Over the course of the third act, the underlying dramatic irony increases, which builds towards the play's climax. The men, sitting around talking in Lord Darlington's rooms, have no idea that Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne are in the room with them, hidden from view.
Lord Darlington provides another source of dramatic irony when he begins to talk about the woman he loves. While the audience knows that Lord Darlington is talking about Lady Windermere, Lord Windermere has no idea. She is present for the whole conversation, and is one of the only characters who knows—from the start—who Lord Darlington is talking about.
LORD DARLINGTON The woman I love is not free, or thinks she isn’t. (Glances instinctively at Lord Windermere while he speaks)
CECIL GRAHAM A married woman, then! Well, there’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about.
Lord Darlington's brief glance at Lord Windermere creates further tension and excitement on the part of the audience. Cecil Graham's comment pushes the dramatic irony even further. Speaking to the passion of the forbidden, he claims that husbands do not receive the same love that a lover receives. Besides Lord Darlington, none of the men realize that the married man involved in the love triangle being discussed is right there in the room with them.
Another layer of irony is added to this by the fact that the married woman's devotion is reserved for her husband—but only by escaping the room can she prove it. Throughout the play, characters share cynical takes on love and marriage. However, the relationship between Lady Windermere and Lord Windermere proves that marriage can be grounded in love. The overarching reason their marriage is nearly brought to ruin is that they listen to other people's pessimistic and bleak views regarding the inevitability of deceit and adultery.
Throughout the play, characters consistently use the same figurative language to describe female ruin. Mrs. Erlynne, who has been through it herself, especially uses words like brink, precipice, abyss, pit, and falling to describe what happens when a woman leaves her husband. Degradation as a depth and shame as a pit return repeatedly as motifs.
The metaphor of shame as a hole women fall into appears for the first time in the third act, when Mrs. Erlynne goes to Lord Darlington's place to retrieve Lady Windermere. She warns Lady Windermere that she is "on the brink of ruin" and "on the brink of a hideous precipice." Soon after, she says there is "nothing in the world" she would not dare to do to save her "from the abyss into which [she] is falling."
Mrs. Erlynne's entreaties form some of the most stirring moments in the whole play, as the audience knows why she's so familiar with this so-called brink—not to mention why she's so attached to Lady Windermere's wellbeing. Although the older woman has until this point been characterized as cynical and scrupulous, this part of Act III shows that she has a soft, self-sacrificial interior. She can't reveal her secrets to Lady Windermere, but she puts great effort into convincing her that she knows what she's talking about:
You don’t know what may be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don’t know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at—to be an outcast!
This metaphor is related to the idea of the fallen woman. Mrs. Erlynne's warnings make it clear that, for women, a ruined reputation is irreversible. Once she has fallen into the pit, she will never make it out. Her serious, intense tone is worth contrasting with the light, playful tone of men like Cecil Graham when they joke about divorce in other parts of the play. While men have the privilege of discussing divorce with levity, women use dramatic metaphors to conceive of what faces them on the other side.
The metaphor of the brink also appears in a description of emotional ruin. When Lady Windermere tells Lord Windermere that she wants to see Mrs. Erlynne in Act IV, he warns her that she "may be on the brink of a large sorrow." This produces dramatic irony, as the audience has heard that word and idea repeated multiple times throughout the play. Unlike the audience, he doesn't know that he was recently on the brink of both sorrow and scandal. Lord Windermere's use of Mrs. Erlynne's term highlights his unwavering faith in his wife's goodness.
Lady Windermere herself turns to this motif in Act IV, when describing her new worldview to her husband. Unlike before, when she thought good and evil were distinct, easily defined categories, she now understands that "good and evil, sin and innocence, go through [the world] hand in hand." She says that shutting one's eyes to "half of life" in order to "live securely" is tantamount to blinding oneself in order to "walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice." She tells Lord Windermere that she herself "came to [the] brink" because she shut her eyes to life.
In the third act, the motif of the brink encapsulates the severe consequences women have to face when their perceived innocence has been compromised. In the fourth act, the motif comes to be linked to Lady Windermere's expanded conception of goodness.
After a steady stream of hints over the course of the first three acts, the audience has no doubt regarding the nature of the relationship between Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne by the fourth act. Lady Windermere, however, remains in the dark. This produces an underlying dramatic irony, which is accentuated when the two women discuss their shared first name. Whereas Mrs. Erlynne knows the origin of this commonality, Lady Windermere believes it's a remarkable coincidence.
The supposed coincidence comes up when they discuss the name of Lady Windermere's baby, who she named after her father. She adds that if the baby had been a girl, she would've named it after her mother.
LADY WINDERMERE My mother had the same name as myself, Margaret.
