Episode 252: “An Ideal Husband” by Oscar Wilde, Intro and Act 1

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast: Episode 252 Summary — “An Ideal Husband” by Oscar Wilde

Introduction

In Episode 252 of The Literary Life Podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks embark on an in-depth exploration of Oscar Wilde's renowned play, An Ideal Husband. Accompanied by lifelong reader Cindy Rollins, the trio delves into the intricacies of the play's first act, unraveling its themes, character dynamics, and the broader Victorian context that shapes its narrative.

Victorian Context and the Aesthetic Movement

The episode begins with Angelina setting the stage by highlighting the late Victorian period—a time marked by stringent social morals and the burgeoning desire to challenge established norms. Thomas elaborates on how Wilde's contemporary, the aesthetic movement, emerged as a counterforce to the pervasive didacticism of the era.

Angelina Stanford [14:00]: "Victorian literature wasn't monolithic. While authors like Charles Dickens emphasized didacticism and moral instruction, the aesthetic movement, with figures like Oscar Wilde, pushed back against the heavy-handed moralism, advocating for 'art for art's sake.'"

Thomas further explains the influence of French thinkers like Walter Pater and John Ruskin on Wilde, emphasizing their role in shaping the aesthetic movement's principles.

Thomas Banks [28:59]: "The aesthetic movement's motto, 'art for art's sake,' was championed by French authors such as Gustave Flaubert and Joris Karl Huysmans. Wilde, deeply influenced by Walter Pater, embraced these ideals, striving to separate art from moral obligation."

Overview of "An Ideal Husband"

Angelina introduces An Ideal Husband as a comedic yet poignant critique of Victorian societal expectations. The play centers on Sir Robert Chiltern, a respected politician whose impeccable public image is threatened by revelations of past indiscretions orchestrated by the enigmatic Mrs. Cheveley.

Angelina Stanford [12:11]: "Today, we begin our series on Oscar Wilde's play An Ideal Husband. This episode will cover the introduction and Act 1, providing insights into the characters and the societal pressures they navigate."

Character Analysis

The hosts meticulously dissect the characters introduced in Act 1, highlighting Wilde's sharp wit and elaborate characterizations.

• Sir Robert Chiltern: Portrayed as the epitome of Victorian respectability, Robert is a junior cabinet minister whose façade of integrity masks a morally compromised past.

  Thomas Banks [64:26]: "Sir Robert Chiltern is a man of 40, looking somewhat younger, with a personality of mark—intensely admired by the few and deeply respected by the many."

• Mrs. Gwendolen Cheveley: A mysterious and manipulative figure from Robert's past, Mrs. Cheveley serves as the catalyst for the ensuing conflict.

  Angelina Stanford [62:22]: "A mysterious woman shows up at a party, claiming to have a connection with Lady Chiltern, thereby igniting the central conflict of the play."

• Lady Gertrude Chiltern: Robert's devoted wife, embodying the Victorian ideal of the "angel in the house." Her unwavering admiration for her husband adds complexity to the moral quandary he faces.

  Angelina Stanford [77:39]: "Lady Chiltern is the moral compass of the family, guiding her husband towards societal respectability, unaware of the cracks beneath the surface."

Themes and Insights

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the play's exploration of duality—the contrast between public virtue and private vice. The hosts draw parallels between Wilde's critique and contemporary societal issues, emphasizing the timeless nature of these themes.

Angelina Stanford [75:50]: "Lady Chiltern embodies the Victorian ideal, the facade of righteousness that hides underlying flaws. Wilde masterfully pokes at this veneer, questioning the sustainability of such societal expectations."

Thomas introduces the idea of the "pendulum swing" between didacticism and aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's work finds a balance between moral instruction and artistic expression.

Thomas Banks [46:45]: "Wilde's plays navigate the middle ground between Walter Pater's celebration of the arts and Leo Tolstoy's insistence on moral purpose, offering a nuanced perspective on Victorian values."

Notable Quotes

Throughout the episode, Angelina and Thomas share insightful quotes that encapsulate the essence of Wilde's play and its broader literary implications.

• Angelina [08:31]: "According to this tradition, man and world were made for one another. We belong to it as much as it belongs to us. The natural world is a great book of symbols, that is natural phenomenon that somehow resonates and awakens some inner part within us."

• Thomas [55:05]: "Wilde's stage directions are more elaborate than Shakespeare's simplistic cues like 'enter, exit, pursued by a bear.' He provides detailed descriptions of characters' appearances and their mannerisms, enhancing the theatrical experience."

• Angelina [62:45]: "Wilde is poking at the Victorian idea that the woman is the 'angel in the house.' He's challenging the unrealistic expectations placed upon women to be paragons of purity and incorruptibility."

Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, Angelina hints at the deeper conflicts and resolutions that will unfold in Acts 2 and 3, promising listeners a continued exploration of Wilde's intricate play. The discussion not only sheds light on the literary significance of An Ideal Husband but also invites listeners to reflect on the enduring tension between societal expectations and individual morality.

Angelina Stanford [78:46]: "I hope something we've said today has been helpful in opening this play and other late Victorian works, and maybe even opening up the 20th century and the whole world a bit more to you as you understand the ideas that have brought us to where we are."

Closing Remarks

The hosts briefly mention the challenges in finding film adaptations of the play, encouraging listeners to stay tuned for future episodes where they will continue their analysis. They also promote related resources, including pre-orders for Dr. Baxter's upcoming book and Thomas's webinars.

Angelina Stanford [79:26]: "Remember, you can go to cassiodoruspress.com to pre-order Dr. Baxter's book and visit houseofhumaneletters.com to sign up for Mr. Banks's webinar. Keep crafting your literary life, because stories will save the world."

Final Thoughts

Episode 252 serves as a comprehensive introduction to An Ideal Husband, blending literary analysis with historical context. By dissecting character motivations and societal critiques, Angelina and Thomas provide listeners with a deeper appreciation of Wilde's work and its relevance to both past and present.

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome or welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and I am here with my ideal husband.

[Thomas Banks]

I knew you were gonna go there.

[Angelina Stanford]

Had to go there.

[Thomas Banks]

Blushing. Now I'm blushing. You can probably hear me blushing. Mysterious Mr. Banks, who will never go into politics. Please don't invest in any canal.

[Angelina Stanford]

Invest in our future in some canal schemes. Please, please do not. Today we are going to begin our series on Oscar Wilde's play An Ideal Husband. And yeah, stick around. You'll not only learn something about the play and the late Victorian period and Oscar Wilde, but probably learn a about our marriage too. And everyone's dying to know about that.

[Thomas Banks]

Fasten your seat belts.

[Angelina Stanford]

Before we jump in, I just want to give everybody a quick reminder that it is that time of year again. The best time of the year. That magical season known as the House of Humane Letters Christmas sale.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I thought we were about to talk about our savior's birth.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, that too. Commerce. Commerce, dear. Commerce. The American way, right? Yes, it is our yearly Christmas sale. You can right now go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com jump into our store and get 20 off of the items in our store. A lot of our listeners have been eyeing various webinars, mini classes, conferences and wait for the Christmas sale so that they can get the most paying for their buck. So it's that time. 20% off and this year no code is required. I'm pausing so they can all cheer. Yay. I had our faithful Atley go ahead and mark each item individually with the discounted price so you will not have to remember a coupon code or anything like that. This year some restrictions apply, but that'll be clear on the website. The year long classes, live events, Dr. Baxter's book. Those do not apply to the sale, but our pre recorded items that you've had your eye on. Now is the time we also have gift cards available if you would like to purchase that for someone else and then they could take advantage of the sale with that as well. So we always make our Christmas sale. And this is, this is a. Angelina is a homeschool mom and runs her business like a homeschool mom kind of comment. But our Christmas sale actually goes through December 31st. And that is because I, well, remember the days when I looked forward to getting Christmas money and that's been my entire life. Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, yeah, maybe that tells you what kind of person I am. But, yeah, like from the time I knew what money was, I was like, Christmas. Yes. Money.

[Angelina Stanford]

Christmas money. Well, adults often get money for Christmas and so, you know, you can now put those.

[Thomas Banks]

It's one of the most appropriate gifts for all ages.

[Angelina Stanford]

It really is. That's why I thank you for my Christmas pennies and my stocking every year.

[Thomas Banks]

You're.

[Angelina Stanford]

You're so sweet. True, true. So, yeah, yeah, that's going to be going on from now until the end of the year. So take your time, peruse what we've got. We've got a really substantial back catalog and a lot of fantastic stuff and we'll be trying to highlight various items in the store individually over the next few weeks so you guys can know what we've got. One of our faithful listeners, Marcina Layton, actually even made a Google Doc, which we're going to put on the newsletter and possibly if I can get it to Kiel, we could even link it in the show notes to this episode. But she made a Google Doc of everything that's available in the store in a nice little spreadsheet so you could like sort of check off what you've already purchased.

