Fwd: 4711

To: seth weidenaar <sethweidenaar@gmail.com>

In a particularly small excerpt from Lady Windermere's Fan  we dive into the every  day life of a Duchess, a Lord and a Lady. We see their viewpoints and beliefs on women, men and their own social standing. The women have high standards for the people around them and they think highly of themselves. The Lord thinks highly as himself as well but also wants to be around the women and desires attention.

            The Lord is very cocky and thinks he is higher than most of the people around him. In lines 9-10 he is talking about others talking about him and says, "Of course they only say it behind my back." He thinks he is being talked about like everyone has something to say about him as if he's someone special. The Lord is also arrogant and stubborn. In lines 61-63 he says, "Because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it." He is stubborn this way because he uses analogies to explain real world problems because he does not want to face the reality of them.

            The Duchess of Berwick is very stuck up and rude. She judges everyone and what they do and how they do it. We see this in lines 14-16 when she says, "We have just had tea at Lady Markby's. Such bad tea, too. It was quite undrinkable. I wasn't at all surprised." She has to go on about a friend's tea as if she has nothing else to talk about. She thinks highly of her parties as well as in lines 24-25. She says, "Of course it's going to be select."

            Lady Windermere is similar to the Duchess and they have the same values. She too thinks highly of herself and the parties she's apart of. In lines 34-36 she says, "I will have no one in my house about whom there is any scandal." She does not want to be associated with any wrong or bad people and she makes that apparent.

            We also gain an insight of the nature of these characters' society is like. The Duchess says in lines 39-41, "Oh, men don't matter. With women its is different.. Our husbands would really forget our existence if we didn't nag at them from time to time, just to remind them that we have a perfect legal right to do so." We see here that in this society women are what matters and they have most of the say in things. In lines 48-49 the Lord says, "The wives hold all the honours and invariably lose the odd trick." The Lord is also commenting here on the society he lives in that the women have the power and the say over men.

            The women here are stuck up and the Lord is also. They think highly of themselves and judge the ones around them. They live in a society that only looks to women. Women must be great and have high standards. For the men, they really don't matter. They can do what they want as long as they leave the power to the women.