Explore "Mrs. Erlynne Exercises the Prerogative of a Grandmother" by Oscar Wilde on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lady Windermere, before Heaven your husband is guiltless of all offence / towards you! And I -- I tell you that had it ever occurred to me that such / a monstrous suspicion would have entered your mind, I would have died / rather than have crossed your life or his -- oh! died, gladly died! Believe / what you choose about me. I am not worth a moment's sorrow. But don't / spoil your beautiful young life on my account! You don't know what may / be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don't know / what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, / sneered at -- to be an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have / to creep in by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should / be stripped from one's face, and all the while to hear the laughter, the / horrible laughter of the world, a thing more tragic than all the tears / the world has ever shed. You don't know what it is. One pays for one's / sin, and then one pays again, and all one's life one pays. You must / never know that. -- As for me, if suffering be an expiation, then at this / moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to- / night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken / it. -- But let that pass. I may have wrecked my own life, but I will not / let you wreck yours.
You -- why, you are a mere girl, you would be lost. / You haven't got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. You / have neither the wit nor the courage. You couldn't stand dishonour! No! / Go back, Lady Windermere, to the husband who loves you, whom you love. / You have a child, Lady Windermere. Go back to that child who even now, / in pain or in joy, may be calling to you. God gave you that child. He / will require from you that you make his life fine, that you watch over / him. What answer will you make to God if his life is ruined through you? / Back to your house, Lady Windermere -- your husband loves you! He has / never swerved for a moment from the love he bears you. But even if he / had a thousand loves, you must stay with your child. If he was harsh to / you, you must stay with your child. If he ill-treated you, you must stay / with your child. If he abandoned you, your place is with your / child. -- _Lady Windermere's Fan_.