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Lady Gertrude Chiltern
A well-dressed, intelligent, manipulative woman who is faintly connected to all three protagonists. She went to school with Lady Chiltern, was briefly engaged to Lord Goring, and has a fateful mutual friend with Sir Robert. Her dandyism superficially resembles Lord Goring’s in its preoccupation with fashion, wit, and pleasure, but there is a fundamental difference between them. Lord Goring seeks to separate conventional values from private values, their appearance from their reality, in order to honor that reality. Mrs. Cheveley seeks to conflate appearance with reality in order to discredit and trivialize moral reality, the empathetic moral core beneath the ornament of politeness. She implies that no such thing exists. This attitude, which initially seems like a sort of sophistication, is finally exposed as blindness.
Mrs. Cheveley Quotes in An Ideal Husband
The An Ideal Husband quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Cheveley or refer to Mrs. Cheveley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1, Part 2
Quotes
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN
You prefer to be natural?
MRS. CHEVELEY
Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
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Act 1, Part 3
Quotes
Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, every one has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues—and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins—one after the other.
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Act 2, Part 2
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The art of living. The only really Fine Art we have produced in modern times.
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Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
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Mrs. Cheveley Quotes in An Ideal Husband
The An Ideal Husband quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Cheveley or refer to Mrs. Cheveley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1, Part 2
Quotes
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN
You prefer to be natural?
MRS. CHEVELEY
Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1, Part 3
Quotes
Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, every one has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues—and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins—one after the other.
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Act 2, Part 2
Quotes
The art of living. The only really Fine Art we have produced in modern times.
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Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
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