Research Paper On Oscar Wilde
Novelist and poet Oscar Wilde was one of the most talented and controversial writers of the philosophical Victorian Era who was better known for his scandalous bohemian life style than his literary work. Because of Wilde’s “gross indecency” ("Oscar Wilde Biography"), literary critics and society during this literary philosophical period, were often unenthusiastic and even hostile towards his work. Wilde established himself in artistic and prestigious circles by his flamboyance and quick wit, though many people in the Victorian society thought that he and his work was outrageous and filled with unspeakable sins. More than a century ago, Wilde’s work was way ahead of his time and even today he is ahead of our time, which is why his literary work baffled the Victorian society. Today however, Oscar Wilde is greatly known for his quick wit and influential, ironic satirical writing, which challenged and irrevocably changed the thinking and morality of the Victorian times.
Oscar Wilde’s uncommon life began with an equally unusual family. Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde …show more content…
was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854. His father, William Wilde was a doctor who worked as a medical advisor for the Irish censuses, later becoming the founder of St. Mark’s Ophthalmic Hospital to treat the city’s poor. Wilde’s mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a revolutionary poet who wrote under the pen name “Speranza” and was closely related with the Young Irelander Rebellion. Wilde’s mother brought literature into the lives of her children, as well as an interest and appreciation in art and culture which greatly impacted Wilde at a very young age. Being considered an unconventional family, the children were allowed to converse and eat with their guests, where they learned and valued an intellectual conversation, which influenced Wilde and his siblings as they were exposed to the real world at a young age which had a profound and lasting effect on young Oscar Wilde.
Even at a young age, Wilde was a bright and studious child. When he was nine, he attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen in 1864, where he excelled and became infatuated with Greek and Roman studies. He attained the school’s prize and title for the Top Classics Student for both of his last two years at school, showing signs at an early age that he was going to have a great future as a writer. Wilde was so apt and clever, that upon graduating at the age of sixteen in 1871, he was awarded with the Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. At the end of his freshman year in college, he was awarded the college’s Foundation Scholarship, the highest honor that could be awarded to undergraduates as well as placing first in the college’s Classics Examination.
Upon his graduation from Trinity College in 1874, he attained the Berkeley Gold Medal as Trinity’s top student in Greek, as well as awarded the Demyship Scholarship for further study at the Magdalen College in Oxford.
During his time at Oxford, Wilde continued to excel academically as well as his writing as it was during this time where he made his first sustained attempts in creative writing. It was during his time at Oxford where Wilde was greatly influenced by writer and critic, John Ruskin, as well as critic and essayist, Walter Pater (“Oscar Wilde: The Poetry Foundation” par. 3). They remarkably influenced Wilde as well as pushed on broadening and expanding his ideas on art and individualism. Two years after graduating and settling in London, he published his first book, Poems, which was badly praised but put Oscar Wilde on the map and established him as an up-and-coming writer and
poet.
As Wilde was put on the map as an up-and-coming writer, the Victorian society frowned upon his work as it was out of the norm in their society. His work seemed outrageous as he dared to do everything other writers did not. During this period, writers were not allowed to mention such things as sex, adulteries, homosexuality, and death, which Wilde flamboyantly expressed in his writing. Wilde’s most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest, was a comedy that mirrored the fashionable and corrupt world of the Victorian society. His masterful way of discretely exposing the oppressive and corruptness of the society in a way that no author had ever done before, made this play so famous and powerful that today is still considered one of Wilde’s best literary works because it challenged the Victorian way of thinking.
Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest was a triumph from the start. Unlike the first book he published, the play was highly favorable in critics’ reviews. This seemed to be Wilde's big break because although the play had similar elements as his previous plays, The Importance of Being Earnest was different in the way that nothing pretended to be real, therefore the audience did not get offended or find his play outrageous. Wilde brilliantly "uses the tools of the satirist without wanting to cure the follies and ills he criticizes" ("Oscar Wilde: The Poetry Foundation" par. 24), meaning that superficially, his play seemed like a humorous piece, but internally, his play revealed the realities beneath the luxurious surfaces of the Victorian society. This is one of the great things about Wilde, he masterfully wrote his pieces in such a unique way that his writing style was so ahead of his time and even our time.
