5 "I find that the poorer classes of this country display a marked desire for higher ethical standards"

Woman of No Importance takes us into the drawing room – or in this case the screening room – of the well-to-do. Amid the gossiping ladies and the harrumphing gentlemen.
Story is a curious mix of this type he wrote so well, and a more serious and bitter condemnation of social mores, which we would more readily expect from his contemporary fellow Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Both authors lived partly during the Victorian era, when women had very few rights compared with men, and this is often highlighted in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, but not so often in Oscar Wilde’s. With this play, Oscar Wilde too has decided to explore some of the double standards of the end of the nineteenth century.