3. Ideal Husband in An Ideal Husband 

3.1 From the perspective of traditional women 

With the success of Industrial Revolution, women’s life in middle-class has improved a lot. They not only accept good education but also have a leisure life with an increasing amount of money. In addition, they have higher requirements on their spiritual life, art, literature and their social situation and status. They are requiring independence and more freedom in more events. Although, in the traditional Victorian concepts, women are angels in the family, traditional women made disappointments over men. Mrs. Marchmont, Lady Basildon and Lady Markey complained about their husbands.文献综述

 Mrs. Marchmont mentioned that “Dear Gertrude Chiltern is always telling me that I should have some serious purposes in life.” (Wilde, 2012: 6) Mrs. Chiltern herself had serious purpose of living lofty with her husband and become a pair of model. Lady Basildon answered that “The man who took me to the dinner talked to me about his wife the whole time. I don’t see anybody here tonight whom one could possibly call a serious purpose.”(Wilde, 2012: 6) In her opinion the only real purpose is to find someone to banter. She could not find her husband ideal. Mrs. Marchmont sighed, “Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go others for that.” However, actually, they are known to have the most admirable husbands in London. So what seemly received as ideal marriages are just something pretended and lack of attraction and real love. She continued, “That is exactly what we can’t stand. My Reginald is quite hopelessly faultless. He is really unendurably so, at times! There is not the smallest element of excitement in knowing him.” (Wilde, 2012: 32) From her opinion we can know that perfection of a husband is not popular to women but disgusting and uninspiring to them.