Not knowing any better because I am only given a snippet from Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan, I have to think that is a revolutionary feminist play. Wilde reveals the silent hardships of women in the most mundane way: letting people talk in a room.
The scene begins with everybody (Lord Darlington, Duchess of Berwick, and Lady Windermere) meeting each other. The interesting aspect to this beginning is that the Duchess of Berwick, not Lord Darlington controls the room's conversation. This is a weird scenario because in the 1800s, men were expected to be the ones to initiate the conversation while the women were expected to fill the holes and dropped hums of the conversation. This is shown when the Duchess of Berwick is the first to speak. Not only is she the first to speak, but also she uses her time to …show more content…
A specific example of this between Lord Darlington and the Duchess of Berwick is after her remark about marriage, in which is the one about being shoved into the corners. Lord Darlington retorts calling marriage a game. A game that let's women win--almost all of the time. This sets up a feud between the two because Lord Darlington is contradicting the Duchess of Berwick's passionate claim about a woman's lack of power. However, Lord Darlington doesn't mean what he says. He even admits later on that he isn't speaking seriously because, as he explains, "life is far too important of a thing to every talk seriously about it" (62). This is something, though, that the Duchess of Berwick does not understand.
Sitting down and talking should not be revolutionary, but Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan made it so. Lord Darlington's cunning remarks and the Duchess of Berwick's urge to reform the propriety of women's standards allows for a very serious argument back then: is it time to be serious about women's
The scene begins with everybody (Lord Darlington, Duchess of Berwick, and Lady Windermere) meeting each other. The interesting aspect to this beginning is that the Duchess of Berwick, not Lord Darlington controls the room's conversation. This is a weird scenario because in the 1800s, men were expected to be the ones to initiate the conversation while the women were expected to fill the holes and dropped hums of the conversation. This is shown when the Duchess of Berwick is the first to speak. Not only is she the first to speak, but also she uses her time to …show more content…
A specific example of this between Lord Darlington and the Duchess of Berwick is after her remark about marriage, in which is the one about being shoved into the corners. Lord Darlington retorts calling marriage a game. A game that let's women win--almost all of the time. This sets up a feud between the two because Lord Darlington is contradicting the Duchess of Berwick's passionate claim about a woman's lack of power. However, Lord Darlington doesn't mean what he says. He even admits later on that he isn't speaking seriously because, as he explains, "life is far too important of a thing to every talk seriously about it" (62). This is something, though, that the Duchess of Berwick does not understand.
Sitting down and talking should not be revolutionary, but Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan made it so. Lord Darlington's cunning remarks and the Duchess of Berwick's urge to reform the propriety of women's standards allows for a very serious argument back then: is it time to be serious about women's