Oscar Wilde

Life and works

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 into an upper middle class family in Dublin. His father was an eye-
specialist and his mother was a patriotic writer for the Irish independence.
After attending Trinity College in Dublin, Wilde was awarded a scholarship at Oxford University,
where he graduated in Greek and Latin.
In 1881 he published Poems. In the following years he wrote The Canterville Ghost (1887) and The
Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), as well as a good number of essays.
He caused a stir with his most famous decadent novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and his
play Salomé (1893), which was considered scandalous.
Wilde wrote a lot of brilliant comedies like Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance,
An Ideal Husband and The importance of Being Earnest.
Wilde's success ended in 1895 when he was accused of homosexuality. He was sentenced to prison
and two years of hard labour. Imprisonment inspired him his most touching and human work: De
Profundis, published in 1905 after his death, a long letter in which the artist talks about his own
spiritual development while he was in prison.
Wilde was released in 1897 and left Englad forever.
After the prison experience, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Goal (1898) where,
adopting the working-class ballad form, he denounced the torment and brutalisation that all
prisoners have to endure, and representing the suffering humanity.
Financially and physically ruined, he died in Paris in November 1900.

Themes and style

For him, art should not have didactic or utilitaristic aim.

He cultivated beauty in his work and in his private life: he rejected the moral and social code of the
19th century and liked to provoke his contemporaries with his way of dressing and his behaviour.
His style in his private life is called “dandy”.

An important theme in his art is the opposition between the artist and the bourgois society. This
theme of the double is very common during the Victorian age.
He thougth that all aspects of humas life can be considered a legitimate subject for his works, so he
chose to deal with sexuality, corruption and even homosexuality.

His four comedies are a social critic to the hipocrisy of the English upper class, touching themes
like money, education, privilege and women.

He converted to catholicism and religion became an important theme.

His works are characterised by the features of aestheticism, that is attention to language and form,
elaborated prose, dialogues prevailing over action, the use of paradox to invite readers to reflect.

The picture of Dorian Grey

The novel is set in London, the protagonists are Dorian Grey, the painter Basil Hallward and his
friend Lord Henry Wotton.
When Dorian Grey sees the portrait that Basil Hallward painted for him, he says that if the picture
could get old instead of himself, he would offer his soul.
Dorian's wish comes true: the portrait shows the signs of old age and corruption for his excessive
life.
He seduces and abandons a girl who kills herself after that and so Dorian hides his portrait in the
attic to avoid seeing the signs of his corruption.
One day Basil visits Dorian and tries to convince him to repent, but he is killed. Tormented by guilt,
he tries to destroy the portrait with a knife and then the servants hear a terrible shout and find an old
man dead on the floor near the picture of a beautiful young boy.

Themes

The novel was scandalous and represented the author's non-conformism. It is considered the
manifesto of the aesthetic movement and contains its main principles:

1) the cult of beauty

2) the treatment of life as art
3) the rejection of the idea of art as a moralising medium

But the novel has a moral: all actions have consequences and all excesses are punished.