Hester And Mrs Arbuthnot Essay

How does Oscar Wilde make Hester and Mrs Arbuthnot contrasting characters?
Oscar Wilde has many characters through ‘A Woman of No Importance’ that have contrasting personalities and backgrounds, but the characters with a clear, most definite contrast are Hester and Mrs Arbuthnot.
Mrs Arbuthnot is known to the readers of the play and the characters in the play as a ‘fallen woman’. She has run off with at least two men whilst married and has now developed a reputation with the rest of the community. She is a very flirtatious character and likes to ‘play with fire’. This means she also will try to get the attention of any man possible. Hester, on the other hand, is very religious and has extremely different morals and views to Mrs Arbuthnot. She doesn’t agree with running off with other men, sex before marriage or flirting with other men, so Hester and Mrs Arbuthnot, in this sense, have different morals.
Mrs Arbuthnot’s relationship with Lord Illingworth is very flirtatious and public. Everyone in the community has heard about them so nothing about them is private. Hester and Gerald’s relationship on the other hand, is very different. Hester plays almost ‘hard to get’ and doesn’t draw attention to her or the fact that she may like Gerald. She likes to
These people have been born into wealth and don’t like people who have earned their money through working. However, Hester is from America and has had to work her way up to gain money and to be where she is today. She doesn’t agree with people being born into wealth and those people looking down on the people who have worked their way up. Both Mrs Arbuthnot and Hester disagree with each other in this sense which shows a contrasting of personalities. On the other hand, Hester says ‘nothing should be out of the reach of hope’, which could seem that Hester doesn’t worry about social class and it doesn’t matter when you are in