A Good Woman: "Lady Windermere's Fan"

The ancients held that the happiness of men is equal to the happiness of the gods, that it admits of no degree. One wonders if this standard applies to works of art? Is any truly good play just as perfect as any other? Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan" would sorely test that notion, for although it is, in its own way perfect, it would also, I have to think, admit of improvement. Let me explain why this play is so satisfying, yet so frustrating.

Read here an extract from the opening dialog of the play, available in full at the Gutenburg Project. Lady Windermere, married a year, in love, and newly a mother, with an acquaintance, Lord Darlington, who has not yet openly revealed that he is madly in love with her:

"Oh, nowadays so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad. Besides, there is this to be said. If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism."
"Don’t you want the world to take you seriously then, Lord Darlington?"
"No, not the world. Who are the people the world takes seriously? All the dull people one can think of, from the Bishops down to the bores. I should like you to take me very seriously, Lady Windermere, you more than any one else in life."
..."I think we’re very good friends already, Lord Darlington. We can always remain so as long as you don’t -"
"Don’t what?"
"Don’t spoil it by saying extravagant silly things to me. You think I am a Puritan, I suppose? Well, I have something of the Puritan in me. I was brought up like that. I am glad of it. My mother died when I was a mere child. I lived always with Lady Julia, my father’s elder sister, you know. She was stern to me, but she taught me what the world is forgetting, the difference that there is between what is right and what is wrong. She allowed of no compromise. I allow of none."
"My dear Lady Windermere!"
"You look on me as being behind the age. - Well, I am! I should be sorry to be on the same level as an age like this."
"You think the age very bad?"
"Yes. Nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is Love. Its purification is sacrifice."
"Oh, anything is better than being sacrificed!"
"Don’t say that."
"I do say it. I feel it - I know it."

Darlington is a charming wit and we sympathize with his rejection of conventional hypocrisy. As the plot develops, we learn from Darlington that Lord Windermere has been fraternizing with a Mrs. Erlynne, (here as played by Helen Hunt,) a woman of questionable reputation. Darlington, an honorable and not unforthright man suspects that Lady Windermere will find herself betrayed, and makes it clear that he intends to "be there for her" when she needs him. Later that evening, when Mrs. Erlynne mortifies Lady Windermere by showing up as her husband's guest at Lady Windermere's party, Darlington repeats his offer, explicitly and urgently:

Lady Windermere: "Yes. Her coming here is monstrous, unbearable. I know now what you meant to-day at tea-time. Why didn’t you tell me right out? You should have!"
"I couldn’t! A man can’t tell these things about another man! But if I had known he was going to make you ask her here to-night, I think I would have told you. That insult, at any rate, you would have been spared."
"I did not ask her. He insisted on her coming - against my entreaties - against my commands. Oh! the house is tainted for me! I feel that every woman here sneers at me as she dances by with my husband. What have I done to deserve this? I gave him all my life. He took it - used it - spoiled it! I am degraded in my own eyes; and I lack courage - I am a coward!"
"If I know you at all, I know that you can’t live with a man who treats you like this! What sort of life would you have with him? You would feel that he was lying to you every moment of the day. You would feel that the look in his eyes was false, his voice false, his touch false, his passion false. He would come to you when he was weary of others; you would have to comfort him. He would come to you when he was devoted to others; you would have to charm him. You would have to be to him the mask of his real life, the cloak to hide his secret."
"You are right - you are terribly right. But where am I to turn? You said you would be my friend, Lord Darlington. - Tell me, what am I to do? Be my friend now."
"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. I love you -"
"No, no!"
"Yes, I love you! You are more to me than anything in the whole world. What does your husband give you? Nothing. Whatever is in him he gives to this wretched woman, whom he has thrust into your society, into your home, to shame you before every one. I offer you my life-"
"Lord Darlington!"
"My life - my whole life. Take it, and do with it what you will. . . . I love you - love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly! You did not know it then - you know it now! Leave this house to-night. I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a great deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose! Oh, my love, choose."
"I have not the courage."
"Yes; you have the courage. There may be six months of pain, of disgrace even, but when you no longer bear his name, when you bear mine, all will be well. Margaret, my love, my wife that shall be some day - yes, my wife! You know it! What are you now? This woman has the place that belongs by right to you. Oh! go - go out of this house, with head erect, with a smile upon your lips, with courage in your eyes. All London will know why you did it; and who will blame you? No one. If they do, what matter? Wrong? What is wrong? It’s wrong for a man to abandon his wife for a shameless woman. It is wrong for a wife to remain with a man who so dishonours her. You said once you would make no compromise with things. Make none now. Be brave! Be yourself!"
"I am afraid of being myself. Let me think! Let me wait! My husband may return to me."
"And you would take him back! You are not what I thought you were. You are just the same as every other woman. You would stand anything rather than face the censure of a world, whose praise you would despise. In a week you will be driving with this woman in the Park. She will be your constant guest - your dearest friend. You would endure anything rather than break with one blow this monstrous tie. You are right. You have no courage; none!"
"Ah, give me time to think. I cannot answer you now."
"It must be now or not at all."
"Then, not at all!"
"You break my heart!"
"Mine is already broken."
"To-morrow I leave England. This is the last time I shall ever look on you. You will never see me again. For one moment our lives met - our souls touched. They must never meet or touch again. Good-bye, Margaret."

