An Ideal Husband Key Quotes Explained

There is such an abundance of epigrams in An Ideal Husband it is easy to forget that sometimes characters can still speak directly, as Mrs. Cheveley does in this quotation. It follows her fiendish offer to Lord Goring: if he marries her she will destroy the letter incriminating his friend, Sir Robert. He refuses, and she says she will ruin Sir Robert. When he objects in horror, she argues that it's just business. In this instance Mrs. Cheveley says what she means and means what she says. Earlier in the scene she claimed that she loved Lord Goring years ago but qualifies it, saying that he was "the only person I had ever cared for, if I ever have cared for anybody." She clearly wants to marry him as much for wealth and social status as anything else. Many of the characters in the play base their actions on their own self-interest, often hypocritically. Mrs. Cheveley is in a league of her own—the most extreme example in the play of selfishness as a poisonous absolute.

Lady Chiltern says this to Sir Robert when she rejects his decision to retire from public life, which she had previously supported. She is also repeating words Lord Goring has just said to her. This is a speech by a woman to a man explaining the difference between men and women ... and quoting a man to do so. Lady Chiltern will bend her rigid moral standards and forgive her husband's past criminal acts, having decided that a woman's role is to forgive so men can get on with their "greater ambitions." In this way, while her marriage is preserved her own power within it is diminished.