[Thomas Banks]

It's getting to the point where you've.

[Angelina Stanford]

Got your eye on.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, we have. It's. I'm kind of amazed how much stuff we have for sale in our store.

[Angelina Stanford]

But really, really good stuff.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I'm not like blowing my own trumpet here or anything like that, but just. Yeah, the, the extent of subjects, the variety of things. Literature, history, music. Music now.

[Angelina Stanford]

Music now.

[Thomas Banks]

Thank you, Karita. That we have.

[Angelina Stanford]

And. And again, all different price points. We've got things from webinars at $15 which with 20% off is going to be like 12 bucks. And if you had your eye on the fairy tale mini class, you can get a significant discount on 70 something instead of 90.

[Thomas Banks]

No, the fairy tale was 180, so now it's 140 something.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. But significant discounts. Significant discount. So peruse that. Take A look. And enjoy. Enjoy. Okay, so, Mr. Bakes, you also have something going on. You have an upcoming webinar here in a couple weeks.

[Thomas Banks]

I do. My friend and sometime collaborator, Michael Williams and I are going to be giving a joint lecture on the Little Flower, the. The French Saint Therese of Le Su. And we will be discussing her life and her. Her particular form of sort of quiet holiness. And. And, yeah, the France of the late 19th century will figure into it, too, as kind of a historic backdrop. Yeah. An unusual and an inspiring and a very saintly woman.

[Angelina Stanford]

Your specialty, to me is always, like, bringing the most obscure people to our attention, bringing them to life, and making us all feel like, how did I not know about this person? This is such a significant.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, thank you. This is the first person I think will maybe not have been heard of by a lot of our audience. Honestly, I'm trying to think of anyone I've done on that level of, I don't know, below the radar ness yet. But, yes, Santa Rasaya. I mean, as a Catholic, I find other Catholics, especially if they're like, French ancestry, will know who she is. You knew, of course, who she was being from Louisiana, but, yeah, many people do not, and we will hopefully change this.

[Angelina Stanford]

I only knew who she was because there was a Catholic school down the road from me called Little Flower, and I had no idea when I was a kid that that referred to a person. So I'm. Yes. Now you subtitled it. What did you call it?

[Thomas Banks]

The. The Holiness of the Prosaic.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no, I think it was something like the Ordinary.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Which I just. I think that's beautiful. The Holiness of the Ordinary. I have a. I know.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a phrase that other people have used in association with.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's very inspiring, I fully expect. All right, well, down to business. If this is your first Literary Life podcast episode, you should know that we start each episode by sharing something from our reading. Mr. Banks, do you have a commonplace quote you would like to share?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I read this in a article I read just the other day by a author who is actually something of an acquaintance of mine, Doctor. Excuse me, Doctor. Brother Daniel Hicey, who is a Benedictine monk in Pennsylvania in an essay on Shakespeare. And the historian writes, needless to say, I believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. It is as silly to imagine that Francis Bacon or Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare as to try to prove that Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone teleplays were really written by J. Edgar Hoover. Which is kind of a funny thought.

[Angelina Stanford]

I like that a lot.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Yes, preach, preach. I like that. Well, for my commonplace quote, I decided to continue the tease of our audience that we started last week when we had a great conversation with Dr. Jason Baxter on why Literature still matters. And you should totally listen to that episode if you have. Not that we. I think that's one of our best conversations we've ever had. And he's got a brand new book coming out by that same title, why Literature Still Matters. And it is being published by our brand new publishing house, Casador Press. So I thought I would tease you with a commonplace quote from that book, and I probably will be doing that over the next few weeks to continue to stoke the fires of excitement. I know that after last week's episode, everyone who pre ordered the book was commenting like, well, get here already. Get here already. We are getting it to you as fast as we can. Any, Any. Very soon, very soon now. So, yeah, so here's a quote from that. So he's been describing a sort of poetic and artistic and literary tradition. And then he says this. According to this tradition, man and world were made for one another. We belong to it as much as it belongs to us. The natural world is a great book of symbols, that is natural phenomenon that somehow, some way resonate and awaken some inner part within us. When we look at the moon over the sea, or a waterfall or cliff, or a skylark or nightingale, we sense a corresponding quality within the world is like a tuning fork, which brought near to a second tuning fork, in this case our hearts, causes the latter to vibrate as well. Inspired by what we see, we reach down into that inner depth. And if we are able, we pull out words or images or chords or scales for what we find, words or pictures or sounds we did not previously know we had. In this way, the natural symbol draws out something that had been deeper down and hidden within.

[Thomas Banks]

That's moving.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's a fantastic writer, I'm telling you.

[Thomas Banks]

He really is.

[Angelina Stanford]

He really is. He really is. So now that you've got that tease and like, I need more, you need to listen to the podcast episode and then you need to go to pat cassiodorus press.com and pre order this book. And as I said last time, the more you order, the better deal on shipping you get. And it's a. A very accessible, very small volume. So intentionally designed as a sort of open the door book, a gateway book. Not intimidating, really lovely, very inspiring. And like I said, already highly accessible. It really is. This is the kind of book that you could hand to somebody when they say, why do you listen to that podcast? Why are books important?

[Thomas Banks]

And just to take up your gateway metaphor and run with it, when you read this book, you will become addicted to reading. So be warned, you know, there will be no coming back after this. The first one's free. That's right. That's not. It's not free, but you know what I mean.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, exactly. It makes Nancy Reagan's DARE program. Dare to read, boys and girls. Dare to read. All right, well, now that you're all excited about why literature still.

[Thomas Banks]

Nancy Reagan was just saying no.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, yeah, but she started the DARE program.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, all right. That was still good. Yeah, okay. I remember that.

[Angelina Stanford]

She was just saying no, but she started the DARE program. So we want you to just say yes to books.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Angelina Stanford]

Dare to read. See, we're turning it upside down. We're going to talk about. Today. Are we going to start talking about Oscar Wilde? The late Victorian movement, the aesthetic movement? Just put this play in its context, its imaginative context, and start. And start the play. An Ideal Husband. Probably just getting through the first act today and doing Acts 2 and 3 next time. Now, Mr. Banks, this was another one of your picks. I accidentally did the schedule where it's like three of your picks in a row here.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So I had wanted to do another Oscar Wilde play because I remember quite. Quite enjoying myself with you and with Cindy. With the illustrious Cindy when we did the Importance of Being Earnest and this play and the Importance of Being Earnest, if you. They're both great plays, but don't read them back to back because you'll get the characters confused because they're made up of the same types of people and even, like, kind of the same pairings of people. But, yes, this is a play I have read before, but not for. I don't think I've read this one for 15 years or so.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm gonna say I have actually never read it. I saw the movie when it came out in 1990, and there is a.

[Thomas Banks]

Very good movie version. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I'm quite enjoying it. And I don't even. I don't remember how it ends. So this is gonna be exciting. I put myself in your hands, in your capable hands.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Guide me through this play.

[Thomas Banks]

Being a wild comedy, there are no dull bits. Oscar Wilde's plays are. Well, we'll get to the. You know, the. The character of the play itself, but he and PG Wodehouse have in common that, like, basically every paragraph, if not every sentence, has something that makes you howl with laughter and their sense of humor.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I did look it up after the last time because I was so curious. And PG Wodehouse does list Oscar Wilde as an influence.

[Thomas Banks]

I think that's. I think that's kind of obvious. Like, you brought it up with the ants. Like the kind of bossy, imperious aunt. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Agatha and whatever the aunt was in, in the Importance of Being Ernest. But they're basically the same character.

[Thomas Banks]

And Augusta.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was it. And Augusta, even the name is. Yeah, just basically the same. Same kind of character. And the. And the witty wordplay and the sort of delighting in the foppery and also just kind of the light. What. What am I trying to say?

[Thomas Banks]

It's like a world made of champagne bubbles, kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's very well said.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, well, thank you very much. I try.

[Angelina Stanford]

And you are. Oh, yeah. The world of champagne bubbles.

[Thomas Banks]

That's a frivolous effervescent and unreal and sweet and. Yeah. Kind of just fun.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. All right, so let's start off by putting this play and Oscar Wilde in general in a certain context. We talk on this podcast a lot about Victorian literature, but this is late Victorian Literature, 1895. And so there are some different things going on. Why don't you tell us about that?

[Thomas Banks]

So by this point in Victorian social and literary history, I think you start to see a generation of writers. Oscar Wilde is born in 1854 himself. He dies in 1900. So that means he lives his entire rather short life in the Victorian period and the particular customs and mores and standards of what is and is not respectable behavior. I think by this time, people are getting sort of self conscious about them and starting to find them a bit funny. And Oscar Wilde is part of that movement in literature and society. In the 1880s and 90s, the 90s were often referred to as the gay 90s or the yellow 90s, the decadent 90s, where. The 1890s, this is where the younger people are starting to laugh at their parents, furniture and morals.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. So the Victorian era, again, putting it into a slightly larger context, you have the Regency era of the early 19th century. So like the Jane Austen era. And the Prince Regent who ran the country was known for his incredible decadence. And so England had a reputation similar to, say, Louis XIV and the Court of Versailles.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Their monarchy had lost in it had lost face. That's the only way I can say it. You had a mad king and a foppish and dissolute and irresponsible son. Yes, that says George iii and George IV And Victoria did much. I mean she was a constitutional monarch who did not, could not just speak laws into existence and declare war by her own will, but she did rebuild the moral stature of the monarch by her own example. And yeah, so she comes to disknown.