And of course, she breaks our hearts too! How could she not go with this man, this man willing to suffer all to gain her, to face the world's scorn for true love? But herein lies the play. Lady Windermere does not abscond with a man worthy of her love. We are denied the happy ending we expect in the second act. Yet Wilde has a trick up his sleave, a twist of the plot, and he pulls off a happy ending with which we are, in the end, satisfied. Is the satisfaction the same as it would have been had the Lady run off? She does end the play happily. And if all happiness is equal, then we too should be happy. Yet...

Given our modern view of the Victorian virtues, and especially our knowledge as ominpotent spectators in this play, we can imagine an ending to it other than Wilde's which would satisfy us completely. Yet the play's internal logic is sound. The drama works. Wilde is still a dramatic genius. I am not a dramatist, and while I could imagine a great play with a different ending, I could not write it. I do not know if anyone could. But that does not matter. This work stands on its own, and stands up very well. And it contains some of Wilde's best humor, which I will not ruin by telling trying to tell any of it here.

The play is availble in several versions. Scarlet Johansson stars in the most recent remake which goes by the subtitle of the original, "A Good Woman." The BBC television production which is in stock at Netflix is also available in full at YouTube. Here is part one:



Download the text of Lady Windermere's Fan for free at Project Gutenberg.

Barbara Tuchman "The Guns of August"

As I have previously argued, World war I, not World war II, is the formative event of our era. Its effects, which include the Second World War are still being played out in Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East.

One of the most famous works on World War I is Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Guns of August. This work deals with the circumstances and events leading up to the outbreak of the First World War and the stalemate along the Western Front that ensured a war of attrition settled only by the historically contingent and by no means inevitable intervention of the U.S. in 1917.

Tuchman's book is excellent not only as history, but also as analysis and even as drama. Not a work of art, its artistic touches include grand aphoristic language and a sense of suspense that reads as much like narrative fiction as it does a clinical account.

Neither the actual outbreak nor the course of the war was predetermined. Even up to mobilization the war could have been averted, although, Tuchman argues, the principles often did not see this. Although the reader knows the outcome, through the first half of the book one is kept turning the pages, hoping that war will be avoided. As diplomats and European royalty work sometimes diligently and sometimes fecklessly to achieve some accomodation, others argue that once the wheels are in motion it would be suicide to attempt a delay of action. The Kaiser is shown as too week to avoid a war (one that he both feared and longed for) as well as too conflicted to win it. The effect of Bristish diplomacy was to support France well enough morally that she would not seriously seek to avoid war with Prussia, but not well enough materially to break the German lines once that war broke out. "No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision," says Tuchman.

One particularly tragic event that Tuchman documents is the bombardment of the Belgian city of Louvain and the destruction of its university library, the oldest in Europe, with the loss of countless unique treasures. Cardinal Désiré Mercier, author of the Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy would arise as a hero of the Belgian resistance and of civilzed Europe.

This best-seller has been in print continuously since its publication in 1962. Tuchman's interpretation has influenced historians and the work played a pivotal role in the Kennedy Administration's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Read it as drama, as history, and as a book of ideas.

Pictured are the iconic "you country needs you" poster with Lord Kitchener, killed in WWI, The Kaiser in his warlord costume and the ruins of the library of Louvain University.

Beethoven's Sixth Symphony "The Pastoral"

Little compares to Ludwig van Beethoven. One of the strangest opinions I've ever heard of Beethoven is that his music is malevolent. He certainly can convey darker themes with his compositions. The Fifth Symphony, with its "Fate knocking at the door" is far from lighthearted. Indeed, Beethoven can be seen as the first Heavy Metal artist, with the booming epic style of his symphonies. Considered a member of the Classical school along with Mozart and Haydn we can hear echoes of Shubert and a foretaste of the Romantics that is absent mostly, say, in Mozart. To make a grossly inadequate analogy for the student of pop music, Beethoven's dramatic range is like Led Zepellin to Mozart's saccharine early Beatles.

Beethoven's place in Western culture is unparalleled. Consider Stanley Kubrick's dystopian masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange. The anti-hero Alexander De Large could hardly have been portrayed as a Tschaikovsky fanatic. When the Berlin Wall fell, they did not hold a Mahler or a Wagner concert to celebrate. One of the greatest of all human accomplishments is Beethoven's nine symphonies. Especially the last seven, from the "Eroica" (3rd) from which he ripped the dedication to Napoleon when Bonaparte betrayed the Republic and crowned himself Emperor, to the Ninth, the wildly popular "Choral Symphony" based on Schiller's romantic poem, the Ode to Joy.

