SOURCE: Mikhail, E. H. “Self-Revelation in An Ideal Husband.” Modern Drama 11 (1968): 180-86.

In the following essay, Mikhail perceives An Ideal Husband as a reflection of Wilde's personal torment and a foreshadowing of the scandal that would ruin his career.

Despite its apparent objectivity, An Ideal Husband is self-revelatory. In a letter to his friend Reginald Turner, written in 1899, Wilde said:

I read a great deal, and correct the proofs of An Ideal Husband, shortly to appear. It reads rather well, and some of its passages seem prophetic of tragedy to come.¹

A sense of damnation, a foreboding of tragic failure, is to be found in the writings of Oscar Wilde long before it is sounded in An Ideal Husband. It is the theme of the sonnet Helas! as it is of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The motive of the outcast is conspicuous in Wilde's two previous comedies...