Oscar Wilde: Aestheticism, Wit, and Victorian Drama

Oscar Wilde: Life and Education

Oscar Wilde's family was Dutch in origin. Oscar proceeded from a brilliant student career at Trinity College, Dublin, to even greater brilliance at Magdalene College. He won the Newdigate Prize for poetry and first-class honors in Classics.

Aestheticism and Public Life

Wilde set out to idolize "beauty for beauty's sake." Aestheticism was the keynote of his creed, and he declared that beauty was the ideal after which everyone should strive.

• His marriage in 1884 was the society spectacle of the year.
• He sparkled as England's wittiest conversationalist and its most talked-about writer.

He was convicted on charges of homosexuality. He fled to France, and was converted to Roman Catholicism just before his death.

Literary Style and Aesthetic Movement

Wilde belonged to the fin de siècle aesthetic movement, which believed in art less as an escape from life than as a substitute for it. He felt impelled to carry the "play" of his own life to its melodramatic conclusion.

The Fin de Siècle Flourishing

It was in the 1890s that the aesthetic movement flourished most vigorously. Its members were out to shock, but also to demonstrate a specific way of life and a way of art.

Wilde took formulas from Victorian farce and melodrama, enhancing the dialogue with a polished wit and stylization. This dialogue imposes the order of an ideal wit on the society he portrays.

He achieves this most perfectly in The Importance of Being Earnest. The tradition of wit, which Wilde bequeathed to the modern comedy of manners, proved too tenuous and self-sufficient to be easily usable by others.

Oscar Wilde's Dramatic Works

Wilde's major comedies include Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband. Both comedies were an immediate success.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Wilde termed The Importance of Being Earnest "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People." The play's lasting appeal arises from some of the most brilliant dialogue on the English stage. Even where irrelevant to the plot, Wilde's wit dazzles.

The drama reduces to inanity all the stock features of coincidence, mistaken identity, and incredible dénouement.

Salomé: A Unique Tragedy

Wilde wrote his biblical play Salomé in French. The Lord Chamberlain refused to grant a license, on the ground that no play that contained Biblical characters was allowed to be performed on the English stage.

The high pitch of emotions in this play, its atmosphere of Byzantine violence, and its somber brooding over evil create something utterly alien and unique in English drama.