[Angelina Stanford]

In 1837, she's what, 18 years old at the time?

[Thomas Banks]

Very young.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very young. And you know, for a lot that we sort of make fun of Victorian, you know, prudishness and some of the kind of wacky morality that they held to, the truth is that Victoria and the nation were responding to, you know, the pendulum swings back and forth. Right. Is responding to a very, very decadent period. And so she set the moral tone. And so you have a. Oh gosh, you have a. A royal family that is just the height of respectability. Right. She.

[Thomas Banks]

Between her and Prince Albert. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Which was a love match. They have a very large family. They're devoted to each other now.

[Thomas Banks]

Some like 10 or 11 children, a lot of children.

[Angelina Stanford]

It seems like she was eternally pregnant. And she really did set the moral tone. Middle class respectability, English respectability, family values, all of that kind of stuff. And, and it was what the nation needed at the time. Now, like so many things, it went rather far and we emphasized a lot of that. I mean, in Victoria's own life, as some of her children grew up and became the kind of rebelled against the next version of dissolute.

[Thomas Banks]

Like you said, PENDULUM SWINGS PENDULUM swings.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean her, her son, the next King Edward was, you know, he was a mess, scandal after scandal and quite the thorn in his parents side. But yeah, so, so, so a couple of different things come to mind when I think about late Victorian literature and there's two different kinds. We should probably. We'll say that as well. There's, there's the kind. The aesthetic movement that Oscar Wilde is a part of, but there was also kind of the hyperrealism movement as well. People like George Moore and others. Maybe.

[Thomas Banks]

The tail end.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Tipling in his way sometimes. Yeah. Kicking kind of is all over the map though. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

He has some of Thomas Hardy stuff later.

[Thomas Banks]

Definitely. Thomas Hardy, yeah. Some of George Meredith occasion.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So it's not just the Oscar Wilde movement, but that's the one I'm primarily focusing on. So you get the sense. You don't get the sense. The Victorians are very concerned about projecting a certain respectability and morality into the world. And after a while this starts to get poked at as kind of a hypocris that you have A public morality, and you have a private morality. This was something that the late Victorian writers, particularly Oscar Wilde, were very interested in poking their finger at, that there's this veneer of respectability in our society, but does it go past the surface at all?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And if you get, like into the soul of anyone or anything, they're going to have their foibles and their failures.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right? Exactly, exactly. In some ways, it almost reminds me of the 1950s in the United States and how that super squeaky clean 1950 inevitably turns into the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Right. Like, there's only so long that you can promote that we're perfect, everything's great at home, we've got it all together. Before the next generation rises up and says, yeah, we lived with you. That is totally not true. You're faking this. And, you know, in the pursuit of, quote, unquote, something authentic, you end up, well, sometimes going too far, as. As happened in the United States. So that's one thing that's going on, poking at the veneer of respectability. The other thing that's going on is we talk a lot, a lot on this podcast about Victorian didacticism. So part of that, and I should stop now before anybody listens to this and says she's just really poking at all the Victorians. I love the Victorians. So do you. I would highly recommend that you listen to our series on Charles Dickens, Hard Times to know that we absolutely do like quite a few Victorian authors. I'm trying to put us in the mindset of how the late Victorians are viewing the past century so that you can understand what it is they're trying to do.

[Thomas Banks]

So you've got the cult of domesticity and, you know, middle class, snugly married and, you know, philoprogenitive, just kind of middle class morality.

[Angelina Stanford]

Middle class morality. And I should say too, that. So I did my master's work on this particular issue and I'll. And I'll try to keep this very, very pg. But at the same time that people were really promoting this, like you said, domesticity, it was, it really was called the cult of domesticity. And, you know, the husband and the wife, you know, middle class values, you know, a boy, a girl, a dog, a nurse, maid, a governess, you know, the height of respectability. At the same time, you had things like the birth of modern pornography. You had such widespread prostitution and venereal disease, syphilis really run rampant through this period. So you can totally understand why some people are saying, hey, you guys, are projecting that, but you're totally not living that. Like this is, this is a fraud. And so some authors begin to poke at that. Now going back to the didacticism era, not all Victorians. Okay, so Charles Dickens and George MacDonald and others, you kind of have two strains. So like if you listen to the Samuel Coleridge series we did, I talked a lot about what was going on there with the imagination. And so you have that romantic strain coming from Coleridge which embraces the imagination, which says that the imagination is a faculty of truth and it should be cultivated and nurtured. And so you have writers working in that tradition, Charles Dickens, George McDonnell, et cetera. But then you have against that the view that we need facts, people need, children need facts, adults need facts.

[Thomas Banks]

And along with facts also uplift, up, uplift.

[Angelina Stanford]

Inspiring stories. Basically turning everything they could into a very heavy handed Sunday school lesson.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Even to the point of, I was.

[Thomas Banks]

Going to say you can kind of quote Dickens on both sides of this line.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yep.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Because like say like the Dickens of the old curiosity shop is the kind of, the very cushioned middle class, let's you know, make everyone feel good and comfortable in. Yeah. Anyway, that, that kind of thing. But, but please go on. I cut you off.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, Charles Dickens is fascinating for, for many reasons. And again I would, I would recommend our series on hard times. We're both big Charles Dickens fans and he himself a great lover of home life and domesticity and all of those things. And we're not criticizing any of those things. We're quite ourself and we enjoy our home life. The issue was whether or not that projection was real. That is what people were, were pushing against that it didn't seem real. So the didacticism was so heavy. For example, Charles Dickens wrote an essay quite objecting to the fact that certain groups had rewritten fairy tales and turned them into very serious Sunday school lessons. One of them they re wrote, rewrote some fairy tales to make them tracks for temperance.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, you know, and therefore boys and girls don't drink gin.

[Thomas Banks]

Instead of the witch's house being made of candy, it was, you know, a bunch of bottles of, you know, intoxicating beverages. And then, you know, Hansel and Gretel, there was no turning back for them.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was exactly it. And it was just getting nuts. Everything was this super, super heavy handed moral lesson. And you know, we made the joke about not just say no in the dare program. I mean in fairness, there was a very, very serious problem with gin in the Victorian period. And the working class, it was, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

There'S a reason like that. Why the temperance.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it has been described as akin to our modern meth problem in, in this country. So it, it was a big deal. But Dickens and others, and myself included, did not think that the proper way to respond to this was to turn fairy tales into temperance tracks. I was actually joking about this in my Good books class this last week and I said, so like, imagine if the American Dental association decided to rewrite Hansel and Gretel, right? So, so the Hansel and Gretel go to the gingerbread house and they just start eating the candy. And then the witch comes out. Oh, little children. And she pulls out toothbrushes. Don't forget to brush. You need to brush after having candy.

[Thomas Banks]

Good gosh. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Somebody somewhere is listening to this saying that should happen.

[Thomas Banks]

If I were to sum this up in one sentence. There was a best selling Victorian novel by Charles Reed and Charles Reed was a talented man, but he, he actually wrote a novel, a popular book called it is Never Too Late to Mend. I. Yeah, what to do with this. Yeah, there you go.

[Angelina Stanford]

So like the worst offenders, I would say nobody's reading them anymore. They've kind of gone or we've, or.

[Thomas Banks]

We'Ve selected their books where they kind of sin against their own rules. And so Wilkie Collins, I think Wilkie Collins was like, he was very much an improver and a writer of the novel as Pastoral Tract. But the books of his that we still read are kind of the ones that he wrote for pleasure. But yeah, I read a novel of his called Basil this last year. Terrible book. I'm surprised I got to the end of it. Terrible. It's. And it's. The whole thing is kind of a long screed about Victorian marriage laws disguised as a sort of sort of pot boiler melodrama. But it's. Yeah, it's a. Yeah, there's even very, very gifted people and Wilkie Collins was a supremely gifted man. Yeah, that was just kind of the, the agreed, the environment they lived in and they didn't always transcend it.

[Angelina Stanford]

So even somebody who I adore, like George Eliot, she, she slides and she.

[Thomas Banks]

Slides into the preaching.

[Angelina Stanford]

She does. And then the series we did on Agnes Gray and we talked a lot about the Brontes, that's another one I would recommend to you if you're interested in learning more about the Victorians. She also, I think Anne Bronte definitely processed the past.

[Thomas Banks]

She's a pastor's daughter.

