Oscar Wilde, Social Purity, and An Ideal Husband

Oscar Wilde, Social Purity, and An Ideal Husband RICHARD DELLAMORA The Oscar Wilde who edited a magazme entitled The Woman's World between 1887 and 1889 was an enthusiastic supporter of the advent of women 's influence in politics: "The family ideal of the State may be difficult of attainment, but as an ideal it is better than the policeman theory. It would mean the moralisation of politics. The cultivation of separate sorts of virtues and separate ideals of duty in men and women has led to the whole social fabric being weaker and unhealthier than it need be."I Wilde's endorsement of this change, however, was by no means simple. He welcomed the advent of "the family ideal" in politics only on the condition that "separate ideals of duty in men and women" be abandoned. Within the context of social purity agitation o( the day, this phrase meant the abandonment of the double sexual standard for men and women as well as the doctrine of separate spheres, i.e., the doctrine that women should exercise influence within the home while public influence should be reserved to men. A change in "separate ideals" confined to these terms was liable to operate at the expense of the Wilde who, within a few years, was circulating as a "John" in London's male sex trade~ The erosion of separate spheres deprived Wilde of the sorts of protection that upper- and upper-middle-class men customarily enjoyed. Wilde had something else in mind when he prescribed the end of "separate ideals" for men and women. Wilde's version of socialism took as its fundamental principle the possibility of self-development for all individuals. On this basis, "the family ideal" definitely did not include a role for the state in defining and enforcing norms of sex and gender. Wilde rejected "sympathy," the central term of liberal humanist value, as an effective social norm. Instead, he recognized the need "to transform the material conditions which create and perpetuate suffering.,,2 Unless subject to challenge "the family ideal" was likely to depend upon the continued enforcement of a number of the "separate ideals of duty in men Modern Drama, 37 (1994) 120 An Ideal Husband 121 and women" that Wilde and feminists such as Josephine Butler and, later, Emmeline Pankhurst rejected. Moreover~ a subject of male-male desire had additional reasons to resist "the family ideal of the State" as it was vectored through mainstream social purity agitation. Already in 1885, the fight against the double standard of male sexual morality had led to passage of the Labouchere Amendment. This piece of legislation constituted an attack of the most serious sort on the civil rights of the group of men who would, by the early 1890s, begin to be referred to as homosexuals. In the Criminal Law Amendment Act, the objective of securing legal protection of young females from sexual exploitation had been secured at the expense of criminalizing another class of persons. A decade later, in the midst of the West End run of An Ideal Husband, Wilde would be arrested under the terms of the Act on charges of "gross indecency." An Ideal Husband focuses on the obsession with purity of a young woman who pursues female suffrage and other reforms through a working partnership with her husband, a rising politician. When she learns that his career was made possible at its outset by the betrayal of a cabinet secret, the assurances within which she lives desert her. She is forced to ask herself anew what truths to live by. The form, of Lady Chiltern's engagement - voluntary work conducted by the wife of an influential young politician - is consistent with the gradual modification of the "separate spheres" rule as a consequence of the active participation of women in social purity agitation. In this context, Lady Chiltem qualifies as one of the "New Women" of the I 890s, but if homosexuals and New Women were to be able to support "the family ideal of the State," "the moralisation of politics" needed to be re-imagined in new and radical terms. This problem, or more generally, the question as to how women's influence...