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Character Profile: Lady Chiltern (Adjectives (Grave (Serious, strict, aged…
Character Profile: Lady Chiltern
Adjectives
Grave
Serious, strict, aged beyond her years
Bewildered
Childish fear
Helpless
Child like, lost without security of perfect husband, dependent on husband, like child is to parents - status of women
Dreadful dream
Shocked, disbelieving, hard to come to terms with seeing her husband differently
Role in the play/ used as a device?
Lady Chiltern is the wife to Sir Robert Chiltern whom both idealise each other
Wilde uses her as a stock character of a strict puritan wife
Uses idealism between the married couple to demonstrate his own moral views exploring the danger of loving an ideal and thinking perfection is fact and not an opinion
Key quotations
Dialogue
'Robert must be above reproach' - Act two
'you are not a man to anything base or underhand or dishonourable' - Act One
'Robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing as he is of doing a wrong thing ' - Act Two
'Nothing could make her alter her views' - Act two - said by Robert Chiltern
Stage directions
'a woman of grave Greek beauty'
- Act one
Attitude to key themes
Morality
Has very strict moral beliefs
Forgiveness
Inflexible doesn't forgive
Idealism
Lady Chiltern idealises her husband and falls in love with her ideal version and gets a nasty shock when she finds out he isn't as perfect as she thought
Roles/expectations of women
Remain loyal and faithful to their husbands even if they disagree with what their husband is doing they have no political, social or marital power over their husband to change it
Consistent or change across the play
Consistent and doesn't change or stray from her beliefs even at the end of act 4 when she reconsiders and lets Robert take the position in the cabinet she ahs to be persuaded by Lord Goring beforehand