One of my favorite of all classical pieces is Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, "The Pastoral." Composed, rehearsed and debuted along with the more ominous Fifth, The Sixth, with its buoyant mood, provides a perfect complement. The Pastoral Symphony, which is intentionally meant to evoke "recollections of country life" has been famously adapted to two iconic movies of the Twentieth Century. The first is Walt Disney's animated masterpiece Fantasia. The full five movements, performed by Leopold Stokowski directing the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, are illustrated with scenes of Greek and European mythology that comprise one of my earliest and most joyful childhood memories.

The second iconic film usage is in 1973's sci-fi noir, Soylent Green. The fatherly police archivist Sol Roth, (Edward G. Robinson in his last role,) has watched America decay from greatness to mindless rioting and self-delusion. Choosing to die, he patronizes a state-run euthansia clinic. With all the world's wildlife dead, Roth watches images of the countryside and listens to Beethoven's Pastoral as the fatal cocktail takes effect. Of course its use in Soylent Green is darkly ironic. The piece itself conjures no malevolent images, at least nothing worse than a soon-passed summer thunderstorm.

Click here to see part one of the Pastoral in Disney's Fantasia. Click here for Sol's departure in Soylent Green. And here is Herbert von Karajan, renowned for his beethoven Interpretations, directing the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of the complete symphony:

Dirty Vegas "Days Go By"

"Heathers" Femmes Fatales II

A mix of Nietzsche and teen angst ending with the words, "There's a new sheriff in town," Heathers, a 1989 dark comedy starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, is a wicked satire of high school cliques, disfunctional families, and the therapeutic culture. While the film was not a box office success, it has attained cult status, with continuingly solid DVD slaes and rental revenue. It was a critical success for first-time director Michael Lehmann, and the first major lead for co-stars Slater and Ryder after his appearanced in Name of the Rose and hers in Beetlejuice.



Heather Chandler, Heather Duke and Heather McNamara are three vicious, sexually manipulative, and deeply unhappy "popular girls" whose clique terrorizes the student body of Westerburg High. The pretty and intelligent but alienated Veronica Sawyer (Ryder) joins the croquet-playing prank-planning sorority as an "honorary Heather." Her first assignment is to humiliate her former friend, Martha "Dumptruck" Dunnstock. Veronica, whose parents show their concern for her well-being by assuming, as they sip their martinis, that she must be suffering every fad teenage syndrome they hear of on TV, is just going through the motions. There is nothing more empty than a teenage suburban limbo where "that's so 1987" is the worst imaginable put-down.

Then bad-boy Jason "J.D." Dean (Slater) transfers in to Westerburg. With his shades and leather jacket and his disdain not only for authority but also the Heathers, he embodies for Veronica the possibility of a sufficient self. But J.D., for all his apparent bravado, is an empty shell as well. With no real values of his own, this nihilist lives to expose the emptiness in others. Finding the lone wolf in him attractive, Veronica decides to explore the dark side, beginning with a visit to the top Heather who is suffering the effects of a hangover. But J.D. switches the pick-me-up Veronica pours for her with poison. In a frantic attempt to avoid blame for her surpise demise, Veronica forges a suicide note. Not only is the note successful, but Heather's suicide is seen as an example by her classmates, and the ensuing farcical deaths are celebrated as an "opportunity to heal" by the school guidance counselor.



Veronica begins this movie as a burned out cynic. In search of the thrill that she can no longer get from Barbie Dolls, she joins the "elites" of her school to prey on her former friends who are seen as nerds and losers. Finding this even more barren, she turns on the predators with J.D.'s help and takes down the Heathers and top Jocks. J.D., a true psychopath, revels in the destruction. When Veronica abandons him, he plans murder to silence her, and a holocaust for the school. But Veronica, realizing the real worth, if not the supposed glamor of her former true friends, realizes that she has a value she wants to protect. A woman with a mission, she goes up against a killer, and completes her metamorphosis from delinquent to champion.

With its dark humor, over-the-top performances, stylized lunacy, and disdain for convention, Heathers resembles many critical hits of the seventies such as A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The top-grossing teenage flick of the 80's, The Breakfast Club, would have us believe that mean teachers and low self-esteem are the central problems of youth, and that the cure is self-therapeutic weekend bull-sessions. Heathers blows that unintentional farce out of the water. At times surreal, almost psychadelic, Heathers succeeds as black comedy and as biting social commentary. But while Heathers succeeds as satire, it does not settle for mere cynicism. While Veronica flirts with nihilism, she never commits, ultimately withdrawing in horror once she sees the nature of that drooling beast. Beautiful and brilliant, a lack of strength was never Veronica's problem. Once she is wakened from her funk, she acts with courage. Veronica goes beyond the femme fatale, and choses to be a heroine instead.