[Angelina Stanford]

Pastor's Daughter.

[Thomas Banks]

And she, she, no judging.

[Angelina Stanford]

She can't be very preachy. So that's the context then also, like you said, very. The Victorians are the first generation who is concerned and I would say obsessed with self improvement. They want to improve. They're going to read a book that is going to improve, full of improving.

[Thomas Banks]

Characters and in situations and. Oh, well, here's one. I mean, so test of the d'Urbervilles, as you know, was kind of created a scandal. It was. I mean, everybody read it and everyone condemned it. And Thomas Hardy got some. Some mean what? Not fan mail, enemy mail. Anti fan mail from people who. One letter, I think I saw in a biography of his where he was told that he had made his heroine, his fallen woman, too likable and too sympathetic. And you shouldn't do that with a woman like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

That is genius.

[Thomas Banks]

It is, it is. But there you go.

[Angelina Stanford]

I adore that. If you're listening to this recording, we just had to cut something out because my husband just spoil the ending of Test the Dermavilles. But that's okay, that's.

[Thomas Banks]

Thought everyone knew the end.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, no, no, we can't. Well, several hundred years is not enough for spoiler laws. But. But he had a great hearty quote about. About perhaps the Natural.

[Thomas Banks]

I know, I couldn't help myself.

[Angelina Stanford]

You did, you did. If you come to all fellows, eve on the Patreon and we'll tell you what the rest of the story was. So into that backdrop of heavy didacticism begins the aesthetic movement in the late Victorian period. It actually starts in France and gets filtered into the.

[Thomas Banks]

It's always the French.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's always the French gets filtered into England through one of your favorite writers, Walter Pater. So tell us a little bit about the aesthetic movement.

[Thomas Banks]

So the aesthetic movement has, for its marching orders, its watchwords, its motto, art for art's sake or l'art pour in French. And in France it's associated with a variety of authors. I would say Gustave Flaubert. It is kind of, especially the early books, the sort of. The more romantic Flaubert, like the temptation of St. Anthony or Salammbo. And another author actually, who's very important in Wilde's own development, named Joris Karl Huysmans. He's a French author with a Dutch name. He wrote a book called Arabur, or Against the Grain, sometimes translated as against nature, which if you've ever read the Portrait of Dorian Gray, that is the famous unnamed yellow book that Dorian reads which corrupts him. And it is a book About a man of leisure who is bored with life. So he decides to indulge himself in all of the principal sins and the litany, basically, and, you know, surround himself with, you know, collecting odd objects of, you know, antiques, works of art, rare books, gems. He buys a tortoise and encrusts its, its shell with jewels and. Yeah. Ruins various people's lives in a variety of rather cruel ways, all in the name of pursuing sensation. So that would be an example of a very, usually a very amoral sort of, of sort of work, whether in, you know, the visual arts or in fiction, which celebrates, you know, defiance of convention, defiance of the established order and indulgence of the refined senses. I suppose that was kind of a wandering description, but I think he gives an idea.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And I would like to highlight a few other things about the aesthetic movement as well. So, you know, if you go back to my metaphor of everything's a pendulum, the pendulum swings. And so you have this very heavy didacticism in the, Victorian, you know, art scene. Everything's got to have a moral, everything's got to have a message, everything's got to improve us. And so certain artists start to think, well, that that just makes the art suffer. If we're so heavy handed with a message, that just makes the art suffer. In some ways, it kind of reminds me of what I dealt with in the 80s at a Christian school. I was in high school at a Christian school and I had very strong sensibilities about what art should be like. I remember it was like, did you.

[Thomas Banks]

Have a position on warning labels on.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh boy, did I. Boy, Gore, I'm still mad about that. Oh boy, did I ever have some feelings about that. As if, as if the government could have a rating system to decide what was moral enough for our ears. Yeah, don't even get me started on that. But now I've lost my train of thought. Oh, I, I remember when I finally discovered Dorothy Sayers and the mind of the maker and other things like that, just feeling so affirmed because she says the same thing. But in the 80s, when you had really the booming of the Christian subculture. And what I mean by that is like the Christian T shirts and the Christian songs and the Christian books and everything was kind of like, if you like this worldly band, listen to this Christian band. If you like this worldly author, you.

[Thomas Banks]

Know, Rich Mullins, or maybe he was more of a 90s guy. That was, maybe it was, that was after your time.

[Angelina Stanford]

We have some Rich Mullins fans. I, I, to this day I can simply say I have never listened to any artist that has called themselves Christian and probably never will for this reason. Oh, boy, we could probably anger some people here. But I grew up very much in the atmosphere of people who were like, well, who cares if it's not very good art? It's got a great message.

[Thomas Banks]

It's got a great message.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's a great message. And I was very offended by that. And I said, it does matter. It does matter. And I said, if it's got. If you're a Christian, your art should be better, not worse. Because. Right. Like getting myself worked up here. Oscar Wilde would be happy.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, go for it.

[Angelina Stanford]

I love it. Oscar Wilde would be happy. And so when I discovered Dorothy Sayers, she said the same thing. She said, you know, a table is a good table if it's a well made table and not because it was made to the glory of God. And that if you're saying you're making it to the glory of God, it better be a better table, not a worse table. And. And she applies that to art. And I felt the exact same way. And I'm not saying Christians can't make good art. I'm saying in the 80s, in the environment I was in, everything I saw was a sad rip off, a second rate ripoff of everything. I mean, I grew up in a generation where they sold T shirts with a Coca Cola can on it and it would say Christ the real thing, instead of Coke, the real thing. I grew up in a generation. No, I'm not. They took, I'm telling you, they took everything that was out there in the world and they rebranded it as Christian. I, I didn't want anything to do with any of that. Okay, I remember, I remember. This is really gonna curl your toes. I remember a T shirt. Okay, so you remember all the Michael Jordan silhouette of him dumping the ball, okay? It was a silhouette of Michael Jordan, except it was Jesus dunking the ball. And it said air Jesus.

[Thomas Banks]

That's kind of blasphemous.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's what I thought too. Okay? So that's the Christian subculture I grew up in. And I just, I just despised it, okay? And so I'm gonna transpose that 80s Angelina to the 1880s, okay? It's the same sort of thing that we are pushing this, except there.

[Thomas Banks]

It's not a Christian evangelical subculture. It's just the culture at large.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, you're right. It's the whole culture and saying, hey, listen, not that it's wrong to have a good message, but if you don't think making good art is the point, and if you're so focused on a good message that the art is suffering, then you've got it backwards. Now, yes, as you said, one way that people responded to that was to have since to. To. To intentionally provoke. Right. Intentionally have edgy, kind of immoral or amoral things as a sort of. In your face. This is, this doesn't have a moral message. But that was not the only, the only line that came out of that in the aesthetic movement.

[Thomas Banks]

And no, actually, like, Wild's plays are all very, very clean. Very clean. Surprisingly so.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very clean. And. And I would say moral. But. But the point was not to write something with a moral lesson. But I, I digress. The estates have been called the last heirs of the Romantics. And, and so I, I think that that's an important strain because I think that the phrase art for art's sake came in the 20th century to mean immoral stuff and, and people defending it and saying, but it's great art. But that's not really what art for art's sake was about at the beginning, because you have people like T.S. eliot, very conservative, a Christian, and he embraced the art for art's sake movement, and he said his phrase was poetry must be judged as poetry and not another thing. And that's all very consistent with what we talk about.

[Thomas Banks]

I didn't know that T.S. eliot was associated with this. That's very interesting.

[Angelina Stanford]

According to this book right here.

[Thomas Banks]

How about that?

[Angelina Stanford]

And, of course, a very, very moral guy, very conservative as both a writer and an editor and publisher. And so what they're trying to do is say the way that you judge the value of a work of art is in terms of its value as a work of art and not as in terms of its value as a sermon, which is a very consistent message that we have on this podcast. And that is not to say. That is not to say that the message doesn't matter. It's to say that the meaning of the poem should come from it being a poem. And again, I don't want to spend the whole time talking about what that means, because we have five years worth of podcasts about, about what that means. But that you, you, you don't approach a work looking for it to be a sermon and saying, what is this? What is the sermon? It's trying to teach me. But that you approach a poem as a poem and you enter the poem and you experience the poem, then of course, you know there's a meaning there that, that Sort of, you know, comes up on its own. It bubbles up to the surface if you know how to approach it as a poem. And so Oscar Wilde is somebody who is in this art for art's sake movement and who thinks that, I mean, he was deeply influenced by Walter Pater and by John Ruskin. I always kind of think of Oscar Wilde as a adjacent Pre Raphaelite deeply influenced by those ideas.

[Thomas Banks]

If you're to draw, if you were to draw a Venn diagram with two or three of the leading Pre Raphaelites, you wouldn't have to extend the bubbles very far before you got to Wilde.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. I mean, Wilde is actually interested in a lot of the same things. He's interested in the Arts and Crafts movement. He's interested in the. What was it called? The Society for Sensible Dress. He was, he used to write pamphlets.

