SIR ROBERT: “The error all women commit… as I have lost it now.”
Lady Chiltern’s love is highly placed in Sir Robert’s mind, one that he can’t afford to lose or live without, which gives one a very valuable insight on Sir Robert’s emotional dependence.
Lady Chiltern’s love is very different from that of her spouse. Her love revolves around being morally upright and pure. As long as Sir Robert fulfilled these conditions, she loved him but forsaked him, when he told her of his moment of weakness.
LADY CHILTERN: “I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.”
Lady Chiltern’s love, like her, is rigid and uncompromising. It would be more fitting to call it worship, than love.
LADY CHILTERN: “We women worship when we love, when we lose our worship, we lose everything.”
Lady Chiltern is more in love with the idea of an ideal husband rather than her own husband. Her love, according to her, gives her a sixth sense about right and wrong, especially when it does not agree with her opinion if right and wrong.
LADY CHILTERN: “Robert, love gives one an instinct to things. I feel tonight that I have saved you from something that might have been a danger to you.”
On the other hand, her love can also be very nurturing and motherly at times, where one can often find her adopting a ‘I know best’ attitude, thus imposing upon and controlling Sir Robert like a puppet, through the power of her love.
Luckily, for the Chilterns, Lord Goring saves their marriage, by making Lady Chiltern realize that her rigidity and hart-hearted nature was the cause, how she needed to ease up with Sir Robert, and shim the true love she felt for him. Her love transitions from a cold love for an imaginary idea to a warm love for a real man, whom she accepted despite his faults and shortcomings.
Lord Goring is the dandy of the play, full of love for life, living life to its fullest. This is quite obvious by how he lives his in an amusing and sometimes trivial manner, worrying about button-holes. His manner of speech also indicates of a man who is high on life, using wit, sarcasm and humor to a large extent.
LORD GORING: “I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.”
Lord Goring, past his thirties, remains a bachelor, for most of the play, though he proposes to Mabel Chiltern, who accepts. However, Lord Goring had another romance before Mabel. We also discover that he as previously engaged to Mrs. Cheveley. The love between them is not supposed to be very strong, as Goring does not romantically trust her and believes her to be cheating on him. Their love might have been true for some time, largely from Goring’s side, and to some extent from Cheveley’s side, but it diminished with time, until only the semblance of love remained. Cheveley later claims that she never quite got over him, in Goring’s home, though Goring remains a skeptic still. He believes that Mrs. Cheveley’s love was for his social standing and wealth, rather than himself.
LORD GORING: “My dear Mrs. Cheveley, you have been far too clever to know anything about love.”
However, the love between Goring and Chiltern is very amusing. It is fresh and young love, complete with flirting and teasing, Ironically, Goring who is the ultimate Casanova and great at flirting, fails to acknowledge Mabel’s flirtations towards him.
MABEL CHILTERN: “If you knew anything about … anything, which you don’t, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you.”
Lastly, we talk about a love which requires no human companion, though one may be useful. The love and desire for money and social status. From the very beginning, we can see that Mrs. Cheveley is focused on acquiring wealth through the fraudulous Argentine Canal Scheme, at the expense of Sir Robert. For Mrs. Cheveley, everything plays second fiddle to wealth. Her relationship with Baron Arnheim proved to be quite profitable. She has been seen to attach herself to men with a high social standing and great wealth, like the Baron, Lord Goring and her two previous husbands.
However, there is a solitary moment where she confesses her love for Lord Goring. Though it is hard to tell whether her feelings are genuine or just another plot, it is certain that she does have a trace of feeling for Goring.
MRS CHEVELEY: “I loved you, Arthur.”
Mrs. Cheveley prefers to love material entities more than the human ones. Her love of scandal, money and social fame suggests that. As does her lack of compassion, and steely demeanor when dealing with Sir Robert.
Each of the main characters exhibits a different kind of love, some attributes match, while some differ greatly. However, this play still revolves around love in its various forms; thus playing an important and thematic role in the play.
by
zelix95 (student)
