Social criticism in Oscar Wilde´s Lady Windermere´s Fan (ePub)

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 the
treatment of the genders; women were discriminated against in many fields of social
life.
Especially women of the upper and middle classes were not expected to be in
employment but to marry and to rear the children. They had an extremely restricted
choice of occupation as many professions refused entry to them, for example
becoming doctors or bankers represented an impossibility. According to Professor
George Peter Landow1, the range of female occupation facilities generally did not go
beyond domestic servant, dressmaker and milliner, factory worker, governess or
teacher, member of religious order, nurse, writer or prostitute. Usually, female labour
consisted only of running the household and offering a pleasant family home to their
husbands.
Since they did not earn any money with the work as domestic servants who fulfil
their duties as housewives and mothers, women were eager to get married and
depended on their authoritarian husbands. Girls were brought up to ignore their
sexual feelings and to obey their spouse as the head of the family. The whole
education of young ladies focused on future marriage and the efforts of the season
were to achieve this particular aim. Normally, the parents found the suitable partner
for 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 commercial
terms; the social status or the institution ¿marriage¿ itself seemed far more important
than the husband-to-be as a person. Society marriage could be seen as a mere
mercenary affair: "People did not marry for love so much as for the conveniences of
the 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.