Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, celebrated literary author/playwright and provocateur, is responsible for much controversial conversation in the Europe of the 1880s and 1890s.  His lasting legacy is still debated today.  A true product and defining character of the Victorian era, Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 to a wealthy intellectual family, part of the aristocratic class much like the protagonist of his famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. His father made enough money to send him to the finest schools in Great Britain; he was educated at Trinity College and in his early 20’s moved to London where he attended Oxford.  While at Oxford, he developed a set of attitudes and postures for which he would eventually become famous.  By age 37, still in London, he was already a literary figure due to his 1890 fictional novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the tale of the young handsome Dorian Gray and his curse of beauty.  While fiction, the novel’s inspirations were undoubtedly rooted in truth.  In 1892 Wilde became a playwright and found much success, his most famous play being The Importance of Being Earnest.  Both tales are about the double life, secrecy, and deceit, not about sincerity but instead about style (as an opposite to sincerity).  They are about art and life, going against the grain, social class and the ability for upward social mobility whether it be through money or marriage, and are purposefully provocative.  Wilde was a unique individual who demonstrated a strong artistic philosophy, emphasizing aestheticism and new hedonism and a displaying a firm will to go against the grain of society as evidenced in these two works.  Wilde believed that art imitates life as opposed to Thomas Mann who saw a conflict between art and life. Wilde, similar to the theme addressed in his novel and plays was one author at the time who was exploring his homosexual tendencies and passions…and like the rest, was struggling.  However, also like Gide and Mann, Wilde also had a sense of ambiguity when it came to homosexuality in The Picture of Dorian Gray.  This is because Wilde ultimately was focusing on his art before his sexuality.  In the preface to the novel, Wilde cautioned the reader against finding meanings “beneath the surface” of art.  Ironically, that is exactly what I am doing.

But what else is a reader to do?  The two works, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, directly reflect Wilde’s principals and way of life.  Mendelsohn in his analysis of The Importance of Being Earnest states, “It’s the voice of Wilde the brilliant talker - amusing, incisive, economical, wicked, feeling, fresh, contemporary, right – that you hear in the plays.”  The play and the novel share many commonalities with Wilde’s life and philosophy.  The novel structures a debate between art and life by featuring Wilde’s support of the principle of aestheticism, the movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts.  Wilde took this conflation between life and art a step further through portrait that Basil painted of Dorian Gray.  The painting preserved Dorian’s beauty by reflecting any sin by or damage done to him so that his actual form may remain untainted.  Wilde deliberately created a conflation of life and art.  Wilde had become sufficiently famous as a proponent of aestheticism by his mid twenties that he went on a tour in the United States for two years giving tips on how to make life more aesthetic.  He would preach, “The supreme object to life is to live.  Few people live.”  By living, he meant living beautifully down to every little aspect of life. Wilde lived his life according to this artistic philosophy, donning flamboyant clothing and long, flowing hair. It seems he did not do a very thorough job of hiding his homosexuality.

Before his literary fame, Wilde once said, “I won’t be a dried-up Oxford don…Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not notorious.” This attitude is displayed in both the novel and the play by the main characters Dorian, Jack, Algernon respectively.  Although of the upper class, these three behave contrary to how the upper echelon should act, or “against nature”.  Homoeroticism is clearly expressed in The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Basil paints the portrait of Dorian because of his love for Dorian’s beauty and even questions himself for displaying too much of his love in the painting.  Lord Henry’s relationship with Dorian is also quite homoerotic, but in a very different way.  Lord Henry displays love for Dorian but is dominating through his words and actions.  These two representations could be Wilde deliberately portraying multiple sides to homosexuality.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is highly influenced by his obsession with the book A Rebours, an obsession most likely shared by Wilde himself.  “A Rebours” translates to “against the grain” or “against nature”, a philosophy Wilde clearly sought to live by given his knack to purposefully incite controversy and his own homosexual tendencies.  Wilde, like Gide and Mann, was of the upper class, and also like those two, behaved contrary to how the upper echelon should act, or “against nature”.  The protagonists of The Immoralist, and A Death in Venice struggled with their homosexual tendencies, as did their authors.  However, Dorian Gray had less of a struggle due to his portrait bearing the effects of all of his sins, although ending the story with the same outcome as Aschenbach.  I believe that Oscar Wilde, like his protagonist, was more comfortable with the sins of being a homosexual because he linked it to art and beauty. 

Wilde believed in his way of life so strongly that he eventually spent several years in jail after his attempts to defend it in three trials.  I will will not go further into the trials, as they took place after The Picture of Dorian Gray was published.  However, is important to note that as a result of these trials, Wilde became a public figure beyond his writing and a champion of homosexuality.