Challenging Sigmund Freud’s doctrines, Jacques Lacan proposes his own theories on the human psyche, stressing the role of the Symbolic Order in shaping one’s self and restricting one’s primitive desires. While the transition from the Imaginary Order to the Symbolic Order functions as the fundamental precondition of one’s becoming mature, failure in doing so therefore results in one’s preoccupation with the illusions and a perpetual state of naivety. Thus, adopting a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, this paper focusing on Lady Windermere’s overall mindset and her relation with the surroundings examines her persistence in the Imaginary Order and inability to enter the Symbolic Order, exploring the psychological origins of her puerile moral absolutism and disclosing Wilde’s sarcasm towards such people in the contemporary upper-class British society.

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