Panoptic Love: Foucault's Surveillance State in and around An Ideal Husband

abstract: Oscar Wilde's society comedy An Ideal Husband (1895) depends on social reputation to regulate characters' actions. Applying the carceral (prison) model of the Panopticon to this play reveals the impact of Michel Foucault's surveillance state on the characters, demonstrating that intimate, heterosexual relationships are measured against an ideal, and disciplined and punished through the threat of social ostracism. Here, a successful marriage is based on good behavior, flawless reputation, and strong socioeconomic status, defining the institution as itself a Panopticon within the broader Panopticon of society. Played out on stage before an audience, the Panopticon of high society—within that of the theater—is further regulated and disciplined by the audience. The audience of An Ideal Husband thus experiences, and participates in, surveillance of and by heteronormative high society, just as Wilde experiences its regulation of homosexuality.