M. VENKATESWARA RAO
“In the recent drama,
few types of character have been more frequently portrayed than the wayward
woman. Her waywardness has been presented as a matter of the past or of the present,
as something repented of or persisted in. It has been represented, also, as
trivial or grave, the result of passion or of principle. Among recent
playwrights, three have achieved especial success in analysing this character”.1
Oscar Wilde is mentioned along with Sundermann and Pinero as those who depict
the wayward heroine.
Later in his literary
career Oscar Wilde earned reputation as the writer of five social comedies -
“Lady Windermere’s Fan” (1882), “A Woman of No Importance” (1893), “An Ideal Husband” (1895) and “The Importance of
Being Earnest” (1895). In the first three of the above-mentioned plays, Wilde has depicted wayward
women with a past. He had earlier written two, what are called, “romantic
plays” in which he has portrayed wayward women, their waywardness being
presented as a matter of the present. The plays are – “The Duchess of Padua”,
written in 1883
and
“Salome” written ten years later in 1893. The present article aims at highlighting the
characterisation of the wayward women who figure in these two plays.
The theme of the
“Pseudo-Elizabethan drama” 2 is revenge and love. The play shows the
influence of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. In the course of the
play, time and again we are reminded of such diverse plays as “Julius Caesar”,
“Hamlet”, “Antony and Cleopatra” and “The Duchess of Malti”. The play revolves
round the heroine, Beatrice, who is the Duchess of Padua. She is one of those
unfortunate women who have loved and lost. Her first effect is that of pure
beauty. She just passes across the stage and says nothing whatever. But she has
looked at Guido, the hero, and falls in love with him at first sight. She is
married to a cynical and tyrannical old man, the Duke of Padua. He is old
enough to be her father. She hall been starved of love, genuine love. The old
husband treats her as chattel. Hers is not to reason why, hers is not to
question why, hers is to die. In the second act she appears as the image of
pity and mercy. She is a crusader for the welfare of the people of Padua who
are treated with ruthless contempt by the Duke. She distributes her money among
the wretched citizens. By her sympathy for the downtrodden, she wins our
admiration. Guido confesses his love for her and she only too readily
reciprocates. She admits that she fell in love with him the first moment they
met. But her joy is short-lived. Guido is reminded of his duty in avenging the
murder of his father by the Duke of Padua. He decides to put the task of
revenge above that of loving Beatrice. He speaks of a “barrier” lying between
them, and then deserts her. She misunderstands the meaning of the word
“barrier” used by Guido. She believes that it refers to her husband. After
toying with the idea of suicide, she resolves to remove that “barrier”. Under a
momentary impulse she commits the murder of her husband, and tells her lover “I
have just killed him” and “I did it all for you!” Guido is horrified by the
murder which she has committed and from which he himself shrank. He turns a
deaf ear to her pleas and love. Then she does a disconcerting volte face. She
has Guido arrested as the murderer. She lays the crime at Guido’s own door. “In
Act 4 the Duchess becomes a real White Devil (Webster was obviously in Wilde’s
mind, as well as Shelley”)3 During his trial, she seeks to prevent his speaking, lest
he should reveal her perfidy. She expresses regret that his head was not
chopped off the moment he was seized. “Art thou that Beatrice, Duchess of
Padua?” Guido asks with understandable incredulity. “I am what thou hast made
me”, she replies. Yet he still loves her. At this point of the play, the Duchess
forfeits our sympathy by her act of treachery to her lover. But a rude shock
awaits her. When Guido is permitted to talk, he falsely asserts that he
murdered the Duke and thus supports her story so that she may be saved. At this
evidence of his devotion and love, she is touched. She makes vain attempts to
secure a pardon for her lover. She goes to the condemned man in prison, drinks
off the poison meant for him, and urges him to escape in her garments. She
asks, “Can love wipe away the blood from off my hands, pour balsam in my
wounds, heal my scars, and wash my scarlet sins as white as snow?” ... Again,
before she dies, she declares:
“Perchance
my sin will be forgiven me,
I
have loved much.”