In the summer of 1889, Wilde gave up the editorship of Women's World (a magazine) and started writing The Picture of Dorian Gray. Being Wilde's only novel, it was one of his most successful works. Most reviews of Dorian Gray were hostile because of the novel's supposed immorality and perversity because it was out of the Victorian way of thinking at the time, though today it still continues to be a great literary work as well as one of Wilde's greatest accomplishments. The Picture of Dorian Gray is vastly filled with witty dialogue which reflected Wilde's personality and quick wit. The novel discusses the life of a "hedonistic aristocrat" named Dorian Gray ("Oscar Wilde: The Poetry Foundation" par. 11), who when he sees the portrait that painter Basil paints of him, he wishes to change places with the painting, remaining young and beautiful, while allowing the painting to grow old with time. In the opening lines of the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde, Basil the painter's words leave almost no doubt that he is in love and obsessed with the beauty of Dorian Gray. “I suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned half-way around, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself” (9-10). Critics claim that this work was where he started showing his homosexuality by portraying Basil the painter as being infatuated with his subject to the point where Basil would even let Dorian absorb his soul, even his art which is Basil’s most special gift.
As the novel unravels, so do Basil’s feelings towards Dorian when he finally comes to face with him. “Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable” (10). Basil’s thoughts in the novel leave little to no doubt that he is in love with Dorian and his godlike beauty. When Dorian realizes the power his beauty has on people, he begins to perform heinous acts, even murder. His most unspeakable sin in the eyes of the Victorian society would have been his corruption of multiple young men. This literary work irrevocably challenged and changed the society’s way of thinking as he talked about things that was out of the norm in their society. A lot of critics claim that this novel was where Wilde first discretely expressed his homoerotic sexuality. The Poetry Foundation claims that around the time Wilde was writing Dorian Gray, he became very friendly with Robert Ross whom he had met at Oxford (4). Critics assume that during the time he was writing the novel, he had a sexual relationship with Ross, connecting the homosexuality expressed in his novel to Wilde's private life. It was somewhat of an open secret that Wilde was gay, though it was never said. Author Ari Adut states in her article published in the American Journal of Sociology that the publicity of homosexuality and not actually homosexuality itself, was what the authorities were most preoccupied about (224). Wilde was not afraid to express himself, from the way he dressed to the way he spoke, which is why it was hardly any news that he was gay, though it was only implied. Authorities were more worried of him publicly and clearly expressing his homosexuality or relations with younger men, than he actually being a practicing homosexual.
The Victorian authorities rarely and only reluctantly enforced homosexuality laws (Adut 213). Because there was an inconsistent enforcement of the homosexual norms in England, when Wilde was convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with certain male persons” (Ross, par.1), it became a grand scandal, though his implied homosexuality in his literary work was hardly any news. It was around the time that Wilde was enjoying the literary success of Dorian Gray when he began an affair with a man named Lord Alfred Douglas. After finding out about the affair, on February 18, 1895, Alfred Douglas’s father. The Marquees of Queensberry left a note at Wilde’s home addressed to “Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite”, which infuriated Wilde. He then proceeded to suing the Marquees of Queensberry for libel. This turned out to be a huge mistake as it led to a scandalous trial where Wilde's sexuality was blatantly revealed to the point where it could no longer be overlooked. Author Adut argues in her article why society elicited such harsh reactions over something that was overlooked for a long time (214). Everyone knew he was gay because even though he was married with two children, he was very flamboyant in the way he dressed and the way he expressed himself, challenging the Victorian way of thinking.
Oscar Wilde’s writing career, with the exception of De Profundis, came to an end following his very successful play, The Importance of Being Earnest. The play went on for a month following Wilde’s arrest with his name removed from the program and playbills. At his trial, the Marquees attorney needed to show what the accusations written on the card that the Marquees had left at Wilde’s home were justified, but little did Wilde know that he was softening him up before the big blow. The Marquees had hired private detectives who investigated previous young men whom Wilde had sexual encounters with, which Wilde had no clever response to. Because the jury could not reach a verdict, he was tried a second time and whilst being questioned about Douglas’s poem, he began to defend that love mentioned in the poem instead of denying it, which gained angry hisses from the people in the courtroom as well as bursts of applause. Wilde was ultimately convicted and “condemned to the fullest extent of the law even though the evidence against him was circumstantial, uncorroborated, and tainted”, states author Adut in her article. He was sentenced in May, 1895, to two years of hard labor for gross indecency which he served in Reading Gaol.
