Themes
One law for men, another for women
Hester's outburst in the drawing-room names the play's central injustice: 'Don't have one law for men and another for women.' The play then proves her point. George Harford, who refused to marry the girl he seduced, has become Lord Illingworth, a man Lady Caroline calls 'of high distinction', talked of for an embassy. Rachel has spent twenty years under a name she has no right to, working among the poor and keeping away from society. In the last act she sums it up without self-pity: 'I am disgraced: he is not.' The woman suffers and the man goes free, and only Hester's change of heart suggests that the rule can be broken.
Mothers and sons
The play turns on a struggle for Gerald between the mother who raised him and the father who has just found him. Lord Illingworth warns Rachel that children 'begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them.' Gerald proves him half right when he blames the ruined girl in his mother's story. Mrs Arbuthnot's great speech in the last act answers with a love that is fierce and physical: she fought death to keep a sickly baby alive, and she cannot repent a sin whose fruit is her son. It ends with her plea: 'Child of my shame, be still the child of my shame!'
Wit without a heart
Lord Illingworth talks in paradoxes about everything: America, politics, health, women, marriage and sin. Lady Hunstanton finds it all 'excessively immoral' and 'most interesting', and the party treats him as the best company in the house. The play lets his talk run freely, then tests it. His lesson to Gerald in the picture gallery, that 'the future belongs to the dandy', is followed later that evening by the attempted kiss that exposes him. In the last scene his wit fails him: reaching for one more light phrase about 'one's mistress', he is struck with his own glove and leaves without a word.
Puritanism and forgiveness
Hester arrives as a stern Puritan. She tells the drawing-room 'Let all women who have sinned be punished,' and in the third act agrees with Mrs Arbuthnot that the sins of the parents should be visited on the children: 'It is God's law.' She does not know she is condemning the woman beside her and the man she loves. Once the truth is out she changes. She takes Mrs Arbuthnot's part against Gerald, offers to share her fortune, and reverses her creed in a single line: 'God's law is only Love.' The play ends with a family made by forgiveness rather than by law.
English society on trial
Hunstanton Chase is full of people who preach one thing and live another. Mr Kelvil writes on Purity and the beauty of English home life while his wife and eight children stay at the seaside without him. Lady Caroline calls her brother 'infamous, absolutely infamous' but forgives him because he keeps one of the best cooks in London. Hester, the outsider, tells them their society 'lies like a leper in purple', shutting out the gentle and the good. Lady Hunstanton welcomes Mrs Arbuthnot as a sweet saint, and never learns that she is exactly the kind of woman her guests would shun.