MRS ERLYNNE My name is Margaret too.
LADY WINDERMERE Indeed!
Based on her conversation with Lord Darlington in the first act, the audience knows that Lady Windermere believes her mother died when she was "a mere child." The strength of this conviction is why she doesn't put two and two together when she meets this woman named Margaret who is just old enough to be her mother—even if the connection seems obvious to the audience.
The tension produced by this dramatic irony is once again brought to the fore later in the same act, when Mrs. Erlynne asks for Lady Windermere's fan.
LADY WINDERMERE Oh, certainly, if it will give you any pleasure. But it has my name on it. It has ‘Margaret’ on it.
MRS ERLYNNE But we have the same Christian name.
LADY WINDERMERE Oh, I forgot. Of course, do have it. What a wonderful chance our names being the same!
Briefly forgetting that their names are the same, which shows just how little she's read into the reasons for this connection, Lady Windermere wonders why another woman would want a fan with her name on it. The audience, however, knows that even if they didn't share the same name, Mrs. Erlynne would want a fan with her daughter's name on it. The conundrum is solved for Lady Windermere when she remembers that they have the same name, as she assumes that Mrs. Erlynne will let the "Margaret" on the fan refer to herself rather than the person it was originally intended for. For Mrs. Erlynne, however, this name represents a number of things, including her daughter, herself, and their bond.
Mrs. Erlynne would much rather let Lady Windermere "cherish the memory of this dead, stainless mother" than reveal her identity and assume the mother role that she escaped two decades prior. Going through her reasons to Lord Windermere, she explains that she wants to continue living a "childless" life. As a result, Mrs. Erlynne leaves London in possession of the secrets of both Lord and Lady Windermere. The wife and husband have secrets they were tempted to tell each other but that Mrs. Erlynne convinces them to keep bottled up.
With this, the dramatic irony that has built throughout the play carries on without any grand reveals among the characters. The web of secrets that they have increasingly spun over the course of the four acts is never broken. Wilde ultimately seems to suggest to the audience that the key to a happy marriage is knowing which secrets to keep to oneself.
Throughout the play, characters consistently use the same figurative language to describe female ruin. Mrs. Erlynne, who has been through it herself, especially uses words like brink, precipice, abyss, pit, and falling to describe what happens when a woman leaves her husband. Degradation as a depth and shame as a pit return repeatedly as motifs.
The metaphor of shame as a hole women fall into appears for the first time in the third act, when Mrs. Erlynne goes to Lord Darlington's place to retrieve Lady Windermere. She warns Lady Windermere that she is "on the brink of ruin" and "on the brink of a hideous precipice." Soon after, she says there is "nothing in the world" she would not dare to do to save her "from the abyss into which [she] is falling."
Mrs. Erlynne's entreaties form some of the most stirring moments in the whole play, as the audience knows why she's so familiar with this so-called brink—not to mention why she's so attached to Lady Windermere's wellbeing. Although the older woman has until this point been characterized as cynical and scrupulous, this part of Act III shows that she has a soft, self-sacrificial interior. She can't reveal her secrets to Lady Windermere, but she puts great effort into convincing her that she knows what she's talking about:
You don’t know what may be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don’t know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at—to be an outcast!
This metaphor is related to the idea of the fallen woman. Mrs. Erlynne's warnings make it clear that, for women, a ruined reputation is irreversible. Once she has fallen into the pit, she will never make it out. Her serious, intense tone is worth contrasting with the light, playful tone of men like Cecil Graham when they joke about divorce in other parts of the play. While men have the privilege of discussing divorce with levity, women use dramatic metaphors to conceive of what faces them on the other side.
The metaphor of the brink also appears in a description of emotional ruin. When Lady Windermere tells Lord Windermere that she wants to see Mrs. Erlynne in Act IV, he warns her that she "may be on the brink of a large sorrow." This produces dramatic irony, as the audience has heard that word and idea repeated multiple times throughout the play. Unlike the audience, he doesn't know that he was recently on the brink of both sorrow and scandal. Lord Windermere's use of Mrs. Erlynne's term highlights his unwavering faith in his wife's goodness.
Lady Windermere herself turns to this motif in Act IV, when describing her new worldview to her husband. Unlike before, when she thought good and evil were distinct, easily defined categories, she now understands that "good and evil, sin and innocence, go through [the world] hand in hand." She says that shutting one's eyes to "half of life" in order to "live securely" is tantamount to blinding oneself in order to "walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice." She tells Lord Windermere that she herself "came to [the] brink" because she shut her eyes to life.
In the third act, the motif of the brink encapsulates the severe consequences women have to face when their perceived innocence has been compromised. In the fourth act, the motif comes to be linked to Lady Windermere's expanded conception of goodness.