Towards the end of serving his sentence, Wilde wrote a letter to Alfred Douglas, that has come to be named De Profundis, which was one of Wilde's last successful works before he died. After being released from prison, he wandered around Europe for three years under the name "Sebastian Melmoth" , until finally settling in a hotel in Paris and dying on November 30, 1900. When Wilde died, it had been rumored that Wilde has been infected by syphilis, but that was based on gossip rather than professional facts. Author Macdonald Critchley states in his article published in the British Medical Journal, that before Wilde's death, his symptoms consisted of deafness, fever, and intense migraine which do not suggest syphilis but a septic infection that had been mentioned in a physician's report stating clearly that the patient had "meningoencephalitis due to a chronic suppuration of the right ear" (135). In the report there was no mention of any underlying process.
Oscar Wilde’s uncommon life began with an equally unusual family. Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde …show more content…
was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854. His father, William Wilde was a doctor who worked as a medical advisor for the Irish censuses, later becoming the founder of St. Mark’s Ophthalmic Hospital to treat the city’s poor. Wilde’s mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a revolutionary poet who wrote under the pen name “Speranza” and was closely related with the Young Irelander Rebellion. Wilde’s mother brought literature into the lives of her children, as well as an interest and appreciation in art and culture which greatly impacted Wilde at a very young age. Being considered an unconventional family, the children were allowed to converse and eat with their guests, where they learned and valued an intellectual conversation, which influenced Wilde and his siblings as they were exposed to the real world at a young age which had a profound and lasting effect on young Oscar Wilde.
Even at a young age, Wilde was a bright and studious child. When he was nine, he attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen in 1864, where he excelled and became infatuated with Greek and Roman studies. He attained the school’s prize and title for the Top Classics Student for both of his last two years at school, showing signs at an early age that he was going to have a great future as a writer. Wilde was so apt and clever, that upon graduating at the age of sixteen in 1871, he was awarded with the Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. At the end of his freshman year in college, he was awarded the college’s Foundation Scholarship, the highest honor that could be awarded to undergraduates as well as placing first in the college’s Classics Examination.
Upon his graduation from Trinity College in 1874, he attained the Berkeley Gold Medal as Trinity’s top student in Greek, as well as awarded the Demyship Scholarship for further study at the Magdalen College in Oxford.
During his time at Oxford, Wilde continued to excel academically as well as his writing as it was during this time where he made his first sustained attempts in creative writing. It was during his time at Oxford where Wilde was greatly influenced by writer and critic, John Ruskin, as well as critic and essayist, Walter Pater (“Oscar Wilde: The Poetry Foundation” par. 3). They remarkably influenced Wilde as well as pushed on broadening and expanding his ideas on art and individualism. Two years after graduating and settling in London, he published his first book, Poems, which was badly praised but put Oscar Wilde on the map and established him as an up-and-coming writer and
poet.
As Wilde was put on the map as an up-and-coming writer, the Victorian society frowned upon his work as it was out of the norm in their society. His work seemed outrageous as he dared to do everything other writers did not. During this period, writers were not allowed to mention such things as sex, adulteries, homosexuality, and death, which Wilde flamboyantly expressed in his writing. Wilde’s most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest, was a comedy that mirrored the fashionable and corrupt world of the Victorian society. His masterful way of discretely exposing the oppressive and corruptness of the society in a way that no author had ever done before, made this play so famous and powerful that today is still considered one of Wilde’s best literary works because it challenged the Victorian way of thinking.
Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest was a triumph from the start. Unlike the first book he published, the play was highly favorable in critics’ reviews. This seemed to be Wilde's big break because although the play had similar elements as his previous plays, The Importance of Being Earnest was different in the way that nothing pretended to be real, therefore the audience did not get offended or find his play outrageous. Wilde brilliantly "uses the tools of the satirist without wanting to cure the follies and ills he criticizes" ("Oscar Wilde: The Poetry Foundation" par. 24), meaning that superficially, his play seemed like a humorous piece, but internally, his play revealed the realities beneath the luxurious surfaces of the Victorian society. This is one of the great things about Wilde, he masterfully wrote his pieces in such a unique way that his writing style was so ahead of his time and even our time.
In the summer of 1889, Wilde gave up the editorship of Women's World (a magazine) and started writing The Picture of Dorian Gray. Being Wilde's only novel, it was one of his most successful works. Most reviews of Dorian Gray were hostile because of the novel's supposed immorality and perversity because it was out of the Victorian way of thinking at the time, though today it still continues to be a great literary work as well as one of Wilde's greatest accomplishments. The Picture of Dorian Gray is vastly filled with witty dialogue which reflected Wilde's personality and quick wit. The novel discusses the life of a "hedonistic aristocrat" named Dorian Gray ("Oscar Wilde: The Poetry Foundation" par. 11), who when he sees the portrait that painter Basil paints of him, he wishes to change places with the painting, remaining young and beautiful, while allowing the painting to grow old with time. In the opening lines of the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde, Basil the painter's words leave almost no doubt that he is in love and obsessed with the beauty of Dorian Gray. “I suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned half-way around, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself” (9-10). Critics claim that this work was where he started showing his homosexuality by portraying Basil the painter as being infatuated with his subject to the point where Basil would even let Dorian absorb his soul, even his art which is Basil’s most special gift.
