Until today, I had never heard of the English playwright Arthur Pinero (1855-1934), even though he wrote nearly 60 plays and was considered one of the foremost British playwrights, with his period of greatest fame falling in the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century.
Pinero's "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" was the theatrical sensation of the London stage in 1893. It established Pinero as the leading English dramatist of serious social issues and made a star of the (then unknown) actress who played the title role. The play tells the story of the marriage of a "woman with a past" and how it fails because of the double standards of morality that Victorian society applied unequally and hypocritically to men and women.
[Arthur Wing Pinero]
The play opens with a late-night dinner between the respectable widower Mr. Tanqueray and some of his longtime professional friends. All are upper-class members of British society, and the friends are disturbed to learn of the impending second marriage of Aubrey Tanqueray (42) to Paula (27), a woman of "ill repute," or as the Victorians would put it, "a past. Modern readers must pause for a moment here, for it is easy to misunderstand. It doesn't mean that Paula is a reformed prostitute or anything like that, it just means that she had a few boyfriends and lived with one of them-something quite normal today. But the double standards of the 19th century wouldn't allow it. Paula also comes to visit later that evening, much to Tanqueray's surprise (for this also shows that she is a New Woman, as the term was used in the late 19th century), and she hands him a letter describing her past adventures. Tanqueray is a gentleman who wants a fresh start, so he throws the letter into the fire unread. But knowing how cruel society is, Tanqueray decides to move away from London to the countryside of Surrey, where he hopes to live a quiet life with his new wife.
Forget it. To begin with, rural society is even more hypocritical than the city, and disapproving neighbors ostracize the newlyweds. An even bigger problem is Aubrey's daughter Ellean, a priggish young woman who was raised in a convent after her mother's death and now comes to live with them. When the second act begins, a few months after the wedding, it is clear that the marriage has its problems. The Tanquerays are being shunned by their neighbors, and Ellean is distant from the second Mrs. Tanqueray, whom she doesn't accept as a new mother. All efforts to foster a bond between Ellean and Paula fail because Ellean remains cold. When the opportunity arises for Ellean to stay in Paris as the companion of an elderly neighborhood lady, Mrs. Cortelyon, Aubrey agrees in the hope that a temporary absence of Ellean will clear up the atmosphere. Of course, the opposite happens. Mrs. Cortelyon brings Ellean back earlier than expected, because while in Paris her companion fell in love with a young officer, Captain Hugh Ardale, and Ellean hopes that her father will allow her to become engaged to him. Unfortunately, stepmother and stepdaughter seem to have the same taste in men, for to her horror, Paula recognizes Hugh as a former lover with whom she once lived! Paula begs him to leave and confesses the truth to her husband. When Eilean learns why she can no longer marry Hugh, she denounces Paula.
And then something happens that ruins the play: the miserable Paula offers to give Aubrey his freedom, goes to her room and commits suicide... At this point, Pinero loses it. Having convincingly demonstrated that male promiscuity is condoned and the female version isn't, Pinero shows Mrs. Tanqueray behaving with an irrationality that seems completely out of character. It's as if the playwright, having raised a serious issue, wanted to satisfy his audience's desire for moral retribution - after all, in 19th-century literature, "promiscuous" women always had to die (Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Effi Briest, etc., etc.). Nevertheless, when the play was to be produced, many leading actresses refused to play the "scandalous" role of Paula, and such a play could not have been staged in England, say, five years earlier.
[Punch cartoon showing Pinero's relief as the second Mrs Tanqueray (Mrs Patrick Campbell) successfully leaps over a hurdle marked "Convention", followed by George Alexander as Tanqueray]
All the same, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was a sensational hit
when it premiered in 1893, and its theme of the hypocritical standards
held against women continue to resonate today - there are unfortunately
still many cultures in the world where women are treated just as
severely (or even much more severely) and unjustly as in Victorian
England.
Text of the play at Project Gutenberg.
Greatest Plays of All Time