The Victorian Immoralities found in Oscar Wilde’s an Ideal Husband

ABSTRACT

This research examines immorality described in a drama text entitle An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde in Victorian era. An era which constitutes a period during Queen Victoria’s reign from her accession to the throne in 1837 to her death in 1901. The age, then, is recognized as the age of change, a change that embodied a formal manner and strict moral code. The moral standard then, called as Victorian morality.

An Ideal Husband is a social comedy drama published in 1893.It’s plot line conveys the idea that there are very few people in the world who are wholly good, most of them are hypocritical. This is an important message inside Oscar Wilde’s creation for the readers that nobody is perfect. The researcher tries to compare between the immoralities as described in the drama and Victorian society’s real social condition in which then created purposes to find out immoralities described in the drama and explore the satire described in the drama to Victorian society.

To achieve those objectives of the study: to find out immoralities described in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, to explore the causes of immoralities in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, and to explore Oscar Wilde’s satires to Victorian social condition through An Ideal Husband., the researcher applies Sociological approach which insists on the drama to the social phenomena of Victorian England. Since this study is emphasized on the analysis of literary work, then, it is classified as literary criticism. The primary data of the study are collected from Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and the secondary data gathered from England’s history in Victorian age in related anthologies of English literature.

Based on the research analysis, Victorian immoralities in the drama are: flippancy, irresponsibility, less hard work, and disrespectability. The immoralities can be seen through the dialogue along the play. From the dialogue, the researcher notices several phenomenons that describe the immoralities, especially in the major characters’ dialogues: Sir Robert Chiltern, Lady Gertrude Chiltern, Lord Arthur Goring, and Mrs. Cheveley. Then, the causes of immoralities are described through the drama’s plot. And the satire to Victorian social condition that is described through the main characters. The satire, then, compared to Victorian social condition which reflects 1890s Victorian.