A Woman of No Importance · Character
Lady Caroline Pontefract
A society matron who manages her husband's overshoes and everyone else's morals, Lady Caroline polices propriety with a straight face and a sharp tongue.
supporting
Also known as Lady Caroline, Caroline, dear Caroline
First appearance: a woman of no importance
As a supporting figure in A Woman of No Importance, Lady Caroline Pontefract is not background color—the story leans on what they do once the chapter opens.
Lady Caroline Pontefract presides over drawing-room conversation at Hunstanton Chase, correcting names, summoning her husband John to sit where she prefers, and pronouncing on the alarming modern habit of young women playing with fire. Her instinct for order extends from seating arrangements to public morality, which makes her a perfect foil for Mrs. Allonby's epigrams and Lord Illingworth's cheerful wickedness. In the play's early social scenes she supplies the comedy of rigid convention, the baseline of respectability against which Wilde measures everyone else's wit.
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Character Web
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Relationship types
- Other
Character groups
- Peripheral Society Characters
- Central House Party Figures
- Protagonist
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