As the novel unravels, so do Basil’s feelings towards Dorian when he finally comes to face with him. “Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable” (10). Basil’s thoughts in the novel leave little to no doubt that he is in love with Dorian and his godlike beauty. When Dorian realizes the power his beauty has on people, he begins to perform heinous acts, even murder. His most unspeakable sin in the eyes of the Victorian society would have been his corruption of multiple young men. This literary work irrevocably challenged and changed the society’s way of thinking as he talked about things that was out of the norm in their society. A lot of critics claim that this novel was where Wilde first discretely expressed his homoerotic sexuality. The Poetry Foundation claims that around the time Wilde was writing Dorian Gray, he became very friendly with Robert Ross whom he had met at Oxford (4). Critics assume that during the time he was writing the novel, he had a sexual relationship with Ross, connecting the homosexuality expressed in his novel to Wilde's private life. It was somewhat of an open secret that Wilde was gay, though it was never said. Author Ari Adut states in her article published in the American Journal of Sociology that the publicity of homosexuality and not actually homosexuality itself, was what the authorities were most preoccupied about (224). Wilde was not afraid to express himself, from the way he dressed to the way he spoke, which is why it was hardly any news that he was gay, though it was only implied. Authorities were more worried of him publicly and clearly expressing his homosexuality or relations with younger men, than he actually being a practicing homosexual.
The Victorian authorities rarely and only reluctantly enforced homosexuality laws (Adut 213). Because there was an inconsistent enforcement of the homosexual norms in England, when Wilde was convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with certain male persons” (Ross, par.1), it became a grand scandal, though his implied homosexuality in his literary work was hardly any news. It was around the time that Wilde was enjoying the literary success of Dorian Gray when he began an affair with a man named Lord Alfred Douglas. After finding out about the affair, on February 18, 1895, Alfred Douglas’s father. The Marquees of Queensberry left a note at Wilde’s home addressed to “Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite”, which infuriated Wilde. He then proceeded to suing the Marquees of Queensberry for libel. This turned out to be a huge mistake as it led to a scandalous trial where Wilde's sexuality was blatantly revealed to the point where it could no longer be overlooked. Author Adut argues in her article why society elicited such harsh reactions over something that was overlooked for a long time (214). Everyone knew he was gay because even though he was married with two children, he was very flamboyant in the way he dressed and the way he expressed himself, challenging the Victorian way of thinking.
Oscar Wilde’s writing career, with the exception of De Profundis, came to an end following his very successful play, The Importance of Being Earnest. The play went on for a month following Wilde’s arrest with his name removed from the program and playbills. At his trial, the Marquees attorney needed to show what the accusations written on the card that the Marquees had left at Wilde’s home were justified, but little did Wilde know that he was softening him up before the big blow. The Marquees had hired private detectives who investigated previous young men whom Wilde had sexual encounters with, which Wilde had no clever response to. Because the jury could not reach a verdict, he was tried a second time and whilst being questioned about Douglas’s poem, he began to defend that love mentioned in the poem instead of denying it, which gained angry hisses from the people in the courtroom as well as bursts of applause. Wilde was ultimately convicted and “condemned to the fullest extent of the law even though the evidence against him was circumstantial, uncorroborated, and tainted”, states author Adut in her article. He was sentenced in May, 1895, to two years of hard labor for gross indecency which he served in Reading Gaol.
Towards the end of serving his sentence, Wilde wrote a letter to Alfred Douglas, that has come to be named De Profundis, which was one of Wilde's last successful works before he died. After being released from prison, he wandered around Europe for three years under the name "Sebastian Melmoth" , until finally settling in a hotel in Paris and dying on November 30, 1900. When Wilde died, it had been rumored that Wilde has been infected by syphilis, but that was based on gossip rather than professional facts. Author Macdonald Critchley states in his article published in the British Medical Journal, that before Wilde's death, his symptoms consisted of deafness, fever, and intense migraine which do not suggest syphilis but a septic infection that had been mentioned in a physician's report stating clearly that the patient had "meningoencephalitis due to a chronic suppuration of the right ear" (135). In the report there was no mention of any underlying process.