Rent the film, buy the film, watch the film in full at YouTube:



Read Femmes Fatales, Part I and Part III

Google Mars

You are probably familiar with Google Earth, the satellite image website that lets you zoom in from space on any site on the planet. If you aren't familiar with the site, you should check it out immediately. No Roman emperor or god on Mount Olympus could command such wonders as the poorest of citizens with an airport connection or a card to his local library. But even if you have seen Google Earth, have you checked out Google Mars? Through NASA and the Hubble Telescope we can see wonders so grand that mere words cannot describe a millionth of their splendor; the surface of distant stars, the creation of new suns, millions of galaxies billions of years distant.



Google Mars lets us zoom in on the Red Planet as if it were in our living rooms, and not a barely visible red speck in the night sky some 100 million miles away. You can look at Mars photographed in visible light or infrared or you can enjoy the false-color relief map which doesn't show any canals, but which does show plain signs of crater impacts, flowing water, and mountains over ten miles high.

Right Click on the NASA images of Mars above to see them full-sized. Click here for Google Earth, download required, but worth the effort. Click here for Google Mars, no download necessary.

Little Red Riding Hood Redux

There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them.

Red Riding Hood lived with a nurture giver whom she sometimes referred to as “Mother,” although she didn’t mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of that person if a close biological link did not in fact exist. Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, and she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed.

One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother’s house.

“But mother, won’t this be stealing work from the unionized people who have struggled for years to earn the right to carry all packages between various people in the woods?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother assured her that she had called the union boss and gotten a special compassionate mission exemption form.

“But mother, aren’t you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother pointed out that it was impossible for women to oppress each other, since all women were equally oppressed until all women were free.

“But mother, then shouldn’t you have my brother carry the basket, since he’s an oppressor, and should learn what it’s like to be oppressed?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her brother was attending a special rally for animal rights, and besides, this wasn’t stereotypical women’s work, but an empowering deed that would help engender a feeling of community.

“But won’t I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she’s sick and hence unable to independently further her own selfhood?”

But Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her grandmother wasn’t actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called “health.” Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off.

Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were in fact intolerable competitors.

Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and deviants, but Red Riding Hood felt that in a truly classless society all marginalized peoples would be able to “come out” of the woods and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models.



On her way to Grandma’s house, Red Riding Hood passed a woodchopper, and wandered off the path, in order to examine some flowers. She was startled to find herself standing before a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket. Red Riding Hood’s teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality, and chose to dialogue with the Wolf.

She replied, “I am taking my Grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity.”

The Wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.”

Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid world view. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way.”

Red Riding Hood returned to the main path, and proceeded towards her Grandmother’s house. But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma’s house.

He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his nature as a predator. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender role notions, he put on Grandma’s nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.

Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, “Grandma, I have brought you some cruelty-free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing matriarch.”

The Wolf said softly, “Come closer, child, so that I might see you.”

Red Riding Hood said, “Goddess[es]! Grandma, what big eyes you have!”

“You forget that I am optically challenged.”

“And Grandma, what an enormous, what a fine nose you have.”

“Naturally, I could have had it fixed to help my acting career, but I didn’t give in to such societal pressures, my child.”

“And Grandma, what very big, sharp teeth you have!”

The Wolf could not take any more of these speciesist slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for his accustomed milieu, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor Grandmother cowering in his belly.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Red Riding Hood bravely shouted. “You must request my permission before proceeding to a new level of intimacy!”

The Wolf was so startled by this statement that he loosened his grasp on her. At the same time, the woodchopper burst into the cottage, brandishing an axe.

“Hands off!” cried the woodchopper.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” cried Little Red Riding Hood. “If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my own abilities, which would lead to poor self-esteem and lower achievement scores on college entrance exams.”

“Last chance, sister! Get your hands off that endangered species! This is an FBI sting!” screamed the woodchopper, and when Little Red Riding Hood nonetheless made a sudden motion, he swung the axe and sliced off her head.

“Thank goodness you got here in time,” said the Wolf. “The brat and her grandmother lured me in here. I thought I was a goner.”

“No, I think I’m the real victim, here,” said the woodchopper. “I’ve been dealing with my anger ever since I saw her picking those protected flowers earlier. And now I’m going to have such a trauma. Do you have any aspirin?”

“Sure,” said the Wolf.

“Thanks.”

“I feel your pain,” said the Wolf, and he patted the woodchopper on his firm, well padded back, gave a little belch, and said “Do you have any Maalox?”

My thanks to Hilton (HWH) for passing this on. I am unaware of the originator. The Illustrations are by Gustave Doré.