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This essay contextualizes the significance of Oscar Wilde’s social comedy Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) in the formation of “New Woman” towards the end of the Victorian age. Set in the late nineteenth-century England in which women were rarely visible in public space, the comedy portrays “New Woman” as one who is willing to subvert traditional conception of morality and femininity. Mrs. Erlynne in particular fashions herself as an unconventional type of woman who dares to deviate from accepted cultural norms of the society. The new woman is positioned as the main force of social transformation through the course of action in the play. By exploring how New Woman has been hardly treated equitably but they try to make their voices heard in the suppressed society, Wilde challenges the social and cultural stereotype of a good woman in the Victorian era. To examine the implication of New Woman proposed in the play, I focus on how Wilde presents his female characters as genuinely new and thereby promotes the qualities of New Woman such as autonomy, self-liberation, and feminine alliance. In so doing, this essay argues that the play exemplifies how Wilde creates a unique position in the course of his struggle for gender equality. That is why the play deserves to draw more scrupulous critical attention, especially because the issues addressed here stay relevant to our society as well as to Wilde’s contemporary audience.
