Social criticism in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan

Seminar paper from the year 2000 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5 (A), University of Trier (Literature Studies), course: Proseminar Oscar Wilde, language: English, abstract: Victorian England was puritan and it stressed self-discipline, patriotism, family,sexual morality, work and capitalism. There was a predominant inequality in thetreatment of the genders; women were discriminated against in many fields of sociallife. Especially women of the upper and middle classes were not expected to be inemployment but to marry and to rear the children. They had an extremely restrictedchoice of occupation as many professions refused entry to them, for examplebecoming doctors or bankers represented an impossibility. According to ProfessorGeorge Peter Landow1, the range of female occupation facilities generally did not gobeyond domestic servant, dressmaker and milliner, factory worker, governess orteacher, member of religious order, nurse, writer or prostitute. Usually, female labourconsisted only of running the household and offering a pleasant family home to theirhusbands. Since they did not earn any money with the work as domestic servants who fulfiltheir duties as housewives and mothers, women were eager to get married anddepended on their authoritarian husbands. Girls were brought up to ignore theirsexual feelings and to obey their spouse as the head of the family. The wholeeducation of young ladies focused on future marriage and the efforts of the seasonwere to achieve this particular aim. Normally, the parents found the suitable partnerfor their child and they intervened in case of an undesirable liaison. In other terms,they made the decisions for their daughters. They thought mainly in commercialterms; the social status or the institution marriage itself seemed far more importantthan the husband-to-be as a person. Society marriage could be seen as a meremercenary affair: People did not marry for love so much as for the conveniences ofthe families concerned; all marriages were in this sense arranged . 2 [...]1 George Peter Landow, Occupation and employment, Brown University, online,available:http://Landow.stg.brown.edu/Victorian/gender/political.html, 20 August 2000. 2 Christopher Lasch, Divorce and the Family in America, November 1966, online,available:http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/family/divorce.htm, 15 August 2000.