How Is Lady Windermere's Fan A Satire

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One of the great ways for an author to reproach his audience while simultaneously keeping them interested and entertained is satire. In Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play, “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” Wilde successfully portrays the Victorian upper class as completely ridiculous without becoming offensive to those who are actually a part of it. The Duchess of Berwick has the most dominating personality in this play. As a duchess, she is ranked more highly in society than a lord or lady, and clearly recognizes and takes advantage of that. She is so conceited that she goes on to tell the lord and lady about their companions in society as if they are idiots who could not have these same conclusions without being told by someone as smart as herself. The duchess talks endlessly, having many more lines than her two guests. Her focus on herself causes the audience to miss out on meeting the fourth character in the scene, Agatha. The duchess refers to and addresses her daughter a few times within the beginning of the passage, but never allows her a moment to respond. Her pretentiousness is apparent when she tells her company not only about how her “friend” …show more content…

By taking the duchess’s arrogant attitudes seriously, she represents the ladies of her class as smiling brownnosers, ready to do the beck and call of their betters in order to be approved them. Lady Windermere not only reforms herself to fit the duchess’s standards, she ends up imitating her attitude toward men, specifically Lord Darlington, and society. She immediately humbles herself before the duchess, making her ball seem smaller to become a mere dance and vowing that she will only invite the proper company of which the duchess approves. Towards the end she even teases Lord Darlington in a similar manner to the duchess’s, calling him trivial, and lightly chastising him about his “foolish insincerity” in a playful

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