A Woman of No Importance

About

Wilde's 1893 play — his second major success — follows the revelation that the charming, aphorism-dispensing Lord Illingworth is the natural father of Gerald Arbuthnot, the young secretary he is cultivating. When Gerald's American fiancée Hester and his mother Mrs. Arbuthnot are drawn into the drama, Wilde turns his usual wit toward unusually direct feminist statement: Mrs. Arbuthnot refuses Illingworth's belated offer of marriage and calls him 'a man of no importance.' The play has more melodramatic machinery than Earnest and fewer perfect epigrams, but some of Wilde's most pointed observations about women's social position are concentrated here.