Importance Of Degeneration In Oscar Wilde's The Critic As Artist

The nineteenth century was a period of great growth. It yielded an age of material and scientific growth, one characterized by rise in intelligence, moral ground, scientific discovery, medical breakthroughs and improving overall health. The Industrial Revolution swept through the world and urbanization spread through England. This lead to class distinctions and societal upheaval. Underneath the breakthroughs of the age there was a group of people who feared civilization was coming quickly to an end. These “degenerationalists” firmly believed that civilization was in decline and like evolutionary theory, it could be found in biological or physical traits. The word “degeneration” was meant to mean an organism’s gradual evolution from a more complex,

Both characters, Ernest and Gilbert, both were under the belief that the general public sought out mediocrity. Ernest says “…the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.” To which Gilbert expresses agreement declaring “Yes: the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.” Throughout the essay, Wilde continues to berate the modern man, whom he describe as vulgarizing the heroes of old. Gilbert specifically states how the world has degenerated to “cheap editions of great men” and how everyone forgets their duties. It becomes alarmingly clear what Oscar Wilde thought of the masses. He paints the general public out to be ignorant, mediocre and exceedingly critical of anything out of the norm. Wilde says that “Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.” Worst of all, critics (as shown by the metaphor to the critics being Judas) are shown as unjust writers who betray the art they

With growing urbanization came upheavals in the previous societal structure. Rising crime rates from the lower classes, many characters began fitting the degenerate types identified by Lankester and Freud. European travel and colonialism lead to the discovery of what were considered “primitive” people to compare and contrast. This resulted in the awareness of the fragility of western culture and civilization. Several books and papers began “documenting” the deterioration of the human condition, such as Morel’s Treatise on Degeneration and Gobineau’s Eassy on The Inequality of the Human Races. Distressing conditions of the working class and urban environments centralizing in London provided ample grounds for many fictitious stories to be written about the degeneration of man. The Strange Case of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde plays to this fear as well as The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. The novels and essays of the era draw their strength from the tumultuous change into the Industrial Era combined with the anxieties the British Empire were facing about the future. The discovery of various cultures and colonization/globalization also may have had a hand in the growing fear of degeneracy. It could have lead many of the English to realize that they are simply not the center of the world and the fragility of western civilization. In A Companion to the Victorian Novel by