[Thomas Banks]

Wait, that existed?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So I thought that was a joke.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that was not a joke.

[Thomas Banks]

That really existed.

[Angelina Stanford]

That really existed.

[Thomas Banks]

I thought that was like from a Gilbert and Sullivan.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, now, now Angelina comes to life. One of her other favorite subjects. So in addition to people, the late Victorians, feeling like the, the earlier Victorians are superficial in their morality, the other thing that happens in the Victorian era is because it's the Industrial Revolution. For the first time, you have a whole lot of cheap home furnishings. You have cheap clothes, you have all of these things that are.

[Thomas Banks]

This is like the Arrow and Sears and Roebuck catalogs and the end of.

[Angelina Stanford]

The 19th century, you could order your house out of Sears and Roebuck. Like, like the actual house, you could, you could furnish it all out of that. And so because of that, because there were so many cheap goods available, middle class Victorians just went off the deep end. If you. I actually have a book on Victorian home decorating and it's so overwhelming and clutter. Like, I just, I could not live, I could not have been in, in that time period. It's too much stuff. And so there began to be in the late Victorian period amongst the Pre Raphaelites, people like William Morris and Oscar Wilde pushing back against that. And so part of what happened in the Arts and Crafts movement, to me, again, it just reminds me so much of like what happened in the early 2000s, early 2010s, when you have like kind of the hipster movement and they're like, we're sick of the hobby lobby aesthetic, that every. Everything looks the same, everything's cheap and mass produced. And how about us getting back to like handmade things, handmade furniture, you know, slow roasted coffee, you know, boutique Type stuff. And so the Arts and Crafts movement pushed. Pushed back on that really hard.

[Thomas Banks]

You see, you ever see the Portlandia episode where they say we're going back to the 90s? And when I say the 90s, I don't mean the 1990s, I mean the 1890s.

[Angelina Stanford]

I haven't seen that.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, anyway, never mind. But it has some of the things.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so, yeah, I kind of think of the Arts and crafts movement as like the original hipster movement. And so you see changes in architecture, you see a much more stripped down esthetic in home decor. And you want more like handmade, less mass produced, kind of more real, instead of like this sort of superficial wealth of the middle class of the victorious. You know, Trink. Like, it's our version of where you just have like a lot of junk from China, you know, a lot of dollar plastic stuff. But it's not. It's not actually, you know, nice things, valuable things, you know, you're not going to pass down in your will, you know, your collection of things you got at the dollar tree. So it's that kind of idea. Now, as far as the Society for Sensible Dress, this is because Victorian dress for women had become so insane with those huge dresses that women were actually dying of it.

[Thomas Banks]

Example, Longfellow's wife.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was just gonna give that.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, yeah, so. So Longfellow, of course, is an American, but mid 19th century, he. I cannot remember his wife's name, but Mrs. Longfellow and he were having an evening together by the fire. And they're sitting there calmly reading one moment, and her dress, her big hoop skirt is on fire the next. And she burned to death.

[Angelina Stanford]

She burned to death. And. And that kind of thing actually happened a lot. The, the fabrics and the dresses were highly flammable. They were. So the crinoline under it would make the dress poof out. And so with the advent of more like gas fires and things in the home, it was very, very easy to accidentally back into a flame and catch your dress on fire. So that actually happened a lot. Women tripping, coming downstairs and breaking their necks.

[Thomas Banks]

That would be an interesting history book, the Hazards of Fashion. And it wouldn't just be about, like, Victorian dresses, but, like, I would read it, you know, that like, some women in the 80s probably set their hair on fire.

[Angelina Stanford]

I can attest.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, probably. Like everyone knew someone who set her. Her perm on fire.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. Curling iron. Too close to the hair. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So. So women's dresses, well, the dresses had to be super, super long super big, all the things, the corsets were uncomfortable and caused breathing issues, etc. Etc. And so a society, I believe it was called the Society for Sensible Dress. It was something like that. It was a great Victorian name. So Oscar Wilde wrote for these. He wrote, he wrote tracks and pamphlets for the society. So. And actually you do see that happening. So in the late Victorian era, the Gibson girl look is much, much more sensible. You don't have the big.

[Thomas Banks]

The Gibson girls don't look like they're about to be suffocated by their.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. I mean they had to. The dresses were so big they had to build special furniture for the women to be able to sit in those dresses that women wouldn't fit in the carriages. It was just.

[Thomas Banks]

It's hard out there for Scarlett O'Hara.

[Angelina Stanford]

Hard out there for Scarlett O'Hara. You got it. You got it. And yeah, the Gibson, I love the Gibson girl look. The high, the high waisted skirts and the high necked shirts, but it was like more like a kind of a shirt and skirt option and the skirts were a little bit shorter so they only came to the ankle instead of the ground. So they weren't the tripping hazard. And, and anyway, yeah, so you, you really got me going on a tangent here. Oscar Wilde was involved in, in all of that just more sensible living, more, something more real where women could actually not just be walking works of art, but, you know, an actual human being who can move in her own home and not die. And yeah, so that was all part of the pushing back of the, the superficiality. So I, I would argue that, yes, while some of the art for art's sake movement didn't definitely went too far and has been used as an exc. Deliberately immoral things that there were just like we saw with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Romantics, that there was also a strain of conservative Christians who were Romantics, a strain of conservative Christians like T.S. eliot who were members of the aesthetic movement and, and who were defending that the value of a work of art comes from its. In terms of art and not in terms of whether or not it delivers a sermon. You like.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I think there's another side to aestheticism, which simply judged as a theory of art and what art ought to be is, well, problematic. Some of the aesthetic writers and the decadent writers. I'm not thinking of Wilde so much, but he might fall under this, he might fall under this censure, if you want to call it a censure as well. Seem to believe that art for Art's sake is mainly concerned, or perhaps almost only concerned with technique, whether the technique of fashioning a trio letter, a sonnet or, you know, a particular sort of painting and does not, does not need to shed any kind of illumination on life, doesn't, doesn't provide anything in the way of vision. It just is itself. I think that there is, it seems to me that there is something of that in DNA as well, which is a limitation. It's a limitation.

[Angelina Stanford]

Here's how I work it out in my mind that once you get to a point where people reject Aristotle's point in Poetics that art is, is to instruct and delight, that what I see happening is the pendulum swinging between instruct and delight. And so you have people who, you know, really pull the pendulum way out on the instruction version of art. And so that's when you get the heavy, heavy handed didacticism and in the sermons and then there's a response against that and it goes too far the other direction. Delight, delight, delight. So it just has to be beautiful and physically perfect. It doesn't matter what it's about. And the truth, the reality is somewhere in the middle. And so where that again, this is how I explain it to myself. When there's a reaction against going too far with instruction and going too far with delight, when the pendulum swings back the other way, it swings through the middle. And so there's those authors that are.

[Thomas Banks]

Having medium between like Walter Pater and the Leo Tolstoy of what is Art or the Leo Tolstoy of the Shakespeare criticism, that kind of thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, right, right, right.

[Thomas Banks]

And I mean, you mentioned Wilde's connection to Walter Pater and John Ruskin. Both of them at one time or.

[Angelina Stanford]

Another were his professors. Right?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. I mean Ruskin gave various guest lectureships at Oxford while Wilde was there. And I think he studied classics, I think he studied Greek philosophy and aesthetics. Maybe it was under Walter Pater. And if Walter Pater, if that is not a name to conjure with, he was a Oxford don who wrote and he wrote an interesting, albeit difficult novel called Marius the Epicurean. And also he wrote a series of studies on Renaissance artists which, which is, I believe, simply entitled Studies in the Renaissance, which Oscar Wilde considered.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think it's called the Renaissance.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, maybe you're right. Just the Renaissance. Yeah. And Oscar Wilde considered that one of the most important books in his life and supposedly always traveled with a copy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh yeah, that's one of the first books you ever bought me.

[Thomas Banks]

That's true. I was hoping you would bring that up.

[Angelina Stanford]

I do. And then I bought.

[Thomas Banks]

I would have to bring it up myself.

[Angelina Stanford]

Otherwise, the first Christmas we were together. It was before we were married. It was the first Christmas we were together. I got you a folio copy of Walter Pater's the Minister.

[Thomas Banks]

I love this story about Walter Pater. So Walter Pater, of course, was a self declared Epicurean, but he was always careful, always careful about whom he told this to. Because there's a popular sense of the word Epicurean, like, you know, wine, women and song and, you know, just, you know, life is one long kind of indulgent, you know, whatever, you know, sort of rock star after party and Epicureanism. If you actually read the Epicurean philosophers from antiquity, I mean, all of them were quite self disciplined and even austere men like Epicurus himself and Oscar. And he told Oscar Wilde that you should be careful about calling yourself an Epicurean in public because Oscar, it does so confuse those who don't know Greek.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Is there anything else we want to say before we jump into this play? It's written almost at the exact same time as the important.

