Publisher's Synopsis
Lady Windermere's Fan
A Play about a Good Woman
By Oscar Wilde
'A classic piece of drama......'
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirises the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage.
The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. It is then revealed Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter's marriage. The best known line of the play sums up the central theme:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Lord Darlington
Composition
By the summer of 1891 Wilde had already written three plays, Vera; or, The Nihilists and The Duchess of Padua had found little success, and Salome had been censored. Unperturbed, he decided to write another play but turned from tragedy to comedy. He went to the Lake District in the north of England, where he stayed with a friend and later met Robert Ross. Numerous characters in the play appear to draw their names from the north of England: Lady Windermere from the lake and nearby town Windermere (though Wilde had used "Windermere" earlier in Lord Arthur Saville's Crime), the Duchess of Berwick from Berwick-upon-Tweed, Lord Darlington from Darlington. Wilde began writing the play at the prodding of Sir George Alexander, the actor manager of St James's Theatre. The play was finished by October.[4] Alexander liked the play, and offered him an advance of 1,000 for it. Wilde, impressed by his confidence, opted to take a percentage instead, from which he would earn 7,000 in the first year alone (worth 664,200 today).