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An Ideal Husband

Oscar Wilde

Book Overview: 

A comedy/drama which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honor. The action is set in London and takes place within a single day. “Sooner or later,” Wilde notes, “we shall all have to pay for what we do.” But he adds that, “No one should be entirely judged by their past.”

The book has been adopted into several films including a recent popular big screen movie starring Julianne Moore, Minnie Driver, Jeremy Northam, Cate Blanchett and Rupert Everett.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .I am afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean.

mrs. cheveley.  [Leaning back on the sofa and looking at him.]  How very disappointing!  And I have come all the way from Vienna in order that you should thoroughly understand me.

sir robert chiltern.  I fear I don’t.

mrs. cheveley.  [In her most nonchalant manner.]  My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose.  Everybody has nowadays.  The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive.  I know I am.  I hope you will be more reasonable in your terms.

sir robert chiltern.  [Rises indignantly.]  If you will allow me, I will call your carriage for you.  You have lived so long abroad, Mrs. Cheveley, that you seem to be unable to realise that you are talking to an English gentleman.

mrs. cheveley.  [Detains him by touching his arm with her fan, and keeping. . . Read More

Community Reviews

This play belonging to the 1890s depicts the hypocritical aristocratic group of people from London. It in all perceptibility and plausibility delineates that the concept of “an ideal husband” is just a misnomer

i was destined to be an oscar wilde character but i have been plagued with the most random bits of social anxiety and my whole life is ruined now

Don't put your partner on a pedestal.
That's really the first mistake you make in a relationship.
Except for those people who write jailhouse love letters to serial killers. But that's a whole nother level of mistake and Wilde didn't cover it in this particular play.

Ok, so if you don't already know,

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 play by Oscar Wilde, his third most popular work after The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it Wilde explores hypocrisy, corruption, forgiveness and other themes with his trademark epigrammatic humor.

Sir Robert Chiltern, a moral, upstanding

I'm going to say this for the millionth time: Oscar Wilde is a freaking genius. Everything he writes is pure gold. I love his sense of humour, and his writing. He was a great man (treated badly by the society in which he lived) and a great writer too. I wish I could let him know that.

This play was a

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