Oscar Wilde began to write An Ideal Husband in the summer of 1893, he completed it later that winter. At the time of when it was written, he was familiarised to success, and in writing this play he wanted to guarantee himself to stay in the public eye. An ideal husband is one of the most serious social comedies that Oscar Wilde published, it contains bold political tinges, ironically and pessimistically looking at the current political background. The central focus of the play is the corruption of great wealth, which is where the public are usually uninformed. The play is about London society throughout the mid 80s, it condemns the value of Victorian society – it can also be perceived as a social satire.
The Victorian stage melodrama was made up of six stock characters: The hero, villain, heroine, aged parent (Lord Caversham), sidekick and a servant (Phibbs). A stock character is a fictional character that is based upon a stereotype or well-known traits within society. Stock characters rely heavily on the names that they’re provided with (language used, personality and dress code). Stock characters are placed in order for parodies to occur which will amplify any labels connected with these characters. Several stock characters can be applied to characters within ‘An Ideal husband’ and Oscar Wilde’s use of this was intentional to create a comical effect to the play instead of being serious.
As the title may suggest, An Ideal Husband’s main theme is marriage a common principle for the melodrama’s of Oscar Wilde’s era. The Victorian popular theatre provided typical narratives of domestic life that, after several tragedies, would conclude in the repetition of identifiable themes: faithfulness, sacrifice, eternal love, mercy, commitment...
... middle of paper ...
...lar to a fairy tale story – maybe this was published to be an aspiration of Oscar Wilde’s to get to that stage in life where everybody accepts what’s happened and moves on. E.g. society changing and homosexuality being acceptable and not frowned upon like it was in the Victorian Era.
To conclude, Oscar Wilde has successfully conformed to the model of the well-made play with stock characters and storylines because of how easy it is for the audience to stereotype characters within the play to people they know themselves or other plays/literature etc. Oscar Wilde may have done this in order to create a light hearted way of getting his opinions across to the public without being too serious – scandals and secrets within his own life. The play also leaves the audience thinking and questioning their own lives to what they’ve had to sacrifice to get where they are today.
We know that Oscar is married and has children but these letters he has written to different men strike him as gay to some. During this time period, many disagreed with this act, especially Lord Alfred Douglas of Queensberry, one of Wilde’s partners father. Some may say this lead to the theme of hate for the fact that Lord Alfred Douglas of Queensberry despised Wilde for sending these letters to his son and having these feelings towards him (Polashuk, 2007).
As members of the upper class, it is important that they live by these rules for society. Even in the country, which for the cream of the society is associated with relaxation and leisure, the rules of society are followed though the characters really do not perform any laborious actions. “We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthington, in the age of ideals. (pg. 20)” Wilde insinuates that the society, in which the characters live, hold them to live to fill roles, which are gender appropriate. According to Felicia Appel, the women of the Victorian Era were raised and groomed to be the perfect wife to whatever husband chooses them. Gwendolen states “My ideal has always been to love someone of the name Ernest. (pg. 20)” Her idea of a happy life is to ...
In Oscar Wilde’s drama The Importance of Being Earnest, he uses light-hearted tones and humor to poke fun at British high society while handling the serious theme of truth and the true identity of who is really “Earnest.” Truth as theme is most significantly portrayed through the women characters, Gwendolen and Cecily but to present serious themes comically, Wilde portrays women to be the weaker sex of society, despite the seriousness of the subject—the identity of the men they want to marry.
The Importance of Being Earnest Written, written in 1854, by Oscar Wilde, discusses many social matters occurring in the 19th century. Since The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy, it “awakens thoughtful laughter” (George Meredith). This comedic play often awakens thoughtful laughter, or laughter that makes someone ponder more about important issues. One of many of the primary instances of this is created by the ideas of marriage and love is a social device during this era. The characters didn’t fall in love because there was a romantic spark or that they felt a love connection with one another, they fell in love because the people they loved had a specific name, history, physical characteristics or economic status.
The interesting life of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde began on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. By the end of his college education, Wilde had become one of the most famous aesthetes; it was this recognition which drew attention to his affected paradoxes and his witty sayings. This fame led to his 1882 lecture tour of America. In 1885 Wilde began work as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette and a critic for the Dramatic Reviewer. Two years later, he was appointed as the editor of the Lady's World Magazine. The year 1888 marked his first major published work The Happy Prince and Other Stories, which was a charming collection of children's stories. Three years later Wilde made a name for him self by publishing four books in 1891: A House of Pomegranates, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, Intentions, and The Picture of Dorian Gray -- the latter earning him his greatest fame to date" ("Biograp...
