable to refuse. The woman is audacious enough to make acquaintance of Lady Windermere herself, which might compromise the latter in view of the reputation of the former, and has boldness enough to demand that the husband gets her invited to the party the wife is throwing. The husband is desperate enough to ask, the wife refuses in all rectitude, and the husband sends out the invitation anyway in the wife's name, normally a privilege and a right that belongs solely to her. The wife upon seeing the woman she has not invited informs him she shall strike the woman with her fan, a public insult he implores her not to offer - and she lacks the courage to do so. Then she sees the huge amount he has paid out to the woman, and decides it is time to leave him, and takes support of the very persuasive friend who has been attempting to convince her he will be a far more faithful lover than the husband - of course he is not about to remind her of the life of ignominy she shall live thereafter as either an adulteress or as a divorcée, or worse if the said lover abandoned her.

And then comes the full knowledge offered by the author to the reader (but it is to be kept from the innocent young bride for her own security) and the twists that save her, and too the "other" woman. The end is truly delightful, after all the heartbreaks through the whole play.