Thesis on "Oscar Wilde, Rebellion of His Themes"

Thesis 17 pages (4795 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Oscar Wilde, Rebellion of His Themes and Morality in Comparison to the Society of the Time

The objective of this work is to discuss the central image of Oscar Wilde, both conformist and rebel and the extent to which his work contains an inherent contradiction, and specifically in his pointing out the folly of his contemporary society and his expression of values that were contrary to the social norm or that which was expected within society and simultaneously his work being published, performed and appreciated within that society. This work will discuss the central image of Wilde as a figure of contradiction and paradox.

Reality within the view of Wilde is one without a consistent value as he blurs his edges and hides behind a non-alignment with his own utterances. Indeed, he might talk-the-talk but this is evidently not aligned with his walk in life. This work will examine Wilde's inherent hypocrisy in relation to the values of the society in which he lived through a discussion of the probability of his bigotry in relation to certain areas of prejudice, which did and did not relate to his lifestyle. There are areas of Wilde's work, which are particularly significant in the discussion of elitism and specifically in regards to attitudes of learning and intellect and the ability to appreciate art. The attitude of Wilde in regards to women are given little weight in the collection of Wilde primary because his relationship with society was defined by his homosexuality.

LITERATURE REVIEW

I. Introduction

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an author, playwright and was considered brilliant. Wilde was born halfway through the Victorian Age, during the English reign of Queen Victoria 1837-1901. England was undergoing changes of a radical nature and this greatly affected how individuals lived and certainly had an impact upon their way of thinking. The Victorian period is well-known for its narrow thought channels, double standards, repression of sexual desire, hypocrisy, and caste consciousness in society. Wilde's father was a surgeon who had distinguished himself in his field and his mother was a writer. At the age of twenty, Wilde traveled from his home in Dublin, Ireland to Oxford University in England and was considered a brilliant achiever. Wilde was a homosexual and Lord Alfred Douglas became his lover. Wilde's works in writing contained undertones of homosexuality and innuendos and Victorian society was inflamed at this. Evil was depicted by Wild as coming from within instead of being external in nature.

II. The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilde's novel entitled: "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was not well received creating a stir and controversy with its implication of homosexuality, which in Victorian society was punishable by prison. Dorian Gray was a young man with dashing looks and spent his time in self-gratifying sensuality. Gray stated, while having his portrait painted by Basil Hallward that he desired eternal youth and vowed he would give everything...even his very soul to be eternally young.

Amazingly, Dorian get his wish however he grows more and more evil with time and the more evil Dorian becomes the older and uglier he appears in the portrait yet Dorian stays young. The story relates that many years go by and Dorian is faced by his conscience which is a bad one indeed and finally in desperation he takes a knife and stabs the horrid portrait and the story goes that his servants find him with a knife in his hand dead and the portrait miraculously restored to picture the younger and handsome Dorian.

Nils Calusson (2003) writes in the work entitled: "Culture and Corruption: Paterian Self-Development vs. Gothic Degeneration in Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Gray" that the story of Dorian Gray has always "provoked contradictory interpretations, but underlying the disagreements about the work's meaning there has persisted a more fundamental debate about what kind of novel it should be read as. This debate is discernible in the early reviews, though somewhat obscured by the hysteria over the novel's alleged immorality." (2003)

The truth is that critics of modernity are at just as much a division about the meaning behind this novel of Oscar Wildes as the original reviewers and their obsession with the morality found in this novel. That which is unchanged is "the role the perceived genre of the novel plays in interpretation. While some critics read the novel as belonging to a single genre and assume that the conventions of that genre provide the key to unlock the text's meaning, others see it as a kind of heteroglossia combining two or more genres." (Claussons, 2003)

Individualism is examined in Oscar Wilde's work entitled: "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" in what is an exploration of the issue of "self-development, or what he calls 'individualism." (Clausson, 2003) Wilde states that he regrets "that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him-in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living." (Wilde: Soul of Man) Clausson relates that Krafft-Ebing stated a belief that the majority of homosexuals "had a mental disease caused by hereditary degeneration, although environmental factors could influence this inborn neuropathic disposition, or "taint" as he repeatedly called it:" (2008) Krafft-Ebing is noted as having stated:

Since, in nearly all such cases, the individual tainted with antipathic sexual instinct displays a neuropathic predisposition in several directions, and the neuropathic predisposition may be related to hereditary degenerate conditions, this anomaly of psychosexual feeling may be clinically called a functional sign of degeneration. This inverted sexuality appears spontaneously, without external cause, with the development of sexual life as an individual manifestation of an abnormal form of sexual life, and has the force of a congenital phenomenon; or it develops upon a sexuality, which in the beginning was normal, as a result of definite injurious influences, and thus appears as an acquired anomaly. Upon what conditions this enigmatic phenomenon of acquired homosexual instinct depends still remains unexplained, and is a mere hypothetical matter. Careful examination of the so-called acquired cases make it probable that predisposition-also present here-consists of a latent homosexuality, or, at least, bisexuality, which, for it to become manifest, requires the influence of accidental stimulating causes to rouse it from its dormant state." (Krafft-Ebing: in Clausson, 2003)

III. Lady Windemere's Fan (1892) and the Importance of Being Earnest (1985)

Wilde wrote a second novel with the same theme entitled: "Lady Windermere's Fan" in 1892, which was much better received by the Victorian public and was a successful play. Wilde's play entitled "The Importance of Being Earnest" was staged in 1895 and has been called a masterpiece. This play was an attack upon the society of the Victorian age and specifically relating to the moral and social hypocrisy, the system of the social class, the use of marriage as a social tool, and the trivial nature of aristocratic life. (McCauley, 2003; paraphrased) Because ridiculousness of the characters in Wilde's play is so extreme, the Victorian audiences did not understand that it was none other than themselves whom Wilde was making fun of them. Wilde's use of epigrams was also one reason for the success of this play and included those as follows:

Divorces are made in heaven;

The truth is rarely pure and never simple;

In marriage, three is company, two is none. (McCauley, 2003)

The work of Pearce (2003) entitled: "Oscar Wilde and the Politics of Irish Aestheticism" states that readings of Oscar Wilde "...have been burdened by an affliction he struggle against all his artistic and intellectual life: cliche." (2003) Wilde is stated to have provided "the strongest and earliest cliches or stereotypes...in the form of the English aristocratic dandies that populate his society comedies." (Pearce, 2003) There is a subversive edge in the drama of Wilde, which has been most recently recognized as a "modernist challenge that underlies the veneer of Victorian culture." (Pearce, 2003)

Pearce relates that Wilde is recognized more than ever before "a...s one of those who undertook, in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new experiments in language, identity and form." (2003) Pearce states that an alternative to squeezing Wilde into a non-conforming literary model that it would be better to "use him to understand how conscious modernism continues to engage with problems associated with the development of self and society." (Pearce, 2003)

Modris Eksteins (1994) writes in the work: "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age" that during this period in history "Gratification of the sense was suspect, indeed sinful. In the art of Gustav Klimt, in the early operas of Richard Strauss, in the plays of Frank Wedekind, in the personal antics of Verlaine, Tcaikovsky, and Wilde, and even in the relaxed morality of the German youth movement, a motif of eroticism dominated the search for newness and change." (Eksteins, 1994) Additionally Eksteins notes that the sexual rebel "particularly the homosexual, became a central… READ MORE

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