The story is about a famous star couple in the upper class in London. The husband, Robert Chiltern, is wise and intellgent, and his career is bright. The wife, Gertrude Chiltern, is also smart and capable. What's more important is that they love and respect each other. Everything such perfection broke down with the appearance of an “evil” woman, Mrs Cheveley. She threatened the husband to go to parliament to change the previous proposal and instead support the plan that was beneficial to her. Otherwise, she would expose his youth’s misdeeds—his career began with selling important secrets of Congress. As a result, there was a gap between the couple because the wife could not accept the husband who had moral defects. The husband once in her eyes was always perfect. What she expected was an ideal husband.
Undoubtedly, Lady Chiltern is a gentlewoman. This scene is the first time when Lady Chiltern met Mrs. Cheveley. I noticed her riding posture. The background of the story occurred in 1895 before World War I; there were still more restrictions on women, so Lady Chiltern as a model and ideal woman certainly chose to ride with legs on the one side of the horse. This detail reflects her elegance, which is in line with the character.
Then this scene shows the perfect marriage between Lady Chiltern and her husband in front of everyone. It once again emphasized the place of “ideal” for Lady Chiltern.
The first climax of the film was that Lady Chiltern had learned of her “ideal husband”—Robert Chiltern’s unbearable past. Lady Chiltern saw Robert as her own idol before her husband’s secret disclosure. Robert was her life ideal. She worshipped him. She said: We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Now, what she always pursued was suddenly collapsed. She could not accept that her husband, who she had always regarded as ideal, actually had such a disgraceful past. She always thought that the ideal husband was actually falling from the altar.
She angrily and shockingly said, “how I worshipped you! You were to me something apart from common life, a thing pure, noble, honest, without stain. The world seemed to me finer because you were in it and goodness more real because you lived. And now--oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my ideal! The ideal of my life!”
In the final analysis, men and women have different expectations for each other. Women think they admire ideal men. Lady Chiltern actually made her husband as a fake idol. She established a high altar for her husband, but he did not have the courage to step down, show her the scars, and tell her the weaknesses. One day when these flaws emerge, although she is blind to love, the bubble of a perfect husband burst, and her world ruined.
When Lady Chiltern heard her husband supporting the plan, she closed her eyes in despair, and she clearly knew her perfect husband had disappeared. However, in the subsequent reversal, Robert's rising speech made her decide to forgive him.
We can see Lady Chiltern did not a stubborn woman. She loves perfection, but she can still accept her husband who is no longer perfect. In fact, everything is because of love. She loves her husband; she adores her husband, so Robert for her is perfect, but also she loves him, so she forgave him. This plot shows that she is not the person who is pursuing perfection, but also foreshadows the situation that afterwards she admitted that she was not perfect.
The latter half presents Lady Chiltern, who is no longer perfect. Even if she forgave and accepted her husband’s imperfections, she was now asking her to accept her imperfections and confess to her husband that it is still difficult for her to speak up. She was afraid to break her perfect image. This is Lady Chiltern. She is graceful, decent and intelligent. She has always lived in the upper class and she took ideal for granted, so she took ideal as her own code of conduct to maintain her figure. She can accept her husband out of love for him, but let her take the initiative to tell Robert that she is not perfect. She is not sure if Robert can accept it. So when her husband asked her with her handle, Lady Chiltern panicked. Thanks to Mabel and Goring for helping her to, she promptly forgiven and enthusiasm to confess to let the couple reconcile. Everything seems to be back on track. They are still the model couple.
Just as Goring finally persuades Lady Chiltern, it is not perfect people who need love. It is because people have shortcomings, so they need love. Love is inclusive, encouraging, comforting, and motivate people when people are frustrated. If one is too ideal, he loses his weakness, and then he no longer needs love. He'll be fine with himself.
Lady Chiltern shaked. She was not a vanity person. As said before, Lady Chiltern went after perfection only because of her noble status. She hopes everything could comform to her rules and her identity. When she discovered that her lies had affected the happiness of Mabel and Goring, she decided to confess to Robert. After a series of events, she also understands there is not a so-called "ideal husband" is in a marriage. Everything is only the wife's self-imagining. Love is not charity. Love is not standing in the ditch and looking far away in the sky. Love is not that you are my idol, I am your crazy fan. In fact, the most ideal husband is that he is the person who loves you most in this world, so if he is, then give them a sky, love the real man and offer the most authentic you. Love needs to be straightforward and simple. Whether a mistake has been forgiven or not depend on attitudes. And how can there be perfect people in this world? It's just how do you think about this taint, and sometimes it's the past to establish them today's achievents.
Lady Chiltern bravely took this step. Perhaps in her view, her husband, who is no longer perfect, and she is no longer perfect, on the contrary, they own the real perfect marriage.
Maybe someone will feel that Lady Chiltern is hypocritical. She disappointed her imperfect husband while hiding her own mistakes. What made these is her status and cognition. Whereas, it is because she has been in a high society, under the control of her inherent ideas, she can learn to accept imperfect husbands and admit imperfect herself. What she did are particularly valuable and lovely.
by 王子琪
