| BNET Log In Join Search Winter, 2000 by Richard Dellamora The second line is spoken by Mrs. Allonby but is most apropos Illingworth's antagonist in the play, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the person whom Wilde, in a phrase that Irigaray could use to sum up the place of woman in Western culture, refers to as A Woman of No Importance. Mrs. Arbuthnot's position exemplifies what Irigaray sees as the situation of woman. Because of her locus within male exchange, Woman is submitted to all kinds of trials: she undergoes multiple and contradictory identifications, she suffers transformations of which she is not aware, since she has no identity, especially no divine identity, which could be perfected in love. Quite apart from an explicit violence on the part of men, . . . woman is subjected to a loss of identity which turns love into a duty, a pathology, an alienation for her. (Elemental Passions 2) In Wilde's play, Mrs. Arbuthnot becomes a focus of pathos because of her painful self-division. Early in life, she identified herself through an illicit passion with the aristocrat Illingworth, who threw her over after she became pregnant. In the play, he returns to take from her the son to whose existence she has sacrificed the remainder of her life. The potential scandal of the revelation of her abandonment by Illingworth drives the play's narrative: Will "Mrs." Arbuthnot be exposed to further suffering as a mother out of wedlock? Will her son's prospects be ruined? Will Illingworth be driven from society as a result of the revelation of his crimes? | |
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