This paper examines the books of medicine, law, and the contents of the arguments of the Victorian feminists of the later part of the 19th century and surveys the Puritan nature of the intellectual climate of that time. Especially this paper focuses on the oppressive and controlling elements of medical books which distort women's sexuality by quoting William Acton, Auguste Debay, James Copland, and Horace Goss of that time. And then I introduced the “Contagious Disease Acts” which were passed in 1862 to oppress the lower class women called prostitutes by confining them into the hospital at any time to check and treat their venereal diseases. Feminists and many feminists organizations at that time participated to protest against this irrational “CD Acts.” They attacked the inhuman nature of that law and insisted the “Acts” should be stopped. In the process of this protest, these feminists joined together to demand sexual purity from men because they thought that this kind of higher morality could raise the moral dimension of their society and could stop the dual standard of their patriarchal sexual ideology against women's sexuality. Against this intellectual and cultural background I analysed Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and tried to show how unconventional and subversive this play is. For the conclusions I analyzed Mrs Erlynne, the fallen woman, as the heroine of this play and showed how Wilde approached this woman and embodied his own individualistic ideas in her. I also focused on analyzing the use of the fan, the main symbol of this play and showed how this play is similar to postmodern literature of our period in its spirit. I can summarise the contents of my arguments as follows: Wilde showed that 1) women can have sexual desire 2) women have the right to pursue sexual pleasure for their own 3) women can pursue sexual pleasure which has nothing to do with maternity or reproduction. These insights are very far from the conventional discourses on the women's sexuality at that time.

This paper examines the books of medicine, law, and the contents of the arguments of the Victorian feminists of the later part of the 19th century and surveys the Puritan nature of the intellectual climate of that time. Especially this paper focuses on the oppressive and controlling elements of medical books which distort women's sexuality by quoting William Acton, Auguste Debay, James Copland, and Horace Goss of that time. And then I introduced the “Contagious Disease Acts” which were passed in 1862 to oppress the lower class women called prostitutes by confining them into the hospital at any time to check and treat their venereal diseases. Feminists and many feminists organizations at that time participated to protest against this irrational “CD Acts.” They attacked the inhuman nature of that law and insisted the “Acts” should be stopped. In the process of this protest, these feminists joined together to demand sexual purity from men because they thought that this kind of higher morality could raise the moral dimension of their society and could stop the dual standard of their patriarchal sexual ideology against women's sexuality. Against this intellectual and cultural background I analysed Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and tried to show how unconventional and subversive this play is. For the conclusions I analyzed Mrs Erlynne, the fallen woman, as the heroine of this play and showed how Wilde approached this woman and embodied his own individualistic ideas in her. I also focused on analyzing the use of the fan, the main symbol of this play and showed how this play is similar to postmodern literature of our period in its spirit. I can summarise the contents of my arguments as follows: Wilde showed that 1) women can have sexual desire 2) women have the right to pursue sexual pleasure for their own 3) women can pursue sexual pleasure which has nothing to do with maternity or reproduction. These insights are very far from the conventional discourses on the women's sexuality at that time.

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Oscar Wilde,Lady Windermere's Fan,sexuality,homosexuality,sexuality for women,Contagious Disease Acts,Social Purity Movement,Victorian feminists