[Thomas Banks]

So Oscar Wilde, like he was. Yeah, like there was. There's this two or three year period from about 1892 to 1895 where he writes Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of no Importance, An Ideal Husband and the Importance of Being Earnest. I think all four of them were playing at some theater or other in London back to back in 1895, which is also the year in which I'll just say he got into trouble.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he also wrote fairy tales and collections of short stories. I have some of his short stories. They're very good. There's the one about a ghost who's.

[Thomas Banks]

Haunted the Canterbury ghost.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that one's so good.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And he also wrote a biblical drama.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, Salome.

[Thomas Banks]

So Salome, which is a. It's, it's a sort of. Yeah, it's. It's the story of the death of St. John the Baptist at the hands of, you know, Herodias and her daughter Salome and, and Herod. And. Okay, so this play was banned in England not because of anything objectionable or obscene or blasphemous, because it's, it's, it's not those things. But because it was a biblical drama. There were literally. There was still so like the laws that you could not produce a drama featuring a biblical character or scene from Holy Writ in 1890 was still active.

[Angelina Stanford]

English Law the Puritans put into law. Or does it predate?

[Thomas Banks]

No, it's predated. It goes back to. At least Shakespeare couldn't have written a biblical drama if he had wanted to. Yeah. So it's an Oscar. So. Yeah. He had to debut the play in France, I think.

[Angelina Stanford]

Think.

[Thomas Banks]

I know, it's kind of amazing.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think he also brought it to America.

[Thomas Banks]

I think it was the 20th century before that law was abrogated and repealed. Wow. And yes, he went on a speaking tour of America. Okay. And here's the thing. Oscar Wilde was really, really good at publicity. He came to America in 1882. In 1882. He has written like a few poems and essays maybe, but he wasn't like a celebrity. But he promoted himself as a great aesthetic philosopher. And he traveled all over the country and drew huge clouds wherever he went and kind of combined the roles of stand up comedian and esthetician. So he would give lectures on, like, Michelangelo or Cellini or, you know, this or that other Renaissance painter and sculptor. And he would also entertain the crowds and make them laugh and went to one of his. I think one of his most popular lectures was in Leadville, Colorado, when it was.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it was like, it was a mining town where, like cowboys are shooting each other in the strings. Yeah, Leadville.

[Angelina Stanford]

About that. He was so hilarious.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, he was really funny. And I, I, he was well received by American audiences even when he, like, he insulted American boorishness. And we let former insult us. Yeah, the British insult us. Oh, my gosh, that's so British. When you do that again, Hit me again, sir, please, can I have another accent?

[Angelina Stanford]

Americans will take it.

[Thomas Banks]

So he, he was in, I think it was Cleveland. And he comes on stage and he says, I would like to thank the good ladies and gentlemen of Cleveland for welcoming me to their, their city, of which I can only observe that I wonder if some criminal has ever alleged the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's great.

[Thomas Banks]

But yeah, so, yeah, he was one of those guys who. He was really. He had a good sense of knowing, like, how much he could offend his audience and still charm them, whether he was in England or here. Because remember, he's kind of a foreigner in England as well. He's not Irish. He's Irish. Yeah, he's. His full name is Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde. Wow. He had like five names. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And yeah, so he kind of built a career out of being the kind of the gadfly who stings you into laughter. And he got away with it for a while.

[Angelina Stanford]

He did, yeah. I think I mentioned this on our Dracula episodes because Bram Stoker is another late Victorian author, but Oscar Wilde's mother and Bram Stoker's mother, they were best friends.

[Thomas Banks]

Oscar Wilde was in love with the girl who Bram Stoker married when he was young. Ah, yeah. So, like, Oscar Wilde was thinking about proposing to this. This girl whose name I forget. But then Bram Stoker beat him to the punch and she married him and Oscar Wilde married Constance Wilde instead. And. Yeah, so. So there you go. So, yeah, and also, when he was a boy, one of his. One of his friends was George Moore. They. They were fishing buddies.

[Angelina Stanford]

Irish writer.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. He and his brother used to fish with George Moore. And it's like all these people, you always feel like they, like. Did all of Ireland exist on, like, two square blocks? Because he was also a member early on, like before any of them were famous. He was a member of a poetry club, of which a young William Butler Yeats was a member of the Rhymers Club.

[Angelina Stanford]

I've read about the Rhymers Club. Yeats also has connections to the athletics club.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, like the early Yeats. Yeah, the early Yeats sounds a lot like. He almost sounds like an Irish William Morris. And I think William Morris was a big influence on early Yeats, but that's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Another story, another pre Raphaelite connection. All right, so hopefully we've given you a nice.

[Thomas Banks]

Like, this is the constellation of people that wild is one star.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ideas and things that are happening.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right. Shall we jump in with this play?

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, we shall.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, well, take it away. The first thing I noticed, honestly, was how detailed the stage directions were and the descriptions of the characters.

[Thomas Banks]

You compare wild stage directions here with, like, a stage direction by Shakespeare, which is enter, exit, pursued by a bear. If you get that. Yeah, if you get that. Wild will tell you, like, what each man and woman looks like, how they are dressed, how they carry themselves. And I think he's been kind of tongue in cheek here. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Angelina Stanford]

About so and so would want to be painted by this painter, but they wouldn't like it. And they were so funny.

[Thomas Banks]

So here's. Here's an example. So, Act 1, Scene 1. The Octagon Room at Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square. The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests. At the top of the staircase stands Lady Chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about 27 years of age. She receives the guests as they Come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights which illuminate large 18th century French tapestry representing the triumph of love from a design by Boucher. That is stretched on the staircase wall. On the right is the entrance to the music room. The sound of a string quartet is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to the other reception rooms. Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa. They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau would have loved to paint them. And Watteau, if you're not. Yeah, I know, seriously, paint them.

[Angelina Stanford]

And who wouldn't? But go ahead, say about Watau.

[Thomas Banks]

So Watteau was a French 18th century neoclassical painter who, yes, painted a lot of people in wigs. I'll just say, so kind of light and.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I read that Wilde did that because he did expect people to read the place.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, yes, he did, Oscar. I think he was. He had a very. When he wrote a play, he. It wasn't just like the words and this, but I think he had a very specific idea of how not only it would be staged but how the, the actors would deliver their lines. And I, I don't know that he directed any of his plays himself, but he would go to, he would go to rehearsals regularly and make sure that the actors, I think on one occasion at least, the actors were reading his funny lines with kind of an obvious knowledge that these are funny. And Wilde kept saying, no, I want you to read these as if this were actually the way people would speak in real life. And we know that it's not. I mean, this is a very mannerist style of writing, but that'll make it even funnier if you just kind of overlook the funniness of it. So, yeah, so Wilde I think was kind of. Yeah. Where his art was concerned. I think he knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to do it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I think that that was an interesting point to bring up, that he had very deliberate, you know, long stage directions, very specific, but also long character descriptions because he did intend for people to read the plays. I used to have an ongoing debate with an actor about this question and he used to always say, no, no, no, plays are not meant to be read, they're meant to be watched on, on the stage. And so this one's for you. Oscar Wilde wrote his plays for you to read them. And that's why he has all these long descriptions. All right, well, set the stage for Us, we're. We're in a social event at the home of the children.

[Thomas Banks]

Influential and powerful couple. So Robert Chiltern is a rising man in British politics. He is a junior member of the cabinet. So he's like the under Secretary of State. We'll say.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

And his wife is kind of everything a Victorian lady ought to be in the accepted sense of Victorian lady. And we'll see that she is very, very devoted to him. And on the surface, this is the couple who has their act together. Everything is going for them professionally, domestically. They're a power couple, as we would.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now say they are. And there's gonna be some great speeches, actually, where she's gonna talk about that. And I wanna look at that. And then we also meet a cast of characters of like, what, superficial socialites kind of who.

[Thomas Banks]

Kind of. A few of these people kind of act as a chorus almost. There's no chorus in this play, but like these two ladies here, Lady Basildon and Lady Marchmont, they kind of stand off and make the sort of observations that a chorus frequently makes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And by chorus, you mean in the Greek.

[Thomas Banks]

Like in the Greek. Yeah. In the Greek tradition of a chorus's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Role, there was to respond and comment on the things that the voice of the community.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Like often the chorus in Aeschylus and Sophocles is just made up of the elders of Thebes or the elders of Argos or something like that. The old men of this, this or that town.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Angelina Stanford]

So we can judge kind of social views of things by the way these women are talking.

[Thomas Banks]

Mm. And. Yeah. And all of these people are. Well, I won't say all. Most of these people are at once kind of clever and shallow. I don't know. It's like a sophomoric universe, basically. Yes. Yeah. Where everyone says something witty but also like, kind of empty if you look at it for a second.

