Panama Canal Scandal Analysis

Both Oscar Wilde and Christina Rossetti present the attractiveness of wrongdoing and fear of its consequences in both similar and different ways within An Ideal Husband and Rossetti’s Selected Poems. Rossetti and Wilde consider the attractiveness of wrongdoing under different themes. Wilde looks more at a political side of wrongdoing, whereas Rossetti considers wrongdoing in a religious sense. Mrs. Cheveley is a character that is very attracted to wrongdoing; this is evident in An Ideal Husband when she tries to blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern with the letter he wrote to Baron Arheim (who Robert Chiltern was an apprentice to) ‘insert quote.’ Within Victorian England, blackmail was considered religiously as a sin according to the Church of England. Mrs. Cheveley ‘persuades’ Chiltern …show more content…
The Panama Canal Scandal was a scandal in the 19th century which…Within the play as well she is claimed to have stolen a brooch by Lord Goring in which she is found and resolves the blackmail scandal. The brooch is a symbol of the evil woman – a woman who resembles a skin-shedding reptile in her duplicity. However, Mrs. Cheveley is willing to stop at nothing for her plan, which is suggested when she sends a letter to Robert Chiltern that Lady Chiltern had sent to Lord Goring “I want you, I need you, I’m coming to you” possibly hoping to suggest an affair going on between Lord Goring and Lady Chiltern and in turn breaking up Lady Chiltern and Robert Chiltern’s marriage. We can link this with a Christina Rossetti poem, ‘Maude Clare’ as Maude tries to break up the marriage between Thomas and Nell, but for a different reason as to why Mrs. Cheveley tries to break the marriage between Robert Chiltern and Lady Chiltern. Maude Clare ‘curses’ the marriage of Tom and Nell by the wedding gift in which she suggests to give to the couple. In the fifth stanza, with the repetition of “bought my gift” which