MASKING & IDEALISM

(R) CONTEXT

Worked at the St Mary Magdeline’s penitentiary from 1859 to 1870, with fallen women who were, consequentially, social outcasts.
Unyeilding expectation of women as the guardians of the Nation’s morals and uncompassionate consequences for those with “a past.”

(R) POETRY

(W) AN IDEAL HUSBAND

Woman with a Past carries with her the burden of natural determinism as she is inevitably shunned from society



Society’s morally absolutist, Puritanism is the reason that duplicity, secrecy and masking fester in the most noble and upstanding institutions:

  • (GC) "One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged."
  • (GC) "Circumstances should never alter principles!"

MASKING explored most keenly through institutions/establishments and through Mrs Cheveley:

  • "Shows the influence of too many schools" (Stage Directions in Act 1) & in the first production in 1895, she wore an "evening frock trimmed with an entire flock of dead swallows." [page 15 of book? credit?] hyperbolic and aesthetically overstated so as to distract from her amorality.


  • Act 3: "Mask has fallen"

  • Act 1, "Genius in the day time and a beauty at night." (LG in relation to MC)
  • Being natural "is such a very difficult pose to keep up"

FEMININE IDEAL:
Lady Basildon and Lady Marchmont adhere to/uphold the archaic nation of femininity and are dissatisfied in doing so.

  • Lady Basildon, "I never take supper, thank you, Vicomte."
    "What martyrs we are dear Margaret!"
    "We have married perfect husbands and we are well punished for it."

MASKING

  • The narrator in Winter; My Secret can be linked to Mrs Cheveley. The hyperbolic, overstated rhyme scheme, "It froze and blows and snows" and use of clothing "Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all." serves to distract and protect from her inherent vulnerability

STOICISM
Twice, "Broke, but I did not wince", "I smiled at the speech you spoke" - enduring for the fear of ostracism and social consequence

INSTITUTIONAL IDEALISM
Institution of marriage and courting?


Maude Clare: "Your father thirty years ago had just your tale to tell" (analepsis, transgenerality)


memorialisation, death & commemoration
gender and feminine ideals


Reality:


Remember: "When you can no longer hold me by the hand", "You tell me of our future that you plann'd" - unwelcome restraint and imbalance of power


Maude Clare: Thomas, Nell and Maude Clare all described as "pale" - unifies by pallour and discontent that the traditions of the institution of marriage impose


"He's my Lord for better and worse" - Nell submitting and prolonging/upholding a corrupt institution


Twice: "It is still ripe. Better wait awhile...Till the corn grows brown." (commodification of women)
Posits a metaphorical marriage to God/faith, "All that I have I bring, All that I am I give"

Lack of taste correlates to/is indicative of moral failings?


Conventional notions of the feminine ideal under review (demonstrated through the characters of Gertrude and Mabel Chiltern and the 1890s New Woman)
Challenging and ideal which leaves women's identity, physical and financial freedoms contingent on the men in their lives: "We women worship when we love, and when we loose our worship we loose everything." - alludes to the destructive and fatal consequence of divorce (preempting Constance's suffering in the liklehood of Wilde being outed for his same-sex liasons)