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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Key Examples in An Ideal Husband
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
An Ideal Husband is set in London in the 1890s, at around the same moment in which it was written. The play unfolds in the grand residences of the London political elite—much of the play takes place in the morning room and “octagon room” of Sir Robert Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor square, but scenes also take place in Lord Goring’s own house and library. Wilde is quick to point out how such lavish accommodations bely complicated and sinister intentions. During Chiltern’s account of an interaction with the sinister Baron Arnheim, in Act 2, Part 1, Wilde writes that “luxury was nothing but a background, a painted scene in a play” in which the only thing that really mattered was “power, power over other men, power over the world.” This is, assuredly, a sentiment that Wilde saw reflected in the real political dealings of the 1890s.
