Woman of No Importance Pb (New Mermaids) [Paperback]

Oscar Wilde (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0713637900 | ISBN-13: 978-0713637908 | Publication Date: April 1988 | Edition: 2nd

This edition of Wilde's famous society comedy, which is frequently staged, includes a critical introduction and notes which sets the play in its historical, social and theatrical context.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. After his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he tried to establish himself as a writer, but with little initial success. However, his three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his Society Comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the West End stage between 1892 and 1895. Success, howeve --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

Born in Ireland, Wilde (1854-1900) was educated in Dublin and Oxford and went on to become the leading exponent of aestheticism. His work includes plays, a novel, poetry and criticism. Imprisoned for homosexual acts, he died after his release in exile in Paris.Ian Small is a reader in English Literature at the University of Birmingham. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: A & C Black; 2nd edition (April 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713637900
• ISBN-13: 978-0713637908
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Woman of no Importance, December 6, 2000

By 

Damian O'Leary (Ireland/Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman of No Importance: A Fully Dramatized Recording (Plays, Audio, Penguin) (Audio Cassette)

I've just started re-reading this play and I think it is one of the most beautiful works Wilde ever wrote. Mrs. Arbuthnot's speech at the end of Act Four, beginning "men don't know what mothers are" is one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever read in Wilde. It's a very ironic speech, considering it was written by a man, but it shows what a wonderful insight into women Wilde had. The play is essentially about morality and the conflict between a person's own, private sense of morality and the moral values imposed on us by society. Ultimately, Mrs. Arbuthnot is the character who most deserves our respect, precisely because she refuses to buy into the moral values of those around her. Reading it, I can just imagine how it would be performed, I even find myself acting the play out in my head, such is the power and force of Wilde's dialogue. This is a truly beautiful work which I highly recommend

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars COUNTLESS STARS FOR THE PLAY; THREE AT MOST FOR THIS ABRIDGEMENT, December 17, 2007

By 

C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Woman of No Importance (Library Edition Audio CDs) (Audio CD)

I received the news of the availability of this rarely seen or recorded early Wilde morality play with great joy; in reading along with it at home and pencilling out the many parts omitted by Mr. Jarvis (who also reads Lord Illingworth in a George Sands purr) I arose in outrage at the fraud.

We have come to expect in every recording of Oscar Wilde an undue amount of abridgement, from the BBC productions in The Oscar Wilde Collection (The Importance of Being Earnest / The Picture of Dorian Gray / An Ideal Husband / Lady Windermere's Fan) whose most recommendable selection lies in his revelations concerning stock swindling and insider trading among the aristocracy in An Ideal Husband, despite its own abridgement, to the absolutely unwatchable Hollywood versions such as The Importance of Being Earnest (a Victorian woman receiving a posterior tattoo??) and An Ideal Husband.

Unfortunately Mr. Wilde is dimly misremembered and taught as light drawing room comedy and curious one liners, but this is not the case, as those were only a pretty icing upon a very deep and substantial cake of scathing and indeed revolutionary social commentary, as Mr. Wilde was a subversive and secret Irish nationalist using the British aristocracy's own language to undermine it, much as the Cherokee warrior Jimi destroyed a colonialist and anglo generation with their own rock and roll in vengeance for the brutal destruction of his own nation. But that is certainly another story for another day.

The reality of Wilde's opus clashes with our prejudices and thus we trim Mr. Wilde to fit our own poor misunderstanding. But most incomprehensible in this, Jarvis's present butchery of the Wildean substance is the loss of the well known and immortal line: "Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess."

The safest thing for properly understanding this play is to read it yourself, for instance, in the very convenient Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins Classics).

We begin here with an abridged radio play presentation before a rather stiff and crusty live audience. The opening passages remind one of Kierkegard's famous reference to death by trampling by geese as we hear the indistinguishable squawks of women imagining they are producing the honking sounds of the British aristocracy of one hundred and a quarter years ago. Indeed the cacophony grows so profuse and confused that the abridger finds the need to not only excise the best of Wilde's social commentary, but also to insert inappropriately into the mouths of his characters the stage directions and other addresses in order to indicate who is speaking when and where. Sir John would never tell his wife (she of the many ex's) directly he preferred sitting with Lady Stutterfield (of the characteristic repetitious manner of speech). Please follow this with book in hand at all times in order to avoid wandering lost.

And these are not the only insertions, as Jarvis finds it necessary to add brutally the word Chicago where it is not indicated in the script, but only alluded to, as if we might not know now of the great Chicago Exhibition. He excises classical allusions the modern hearer might not have learned and thus would feel put out or looked down upon (Wilde had after all won prizes for classical studies throughout his educational career), as in the Archdeacon's reference to Dorcas, here exiled as now unknown. The archdeacon, by the way is the most listenable and talented of any of these actors. Jim Norton of the equally criminally abridged and overwrought recording of James Joyce's Ulysses (Abridged) here appears as the pretentiously preaching Kelvil, MP.

Jarvis's greatest crime of all is the alteration of the ending and the insertion there of the final word from Lord Illingworth, and the concurrent reversal of Mrs. Arbuthnot's response. If Jarvis wished to alter the ending, why not take up on the Lord's sincere offer to reform from the life he took up, lost after losing the lady of his love as she left him, and his sincere promise to treat Mrs. Arbuthnot with all due deference and respect and form a happy family with her and her son. That would be a modern ending satisfactory to all, if you must alter the ending, Mr. Jarvis.

Indeed, the overlooked mystery of this play is that the Lord is always pictured as the villian, yet he had indeed twenty years earlier offered to marry her, and his mother had indeed offered to support her, but she had fled, as she again does now, and yet she is the sympathetic character. What is Wilde telling us in a deeply inscrutable manner?

Please read this play in its entirety. At the time matters of child custody and single moms were not as common as now, and quite distractingly shocking, and so this play has much to tell us now. It is indeed a source of discussion for a great many moral and social and gender issues. Unfortunately Jarvis excises nearly all reference to the servants and their comings and goings and their direct mistreatment by the aristocracy, so all reference to class struggle is heard here only in pretty little speeches rather than in action.

In sum: READ THE BOOK!

5.0 out of 5 stars Tough, sad and sharp, October 2, 2011

By 

Sonia "Sonia Rumzi" (Kapolei, HI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman of No Importance (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite writings of Wilde. He describes the treatment of a woman who has no means and is of little importance. It is a timeless piece of work since this happens in the here and now also. Some of the scenery makes it a period piece but the story is an ongoing issue to deal with everyday.

Love to read the banter and the sly commentary of vicious women, the innuendo and subtle insults. Excellent read.