She
kisses him and dies in a spasm. Guido kills himself with her dagger. Wilde
tells us that after her death her countenance is a marble image of peace,
showing that God has forgiven her. But the reader doubts whether divine
forgiveness is possible for this particular sinner. But he will feel pity for
the Duchess, just as he feels pity for Othello of Shakespeare.
The
second romantic drama of Wilde depicting the wayward heroine is “Salome”. As
the title indicates, the Biblical temptress, Salome, the eighteen-year old
princess of Judea, is the central figure. As Frank D. Chandler points out,
Wilde has depicted her as the personification of revolting lust. Wilde has made
a significant departure from the original Biblical legend. In the Bible, it is
at the instance of her mother, Herodias, that Salome asks for the head of John
the Baptist on a silver charger. Her mother hates the prophet for condemning
her publicly for marrying her husband’s murderer, Herod. But in Wilde’s play
Salome herself lusts for the body of the prophet, Jokanaan. But she takes no
notice of the young Syrian soldier who despairs of winning her love, and so
kills himself. But her passion for Jokanaan is intense as madness. As she first
looks upon the prophet, she cries, “I am amorous of thy body, Jokanaan! Thy
body is white like lilies of a field that the mower has never mowed ... The
roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are not so white as thy body.” The
more the prophet rebukes and curses her, the more she begs to be allowed to
kiss him. Spurned, she decides to wreak vengeance, upon one who has scorned her
love. Meanwhile, she has infected the heart of her step-father, Herod, also
with love. She extracts a promise from the lecherous old villain that he will
give her anything she wishes, if she dances before him. She dances and Herod is
carried away with ecstatic delight. As the fee for her dancing, she asks for
the head of Jokanaan on a silver plate. Herod recoils in horror but keeps his
word. When the severed head of Jokanaan is brought to her. Salome says to it.
“Well, I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites ripe
fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan.” As she boasts, “I have kissed thy
mouth, Jokanann”, the Tetrach shouts to his soldiers, “Kill that woman.” The
soldiers crush her to death under their shields. “Salome is as much the victim
of her mother’s jealousy and hostility to her husband as she is of Herod’s
irrational and reckless lust, fear of old age and relentless cruelty”. 4
In this way, both the
heroines of these two “romantic dramas” (the phrase is Frank D. Chandler’s) are
wayward women. Their waywardness comes from their passion. “It is not in such
romantic dramas, however, that Oscar Wilde is at his best in drawing wayward
women, but rather in his realistic plays of modern life. In these witty and
amusing satires upon English society, the woman with a past occupies a
prominent place”.5
Chandler goes on and
points out that the wayward women that figure in the later social comedies like
Mrs. Erlynne in “Lady Windermere’s Fan”. Mrs. Arbuthnot in “A Woman of No
Importance” and Mrs. Cheveley in “An Ideal Husband” are all women with a past.
They are wayward through interest. But Beatrice of “The Duchess of Padua” and
Salome are women with a present. Their waywardness sprang from their passions.
REFERENCES
1 Frank D. Chandler, “Aspects of Modern Drama”. Page 121. The Macmillan
Company, London, 1914.
2 Alan Bird, “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”. Page 35, Vision Press Limited,
London, 1977.
3 Katherine Worth, “Oscar Wilde.” Page 44, Macmillan Company, London, 1983.
4 Alan Bird, “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, Page 74.
5 Frank D. Chandler “Aspects of Modern Drama”. Page 134.
* “Selected Letters of Ananda Coomaraswamy.” Ed.
by Vin Moore, Jr. and Rama Poonambulam Coomaraswamy. Indira Gandhi National
Centre for the Arts, New Delhi-1. Publishers Oxford University Press, New
Delhi-1. Rs. 250.