How does Oscar Wilde use humour to deal with how people mask their identities?

"Give a man a mask and he'll show you his true identity" are the words Oscar used. Oscar Wilde was a walking paradox in both his professional and personal lives. Here is a man who constantly vows a devotion towards the Catholic church while being a Protestant who also consistently detours from converting. A man who embodies in his "outer" life a complete Victorian with a wife, and children, while in his "inner" and secret life he is anything but.

This shows his tendencies as an artist to partially connect his inner and outer lives: The accepted and the not accepted into his art.Therefore, An Ideal Husband is a combination of paradox and sarcasm, but mostly mockery at the Victorian hyporcisy which permeated society: The stuffy homes with paraphernalia that meant nothing; the never-ending race to go up another echelon in the social stata. All those elements make "An Ideal Husband " a historical memento for what was going on at the time, and how people saw it behind closed doors. You might always want to add that , in a way, "An Ideal Husband" as well as many other Oscar works were a key to mental liberation, as he was certainly NOT the only Victorian who endured the cynic nature of his times, and the arrogance of his peers .