Gerald has put the letter in its envelope and written the address. He is about to seal it when his mother enters. He sets down the wax, and they look at one another. The letter's purpose seems clear to him: his father is to come at four that afternoon and marry his mother within days. She hears the visitor's name and forbids him to cross the threshold.

The room has just been admired by two callers. Its flowers and respectable pictures testify, in their eyes, to Mrs Arbuthnot's good influence. Hearing that Gerald has declined a position as Lord Illingworth's secretary, Lady Hunstanton regrets that he has no father to guide him. She does not know what he learned the night before: Illingworth is his father, and the mother being praised was the young woman he betrayed.

In the final act of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, Gerald has given up the professional future that so recently excited him. He will not leave his mother to accompany Illingworth. Instead, he wants the man to return in another capacity. No longer the patron who can transform the son's prospects, he is to become the husband who repairs the mother's past.

When Gerald explains, his assurances keep overtaking her attempts to speak. He will insist. He will compel the marriage. Illingworth will not dare refuse. Eventually she identifies the refusal he has not considered: “it is I who refuse.” Gerald is astonished. How can the person for whom he is obtaining justice decline what is owed?

He explains that the marriage is not for his own sake. It will not give him a name rightfully his. At least, however, it can make his mother the wife of his father. He has abandoned a desirable position and recognises that a late marriage cannot erase everything. His error is subtler than simple concern for appearances. He sees the wrong clearly enough to demand a remedy, but considers the remedy too obvious to require her consent.

Twenty years earlier, she wanted this marriage. She had left home believing a promise. As the wedding was postponed, she continued to hope; before her child's birth she pleaded again. Illingworth refused. Afterwards she took the baby and left. That history explains why Gerald thinks of marriage as an obligation still awaiting fulfilment.

But his mother has lived through the intervening years. She has raised him, concealed what happened, and endured a life restricted by shame. She no longer loves the man she once begged to marry. The person who wanted the promise kept has not remained at the moment of its breaking, waiting for her son to grow old enough to enforce it.

Gerald treats the past as though it contains an answer that can still be delivered intact. His mother would have to stand inside that answer now. She would speak vows and enter a relationship. What was wrongfully denied then need not become something she must accept today. Refusing the marriage does not excuse its earlier refusal.

He still imagines that she doubts Illingworth's willingness. If the man asked her himself, surely her answer would change. She says it would not. Gerald offers another plan: the wedding first, then mother and son can go away together. He even calls it a duty to other women, a means of preventing further betrayals. The demand intended for the wrongdoer has begun to descend on the injured person.

Their shared religion also yields different answers. Gerald invokes the belief she taught him as evidence that marriage is the proper course. She invokes it to reject vows she could not truthfully make. She cannot promise love to someone she loathes, or honour the man who dishonoured her child. Having hidden the truth from society to protect her son, she refuses another falsehood before God for the sake of her reputation.

Her refusal has not liberated her from every judgment that confined her. She still calls herself tainted and unfit for respectable company. She tells Gerald how she remained indoors while he went out. The sickroom and church work seemed to offer places she could enter; the happier parts of social life did not. The room admired by the visitors begins to reveal the restrictions that helped produce its respectability.

Her attachment to her son is intense and fearful. She knows his life may increasingly take him elsewhere. These complications make her a person rather than a model of perfect independence. They do not invalidate her answer about marriage. Gerald is moved by what she tells him and promises to be a better son, then insists once again that she must marry. Greater sympathy has not yet altered his proposed action.

Hester comes forward and embraces Mrs Arbuthnot. The previous night, Gerald protected her from Illingworth's advances. She asks how he regards the man who is his father and recalls that protection. Gerald repeatedly asks what he should do. She directs him to his own heart. At last he kneels beside his mother and asks forgiveness.

Reconciliation is not instantaneous. Mrs Arbuthnot speaks of her injured heart. Hester urges kindness towards the son; Gerald, unable to obtain an immediate reassuring response, calls his mother cruel and weeps. Her refusal was hard for them to hear. Now the time she needs to recover closeness proves difficult too. Hester's praise of her suffering is loving, but it risks giving her another obligation to be generous.

More practical possibilities also enter with Hester. She has wealth to share. She retracts the earlier judgment that visited the parents' sins upon their children. She and Gerald want Mrs Arbuthnot with them. Leaving acquires material conditions: money, companions, and someone prepared to change her mind about this family. A better life elsewhere remains a hope, but no longer an unsupported instruction to be brave.

When the young people go into the garden, Illingworth arrives. Despite Mrs Arbuthnot's refusal to receive him, he enters and proposes money for Gerald and an arrangement dividing the son's year between his parents. Marriage is not part of his plan. The mother directs his attention to the garden. His offer is no longer the only conceivable future.

Then he finds the letter. It was never sent. She asks him to return it and explains that Gerald wrote before their conversation and regrets it now. Illingworth claims it as the addressee's property and reads it. The demand remains on paper after the person who wrote it has changed his mind. Illingworth offers marriage, not as an admitted obligation, but as the price he will pay to obtain his son.

The proposal Gerald imagined has therefore arrived. Mrs Arbuthnot refuses it. At the end of the encounter, Illingworth humiliates her with their past and the status of their child. She strikes him with his glove. After he leaves, she breaks down. Being able to reject him has not made her impervious to him.

Hester and Gerald return without knowing what has happened. Hester asks to be her daughter; Mrs Arbuthnot asks whether she would really choose her. Their embrace offers a different starting point from the morning's letter. She need not first become this man's wife before another life can begin. Someone is willing to meet her where she has already arrived.