Throughout the play, the male characters employ a large amount of paradox and verbal irony. Turning aphorisms and clichés on their head, the men use language that often toes the line between provocative and inappropriate. The effect of this is a large amount of puzzling, but ultimately witty, wordplay.
Pretty much any time they are on stage, characters like Cecil Graham, Dumby, and Lord Darlington express ideas that a woman would have to be more careful with at the time. Additionally, many of their lines revolve around making fun of and upstaging each other with witty wordplay. In one instance, Cecil Graham makes light of Lord Augustus and his failed marriages:
By the way, Tuppy, which is it? Have you been twice married and once divorced, or twice divorced and once married? I say you’ve been twice divorced and once married. It sounds so much more probable.
This conclusion is, of course, absurd, as it isn't possible to be divorced more times than one has been married. Cecil Graham's paradoxical verbal irony nevertheless captures a kernel of truth. By saying that Lord Augustus has been divorced more than he's been married, Cecil Graham implies that his friend is more adept at getting divorced than staying married. Whether present on stage or present in other characters' dialogue, Lord Augustus is continually the butt of people's jokes. He lacks the self-awareness and quickness of wit required to keep up with banter, to defend himself, and to get back at his taunting friends.
Cecil Graham's insult is punchy in part for its paradox and irony, and in part because it draws on the stigma of divorce. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was still very controversial to get divorced. However, the stigma of a ruptured marriage fell to a much greater degree on divorced women than on divorced men. This is why the men can make jokes about divorce: it is just controversial enough that Cecil Graham can use it for fodder in his mockery, but not inappropriate in the way that it would be if a woman tried her hand at a similar joke.
Throughout the play, the permission to treat marriage and divorce playfully in speech and action is primarily reserved for men. Lady Windermere, the play's most respected woman, takes marriage very seriously and would never make jokes about divorce. A woman who treats marriage and divorce with the same levity as Cecil Graham, like Mrs. Erlynne, inevitably becomes a personification of infamy.
At multiple moments in the first two acts, the Duchess of Berwick talks about Lady Agatha as though she were a talkative girl. These characterizations are ironic because, as far as the audience can tell, Lady Agatha barely talks at all. Of the mother and daughter pair, Lady Berwick is the talkative one by a wide margin. Lady Agatha never says anything but "Yes, mamma" throughout the entire play.
The first of these inaccurate characterizations appears when the Duchess thanks Lady Windermere for inviting Mr. Hopper, who she hopes will propose to Lady Agatha. Sharing her theory on why he's interested in her daughter, she says "I think he’s attracted by dear Agatha’s clever talk." Even if the audience is only just beginning to get acquainted with the mother and daughter, the irony of the comment is still apparent. It's much more probable that Mr. Hopper is drawn to Lady Agatha for her meek, modest nature.
This irony is all the more palpable in the following act, when the Duchess sends Lady Agatha off to dance wth Mr. Hopper:
Mind you take great care of my little chatterbox, Mr Hopper.
Although these are instances of spoken irony, they are not instances of verbal irony. This is because verbal irony is irony that is intended on the part of the speaker. In these moments, the Duchess isn't saying the opposite of the truth on purpose—she genuinely seems to think her daughter is talkative. She lacks the self-awareness that would be necessary for verbal irony. It seems like she is projecting her own chattiness onto her quiet daughter.
When Lady Agatha and Mr. Hopper return, the Duchess and her daughter have a conversation in which Lady Agatha solely communicates with the same repeated line: "Yes, mamma." Later in the act, the Duchess asks what answer Lady Agatha gave Mr. Hopper when he proposed, which she responds to in her characteristic fashion:
DUCHESS OF BERWICK And what answer did you give him, dear child?
LADY AGATHA Yes, mamma.
DUCHESS OF BERWICK (affectionately) My dear one! You always say the right thing.
This is humorous, because Lady Agatha only ever says one thing. To an overbearing and talkative mother like the Duchess, always saying the right thing boils down to always acquiescing. However, when Mr. Hopper reveals that Lady Agatha has assented to moving with him to Australia, the Duchess changes her tune, telling Agatha that she says "the most silly things possible." This is also ironic, given that the Duchess just said that Agatha always says the right thing. It is clear to the audience that Lady Agatha agreed to going to Australia because she is incapable of saying no. This gives the audience the disheartening impression that Lady Agatha's lack of individuality and agency will carry over from her relationship with her mother and into her relationship with her husband.
Throughout Lady Windermere's Fan, Lady Agatha serves as a model of ladylike politeness and submission. She may be sweet, but she absolutely lacks a personality and mind of her own. Wilde uses irony to give a silly edge to her and her mother. He paints them both as satirical portraits: while the Duchess is a caricature of an inconsiderate, chatty mother, Lady Agatha is a caricature of a submissive, insipid girl who has presumably been spoken over her entire life.
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.