[Angelina Stanford]

And lots of rapid fire dialogue, too.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes. Yeah. What's the stichomythia?

[Angelina Stanford]

Very Shakespeare, very, you know, Benedictine Beatrice.

[Thomas Banks]

But very Greek also.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very Greek also.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Read the description for Mabel Chiltern because she's like this infantilized, what, late teenage 19. Like.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. She's a little bit younger than the other principal characters. So she's the what, the younger sister of Robert Chiltern. And she's. Yeah. All virginal innocence and sweetness, but she's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Definitely got her eyes on Lord Goring.

[Thomas Banks]

She does. Okay, so Mabel Chiltern is a perfect example of the English type of prettiness, the apple blossom type. She has all the fragrance and freedom of a flower. She is ripple after ripple of sunlight in her hair. And the little mouth with its parted lips is expectant, like the mouth of a child. She has a fascinating tyranny of youth and the astonishing courage of innocence to sane people. She is not reminiscent of any work of art, but she is really like a Tanagra statuette and would be rather annoyed if she were told. So this character also. This character also like the. The sweet, sort of pert.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, you saw her and the importance of being a character.

[Thomas Banks]

Cecily, right? Or Cecilia. Yeah, it's one of the two. I think it's Cecily.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, Right. Okay. So we meet Lord Caversham and we know that he has a son who's a dandy.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. A son who is rich, has everything provided for and does nothing.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's just looking to have a good time.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And, like this, doesn't want any responsibilities.

[Thomas Banks]

So Lord Goring, of course, we learn, is Robert Chiltern's good friend and confidant. And Wilde does this more than once. He. He likes to have the one upstanding, you know. Oh, just like moral friend. And then the other guy who's kind of a layabout and just sort of a suave but idle drone.

[Angelina Stanford]

Honestly, this is a.

[Thomas Banks]

This is like the Drones Club right here. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is also the Portrait of Dorian Gray. Same kind of painting, also.

[Thomas Banks]

Portrait of Dorian Gray. Yeah. They're in a darker context, but absolutely. Basil. Like the good guy who's. Anyway, so.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so into this party at the Chiltern home, a mysterious woman shows up.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

That no one knows.

[Thomas Banks]

And Mrs. Cheverly, it's kind of the spirit of strife, showing up at the ambrosial party of the gods to toss an apple of discord.

[Angelina Stanford]

Apple of discord. Thinking that. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. And so she claims that she went to school with Lady Chiltern.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

In the end of Act.

[Thomas Banks]

Which is true.

[Angelina Stanford]

Which is at the end of Act 1, she. We find out that she does remember her.

[Thomas Banks]

And she's been living abroad.

[Angelina Stanford]

Not good.

[Thomas Banks]

And she's the kind of. What should we say? She's a continentalized English woman whose manners and mores are made up of a slightly looser texture than, say, lady chiltern's.

[Angelina Stanford]

Let's read Mrs. Chevaly's description.

[Thomas Banks]

OK. Wild. Okay. Mrs. Is it chevalier Cheveley?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, it's probably cheap.

[Thomas Banks]

I think it's Mrs. Cheveley. So who accompanies her is tall and rather slight, lips very thin. And high colored. A line of scarlet on a pallid face. Venetian red hair. I'm seeing a lot of red imagery. It's like she's a scarlet lady or something like that. Aquiline nose and long face. Throat. Rouge Red again. Rouge accentuates the natural paleness of her complexion. Gray green eyes that move restlessly.

[Angelina Stanford]

The eyes of envy perhaps.

[Thomas Banks]

She is in heliotrope with diamonds. She looks rather like an orchid and makes great demands on one's curiosity in all her movements. She is extremely graceful. A work of art on the whole, but showing the influence of too many schools. A work of art showing the influence of too many schools. So like there's something dangerous. And also maybe from the beginning a lot of people like the. Like the. The woman who you can tell is trying too much to dress like the last model she saw on the Runway or something like that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. Maybe there's no cohesive hole to her. It's.

[Thomas Banks]

It's exactly so.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, A lot of different things.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. And then we meet Sir Robert Chiltern. Read his description. I just loved all the descriptions.

[Thomas Banks]

So Sir Robert Chiltern enters. A man of 40, but looking somewhat younger. Clean shaven with finely cut features. Dark haired and dark eyed. A personality of mark. Not popular. Few personalities are, but intensely admired by the few and deeply respected by the many. The note of his manner is that of perfect distinction with a slight touch of pride. One feels that he is conscious of the success he has made in life. A nervous temperament with a tired look. The firmly chiseled mouth and chin contrast strikingly with the romantic expression in the deep set eyes. The variance is suggestive of an almost complete separation of passion and intellect. As though thought and emotion were each isolated in its own sphere through some violence of willpower. There is nervousness in the nostrils and in the pale, thin, pointed hands. It would be inaccurate to call him picturesque. Picturesqueness cannot survive the House of Commons. That's a great line. Picturesqueness cannot survive the House of Commons. But Van Dyck would have liked to have painted his head.

[Angelina Stanford]

Fantastic. So we also have a random European here, a viscount, who's seems to be chasing Mabel. But Mabel's chasing Lord Goring.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. We have. We have a. What this, this almost kind of vaudevillian stage. Frenchman.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Who kind of acts like a French stereotype over the top. Yes. And this is. What can I say? This is a comedy whose setup could actually begin a tragedy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

Because we meet. We meet a character, Sir Robert, at the height of his. The height of his public and private.

[Angelina Stanford]

Success almost looks like Oedipus.

[Thomas Banks]

It's almost kind of like this could be an Oedipus beginning here.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, exactly.

[Thomas Banks]

And Oscar Wilde even hints that this guy's. This guy's set up for a dive. Like there's something proud about him. He's a little bit too self conscious of his, you know, the fact that he is respected by the many, loved by the few, and, you know, could be the next prime minister. So. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And in enters a woman he's never met before. Okay. And so Most of Act 1, after we meet the principal players is a conversation between Mrs. Steele and Sir Robert.

[Thomas Banks]

And she wants him to do something for her. So Sir Robert, since he's a.

[Angelina Stanford]

And there's lots of like, witty comeback, you know, she says, I want you. It's a very polite.

[Thomas Banks]

It's very polite.

[Angelina Stanford]

Even though it's not a little thing. Mrs. Cheveley. I find that little things are so difficult to do. Oh, no. So everything's just very. Ha ha ha ha ha. And like, you have no idea. This is leading up to her blackmailing him.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. So she wants him to use his influence, since he's a junior cabinet minister to promote an Argentine canal scheme. And this, by the way. So this play is. Debuted in 1893, the year before this play came out. Not in Britain, but in France, there was something called the Panama Canal scandal.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was hoping you would know about that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I mean, he refers to it. This could be another Panama.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

What is it about what that was? There was a French company working on, you know, a civil engineering project in Panama. And it was falling apart, you know, for a number of reasons like that this, this project was not going to be done. Lots and lots of francs, lots of money had been invested in it already. And certain members of this corporation paid a number of French ministers in the Third Republic to lie to the public about the condition of the work so that they would keep investing money in it. Eventually the crash came. So it was an insider trading sort of thing. What we would call today the crash came and the French president at the time was booted out of office. So. And I think a number of ministers were put in jail. Some of these guys who had been involved with this dirty backroom politicking, actually including one name people will recognize. Gustav Eiffel. Oh, yes, yes. So he was, he was the politician.

[Angelina Stanford]

He fell.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, gosh, I wish I had like a symbol to clash right here. He'll be here all night. Yeah. Anyway, so this would have been International news. And. Yeah, Wilds. Wild's audience wouldn't need to be told too many of the details.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, so this woman has invested in this new canal in Argentina and it's a bust. The government's.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it's a fraud.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's a pyramid scheme kind of thing and they're going to condemn it, but she has invested in it and.

[Thomas Banks]

She wants Sir Robert to use his influence to speak on behalf of the scheme in the House of Commons, since he is the man everyone trusts. And, you know, this pyramid scheme can keep going a little bit longer until.

[Angelina Stanford]

She gets her money.

[Thomas Banks]

Until she gets her money. Yeah, that's right.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so, of course, he replies as the upstanding, respectable man would.

[Thomas Banks]

Perhaps you have forgot that you were speaking to an English gentleman. I love that line. Yes, you've been on the continent too long. Maybe this is how they do things in Vienna or Paris, Bright and honest.

[Angelina Stanford]

And Dudley Do Right. And I'm a member of. I'm a member of Parliament, ma'am. I have a sacred covenant with the people. And she says, be that as it may.

[Thomas Banks]

And she knows something about him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

So she knows that. Yeah. So the French novelist Honor Balzac wrote that behind every fortune there was a great crime. So, like, you know, behind success has something dark behind it if you dig deep enough. And she knows that Sir Robert has actually done this kind of thing before.

[Angelina Stanford]

He made his fortune.

