# An Ideal Husband — Character guide

> Key figures in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde.

- [Lord Goring](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lord_goring.md): Lord Goring drifts through London drawing rooms armed with paradoxes, dodging his father's demands that he marry and Mabel Chiltern's teasing with equal grace. Beneath the pose of the idlest man in town lies real moral s
- [Sir Robert Chiltern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/sir_robert_chiltern.md): Sir Robert Chiltern is the admired Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a self-made man whose fortune began with a letter sold to Baron Arnheim eighteen years ago. He worships his wife Gertrude as the embodiment of ideal
- [Lady Chiltern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lady_chiltern.md): Lady Chiltern is a woman of strict principle who once won the good conduct prize at school and has built her marriage on the belief that her husband is a man of unimpeachable honour. Her idealism is both her beauty and h
- [Mrs. Cheveley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/mrs_cheveley.md): Mrs. Cheveley is a woman of restless gray-green eyes and scarlet lips, a work of art showing the influence of too many schools, who trades in other people's secrets and calls it society. She offers Sir Robert a bargain: 
- [Mabel Chiltern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/mabel_chiltern.md): Mabel Chiltern is the play's freshest voice, a young woman who declares London society composed of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics and means it as praise. She teases Lord Goring about broken appointments in the P
- [Lord Caversham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lord_caversham.md): Lord Caversham is a gruff, traditional peer who hates paradoxes and cannot fathom why his son refuses to propose to the pretty Miss Chiltern. He grumbles about Lady Caversham's bonnets, glares at Goring with bushy eyebro
- [Phipps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/phipps.md): Phipps presides over Lord Goring's Adam-style library, receiving hats, presenting buttonholes on a salver, and answering every epigram with a level 'Yes, my lord.' His deadpan composure is the perfect foil to his master'
- [Mason](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/mason.md): Mason moves through the Chilterns' house ushering in the parade of callers — Lady Markby, Lord Caversham, Lord Goring — that keeps the play's social machinery turning. His announcements are the hinge on which the morning
- [Lady Markby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lady_markby.md): Lady Markby arrives at the Chilterns' with Mrs. Cheveley in tow, cheerfully admitting she has no idea which Cheveleys these are — 'families are so mixed nowadays.' She is a one-woman gossip exchange, mourning Sir John's 
- [Tommy Trafford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/tommy_trafford.md): A young man in love with Mabel Chiltern.
- [Vicomte de Nanjac](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/vicomte_de_nanjac.md): A French attaché who appears at social gatherings.
- [Lady Basildon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lady_basildon.md): A fashionable society woman at Lady Chiltern's party.
- [Margaret](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/margaret.md): A woman mentioned in passing by Lady Markby.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters