The characters are often types rather than individualized personalities. Plots are artificially elaborate and very clever but the predominating elements of comedies of manners are satire, dialog and atmosphere. The language is witty, polished and, in plays by Oscar Wilde, brilliant. Comedies of manners are concerned with the gap between reality and the outward conventional appearance of good order, which people strive to maintain. This discrepancy can be used to compare society's code of conduct with how people actually live.
Comedies of manners are most popular during periods of prosperity and moral latitude.
At the end of the film Lord Goring warns Lady Gertrude that she is risking the loss of her husband's affection if she insists that he give up his career in order to keep her love. Some people find Lady Gertrude fickle and unable to hold on to her moral convictions when it becomes inconvenient. Chiltern knew that information was power. Yet he apparently expected that Baron Arnheim would not turn on him and try to use the information that Chiltern had betrayed a Cabinet secret. Chiltern, if he thought about it, correctly assumed that Baron Arnheim would not want to expose his own role in the affair.