[Thomas Banks]

He made his fortune this way by selling a government secret to a fellow she knows, the Baron Arnheim, when the Panama Canal was being. Suez Canal. Yes. The Suez Canal, by the way, was new at this time. The Suez Canal, I think, was only completed in the 1880s. And Sir Robert, in this fictionalized telling, promoted investment in it behind the scenes in an unfair way. So once again, he denies it, and at first he denies it. But she has letters, she says, to prove that this is. Yeah, she can give the. The time and the date and say who was involved and this will destroy you.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now, I'm going to read her speech here because I. I think this is a great speech, first of all. And secondly, gets at some of the stuff we've talking about, about, like poking at that. The facade of righteousness. There you go. The facade of. Of righteousness. I was going to say the veneer of respectability, but there you go. And so he says, what then, my dear Sir Robert, what then? You are ruined. That is all. Remember to what a point your puritanism in England has brought you. In old days, nobody pretended to be a bit Better than his neighbors. In fact, to be a bit better than one neighbor, One's neighbor was considered excessively vulgar and middle class. Us, nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility in all the other seven deadly virtues. And what is the result? You all go over like nine pins, one after the other. Not a year passes in England without somebody disappearing. Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest to a man. Now they crush him. And yours is a very nasty scandal. You couldn't survive it. If it were known that as a young man, secretary to a great and important minister, you sold a cabinet secret for a large sum of money. And that that was the origin of your wealth and career. You would be hounded out of public life. You would disappear completely. And after all, Sir Robert, why should you sacrifice your entire future rather than deal diplomatically with your enemy? For the moment, I am your enemy. I admit it. And I am much stronger than you are. The big battalions are on my side. You have a splendid position. But it is your splendid position that makes you so vulnerable. You can't defend it. And I am an attack. Of course, I have not talked morality to you. You must admit, in fairness that I have spared you that years ago. You did a clever, unscrupulous thing. It turned out a great success. You owe to it your fortune and position. And now you've got to pay for it. Sooner or later, we have all to pay for what we do. You have to pay. Now, before I leave you tonight, you have got to promise me to suppress your report and to speak in the house in favor of this scheme. So she's quite direct.

[Thomas Banks]

So there's the challenge. And this is. Yeah, so this is the clash wills on which the player is going to turn. So.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then we are right out the gate with the conflict.

[Thomas Banks]

That was really interesting. Yeah, this is. It's not a really long play. It's. And we've met on basically all of our important, important characters.

[Angelina Stanford]

He starts to stall. Give me a week. Give me three days.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, because he has to consider, like, you know, family things as well, because he has a wife who I think it's not unfair to say that his wife basically worships him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, she says that. Well, we'll get to her in a second. So Mrs. Cheveley pushes and pushes it and he says, okay. He says, okay. And then the wife comes in. Oh, well, actually, Lady Lord Goring comes back in. And then the wife comes back in and says, you know, what were you talking to that woman about. I remember her, she's terrible. She's unscrupulous and dishonesty.

[Thomas Banks]

The girl you don't want to see your husband talking to.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. You are a respectable member of parliament. You're a respectable man. You can't be seen with this woman. And he, he basically, yeah, okay, so, yeah, I'm looking at this lady Chilton says she stole things. I despise her. She's a thief. And. And he's like, oh, well, surely we can't judge people by their past. So he's speaking out of his own guilt. Yes, that was fantastic.

[Thomas Banks]

She says, no, absolutely, we should judge.

[Angelina Stanford]

People which people should be judged. She said, that's a hard saying, Gertrude. And she keeps pressing him. You are a respectable man. And he is really vacillating here, Gertrude. Truth is a very complex thing. Like he's trying.

[Thomas Banks]

He knows, he's discovered all manner of. All manner of philosophical perspectives in the five minutes. You know.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. And she goes on. Well, actually, well, it's a woman's line. Should I read what she says about her husband here, Robert, that is all very well for other men. For men who treat life simply as a sordid speculation, but not for you, Robert. Not for you. You are different. All your life you have stood apart from others. You have never let the world soil you. To the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh, be that ideal steel, that great inheritance thrown out away, that tower of ivory. Do not destroy, Robert. Men can love what is beneath them. Things unworthy, stained, dishonored. We women worship when we love and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Everything. Oh, don't kill my love for you. Don't kill that man. Yeah, she's putting the screws to him here.

[Thomas Banks]

It's like. Yeah, like Tallulah, maybe, like back it off with the overacting a little bit. It's. Yeah, but no, he makes her like a very melodramatic character and the situation is really something kind of from a bad melodrama.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And her husband, absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

But he turns around and makes it a satire. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Cannot live up to the ideal that she thinks.

[Thomas Banks]

No, like, who could. Like, this would be impossible. This would be a full time job against such.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wait, wait, that's not what you are.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm afraid not. I'm afraid not. I know, like the pedestal you have put me on is too fine for my feet.

[Angelina Stanford]

Anything but that.

[Thomas Banks]

I know. Anything but that. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Do you have shares in a canal? I need to Know about. All right.

[Thomas Banks]

And so she is General Hospital, like hiring or something like that. I was thinking you're acting here like, you know, future in the soaps. Ms. Stanford put some over the top.

[Angelina Stanford]

Thing here, this breathy love that she has for her husband and she, she's really something here. She says no, write her now. Tell her no. And he's like, oh, I'll do it later. I'll. I'll see you. Like, no.

[Thomas Banks]

Cost a play time.

[Angelina Stanford]

No. And she actually forces him. Forces him to write the letter and, and, and a letter about. You have misunderstood who I am. I. I am not a man to be trifled. Now, I suspect part of what's going on here too is that I am.

[Thomas Banks]

The very picture of a modern parliamentarian.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, nice. High five. That was actually.

[Thomas Banks]

Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a play mocking.

[Angelina Stanford]

The aesthetic movement and they parried us.

[Thomas Banks]

Wilde himself. He appears as the poet. Bunthorne. Yes, Patience. That's the one. Patience.

[Angelina Stanford]

Fantastic. So I think what we're seeing here a bit too is Oscar Wilde poking at the Victorian idea that the woman is the.

[Thomas Banks]

She's an angel in the house.

[Angelina Stanford]

The angel of the house.

[Thomas Banks]

Lady Chiltern is a perfect angel. So she's a perfect house.

[Angelina Stanford]

She's the moral compass of the family that she guides this. You know, she, her spirit, the. The wife as the angel in the house. Exerting her spiritual influence over her husband is how the nation moves forward in respectability. And so, so here she's. She's forcing him to do this thing, not realizing that, you know, he. He's not the man she. She thinks he is. So I thought that there was an interesting kind of play on something in the first act because Robert here is the ideal husband, but his buddy Lord Goring is twice referred to as the idle man.

[Thomas Banks]

He says, the laziest man in all of London.

[Angelina Stanford]

I thought there might be an interesting setup of the ideal versus the ideal. The ideal versus the idol. Oh, well, all right. Nice, nice. I noticed something you didn't notice.

[Thomas Banks]

You do? You do?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

This is your first reading?

[Angelina Stanford]

This is my first reading. I'm trying to look for things that are repeated. So as soon as they said it, I was like, oh, oh, idle ideal. I think I see something.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, this is going to be good.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is going to be good. Any final comments?

[Thomas Banks]

Not really, no.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a fun one to read again.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is fun. I hope you guys are enjoying it. I hope something we've said today has been helpful in opening this. This play up and other late Victorian works and maybe just even opening up the 20th century and the whole world a bit more to you as you understand the the ideas that have brought us to to where we are. So next time we'll do acts two and three. I know that the schedule said we were going to do one and two today, but we spent I figured we were going to spend a long time introducing things. So we will do Acts 2 and 3 next time and then we'll finish up with Act 4. And we're supposed to talk about the film and at least supposed to come on, but we are having a really hard time finding it because you can't stream it anywhere.

[Thomas Banks]

So that was a popular movie when it came out. It's a really good movie to be.

[Angelina Stanford]

Shocked that you can't find it anywhere. A big name cast. So I think Atley's going to order a DVD so we can all watch it. So we'll, we'll keep you posted. He's already doing his research and says there's like 47 versions of this, so I know that there's some older ones on YouTube so we'll probably end up still talking about that. All righty. Well, that wraps it up for today. And remember, you can go to cassiodorus press.com to pre order Dr. Baxter's book and and you can go to houseofhumane letters.com to sign up for Mr. Banks's webinar and to peruse all of the sale items at our store. So have a fun with that and get yourself some good stuff for the next year. And until then, keep crafting your literary life, guys, because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

The Thought by Humbert Wolf. I will not write a poem for you, because a poem, even the loveliest, can only do what words can do Stir the air and dwindle and be at rest. Nor will I hold you with my hands because the bones of my hands on yours would press and you'd say after mortal was and crumbling that lover's tenderness. But I will hold you in a thought without moving spirit or desire or will. For I know no other way of loving that endures when the heart is still.