# Lady Caroline Pontefract — A Woman of No Importance character guide

> Lady Caroline Pontefract in A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Lady Caroline, Caroline, dear Caroline

**First appearance:** 0003-a-woman-of-no-importance

## Snapshot

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.

## Who they are

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.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_woman_of_no_importance_se/characters/lady_caroline_pontefract
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_woman_of_no_importance_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_woman_of_no_importance_se/characters