An Ideal Husband Important Quotes
1. “LORD CAVERSHAM: And if you don't make this lady an ideal husband, I'll cut you off without
a shilling.
MABEL CHILTERN: An ideal husband! Oh, I don't think I should like that. It sounds like
something in the next world.
LORD CAVERSHAM: He can be what he chooses. All I want is to be to be oh, a real wife to
him.
LORD CAVERSHAM: Upon my word, there is a good deal of common sense in that, Lady
Chiltern.”
The title phrase, "an ideal husband," appears in the penultimate dialogue of Act IV as the last
joke of the play. Mabel Chiltern and Lord Goring have just announced their engagement, and
Lord Caversham—emblematic of an older generation of London Society—issues the threat
quoted above to his dandified son. At the same time, Mabel and Goring have negotiated a
union that dispenses with question regarding the ideal behavior of the married couple. As
Mabel protests, the "ideal husband" belongs in heaven; Goring can be whatever he wants
while she wants to be his real wife who decidedly belongs to this world. Indeed, throughout
the play they have assumed an amoral pose, disparaging the demands of duty and
respectability. Their union thus in a sense counterpoises that of the upright Chilterns, who
have just reconciled and are also on the scene.
Humorously, Caversham concurs with his future daughter-in-law. His comment on "common
sense" recalls a comic interlude from Act III, in which he identifies common sense as a
property of men. Moreover, unbeknownst to him, he has addressed his comment to the
character who above all has learned the dangers of attempting to create an ideal spouse,
Lady Chiltern.
2. “There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can't you
women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all
feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing
their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for
that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are
wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us—
else what else is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives,
save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.”
Sir Robert makes this speech to Lady Chiltern at the end of Act II when Mrs. Cheveley reveals
his secret past to the Lady and the latter rejects Sir Robert in horror. It is a melodramatic
speech, drawn from the popular stage of Wilde's day; in this sense, it is conventional in both
content and style. A key passage in the play's treatment of the theme of marriage, it
establishes a difference between masculine love, which allows for or is even predicated on
imperfection, and feminine love, which mounts the lover on "monstrous pedestals" for
worship. As it is directed toward imperfect—and not ideal—beings, one might consider this
masculine form of love as more "human." For Sir Robert, masculine love is love in its proper
form, love that can cure the lover's wounds and forgive his sins.
Of course, the play ultimately does not assign this form of love to the man. Sir Robert's
speech is less a description of "masculine love" than an injunction to his wife. With the
reconciliation of the Chilterns in Act IV, the play will conclude that it is actually the woman's
role to forgive and nurture her husband in affairs of love, thus reaffirming a familiar model of
Victorian womanhood. As Lord Goring will tell Lady Chiltern in the final moments of the play,
"Pardon, not punishment, is [women's] mission." Stylistically, Sir Robert's outburst
1. “LORD CAVERSHAM: And if you don't make this lady an ideal husband, I'll cut you off without
a shilling.
MABEL CHILTERN: An ideal husband! Oh, I don't think I should like that. It sounds like
something in the next world.
LORD CAVERSHAM: He can be what he chooses. All I want is to be to be oh, a real wife to
him.
LORD CAVERSHAM: Upon my word, there is a good deal of common sense in that, Lady
Chiltern.”
The title phrase, "an ideal husband," appears in the penultimate dialogue of Act IV as the last
joke of the play. Mabel Chiltern and Lord Goring have just announced their engagement, and
Lord Caversham—emblematic of an older generation of London Society—issues the threat
quoted above to his dandified son. At the same time, Mabel and Goring have negotiated a
union that dispenses with question regarding the ideal behavior of the married couple. As
Mabel protests, the "ideal husband" belongs in heaven; Goring can be whatever he wants
while she wants to be his real wife who decidedly belongs to this world. Indeed, throughout
the play they have assumed an amoral pose, disparaging the demands of duty and
respectability. Their union thus in a sense counterpoises that of the upright Chilterns, who
have just reconciled and are also on the scene.
Humorously, Caversham concurs with his future daughter-in-law. His comment on "common
sense" recalls a comic interlude from Act III, in which he identifies common sense as a
property of men. Moreover, unbeknownst to him, he has addressed his comment to the
character who above all has learned the dangers of attempting to create an ideal spouse,
Lady Chiltern.
2. “There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can't you
women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all
feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing
their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for
that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are
wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us—
else what else is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives,
save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.”
Sir Robert makes this speech to Lady Chiltern at the end of Act II when Mrs. Cheveley reveals
his secret past to the Lady and the latter rejects Sir Robert in horror. It is a melodramatic
speech, drawn from the popular stage of Wilde's day; in this sense, it is conventional in both
content and style. A key passage in the play's treatment of the theme of marriage, it
establishes a difference between masculine love, which allows for or is even predicated on
imperfection, and feminine love, which mounts the lover on "monstrous pedestals" for
worship. As it is directed toward imperfect—and not ideal—beings, one might consider this
masculine form of love as more "human." For Sir Robert, masculine love is love in its proper
form, love that can cure the lover's wounds and forgive his sins.
Of course, the play ultimately does not assign this form of love to the man. Sir Robert's
speech is less a description of "masculine love" than an injunction to his wife. With the
reconciliation of the Chilterns in Act IV, the play will conclude that it is actually the woman's
role to forgive and nurture her husband in affairs of love, thus reaffirming a familiar model of
Victorian womanhood. As Lord Goring will tell Lady Chiltern in the final moments of the play,
"Pardon, not punishment, is [women's] mission." Stylistically, Sir Robert's outburst