Oscar Wilde’s treatment of high society and manners are explored in the play “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Here, members of the upper class display a great deal of pride and pretense, feeling that they are inherently entitled to their wealth and higher social position. An example is Lady Bracknell, who is preoccupied with maintaining the status quo that she quickly squashes any signs of rebellion. Characters from higher societies/classes are mainly concerned about their reputation and respectability. Thus, expectations of the upper class for both men and women include being upstanding, rich and come from a wealthy family. Wilde’s criticism on high society and manners are explored through the characteristics of Lady Bracknell; the dialogue between Gwendolen and Cecily; and the characteristics of Jack in the country.
For a modern audience, Oscar Wilde represents a quintessential example of homosexuality, especially among notable historical figures. However, this audience may not realize how much influence Wilde had over popular conceptions of homosexuality; in fact, many believe that Wilde’s trial in fact represented the birth of the popular homosexual image. If critics like Alan Sinfield and David Halperin are to be believed, the Wilde trials served as the crucible for the concept of the male homosexual. As the many nineteenth-century models of male sexuality came under trial, the rhetoric of Queensberry’s defense in Wilde’s first trial was critical in the convergence of these models to
...erpreted as dark and significant to the period. The comedy Wilde achieves is at the expense of the characters who are seemingly intelligent adding to the ironic structure that much of the comedy is based on. Many of the comic elements of the play are shown through human reactions to Victorian repression and the effect it has on the men and women of the time. Love seems to be nonexistent within the finds of the fierce and brutal Aristocracy when so many of the qualities they value are not based on human qualities but that of the class’s social norms. Wildes Characters are at often times not subtle about their distaste in marriage and love, Algernon is no exception to this “In aried lie, three is company, two is none” showing that they all have distorted views on many of the social practices that make them morally sound, thus adding to the satire elements of the play.
Wilde’s play demonstrates how idealism influences individual’s potentiality to make fate-determining decisions. He does so through the character development of Robert and Gertrude Chiltern. The Chilterns’ idealistic attitudes regarding fiscal, social, and matrimonial issues play large roles in steering the plot to it’s exultant conclusion. For Robert, staying true to his ideals earned him a happy ending. For Gertrude, being gracious and flexible in her ideals led to her to a jubilant outcome. The two married characters bring balance as well as a genuineness to the nature of idealism. Whether an individual is persisting in their convictions or modifying their standards, idealism leads to characters determining their own destinies.
Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde plays around with the standard expectations along with the absence of compassion of a Victorian society in the 1890’s, he demonstrates this through several genres of comedy such as Melodrama, Comedy of Manners, Farce, dark humour and Irony, as well as portraying the themes, death and illness, in this play in a brilliance of unusual amount of references.
Baselga, Mariano. “Oscar Wilde: The Satire of Social Habits.” In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, England: Colin Smuthe, 1994: pp. 13-20.
If there is nothing intrinsically precious, but only superficially glorious, there is nothing to stay. It is the same with marriage. Just as Robert Frost conveys in his poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay," even gold cannot stay no matter how beautiful it is. Comparing to Robert Frost's masterpiece, we witness how an ostensibly joyful marriage turns out to be a catastrophe in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. In this play, we can perceive honor and pride, but the main qualities a marriage requires are innocence and truth. Between the poem and the play, we can perceive many similar perspectives.
Additionally, Wilde’s intense relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas is the inspiration for this poem. Elements like the speaker’s attitude provide evidence to to this claim. The speaker’s attitude is pondering and observant. He is observing the situation and analyzing what is happening. This is how Wilde felt in his relationship with Douglas. Participating in an affair, especially one with a man, was uncharted territory for him. He had to learn through trial and error. Unfortunately, his relationship also faced more stress due to a great deal of scrutiny the couple was under. Their relationship was not viewed as genuine. Society thought that their relationship was not genuine because it was a relationship between two men. Lust was considered
One major theme of The Importance of Being Earnest is the nature of marriage. Throughout the entire play, marriage and morality serve as the catalyst for the play, inspiring the plot and raising speculation about the moral character of each person. Throughout the entire play, the characters are constantly worried about who they are going to marry and why they would marry them. This theme is the most prevalent theme throughout the entire play and shows what impact marriage had on a Victorian society. This essay will prove that marriage is the theme of this play.
Oscar Wilde was born in October 16, 1854, in the mid era of the Victorian period—which was when Queen Victoria ruled. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.While she ruined Britain, the nation rise than never before, and no one thought that she was capable of doing that. “The Victorian era was both good and bad due to the rise and fall of the empires and many pointless wars were fought. During that time, culture and technology improved greatly” (Anne Shepherd, “Overview of the Victorian Era”). During this time period of English, England was facing countless major changes, in the way people lived and thought during this era. Today, Victorian society is mostly known as practicing strict religious or moral behavior, authoritarian, preoccupied with the way they look and being respectable. They were extremely harsh in discipline and order at all times. Determination became a usual Victorian quality, and was part of Victorian lifestyle such as religion, literature and human behavior. However, Victorian has its perks, for example they were biased, contradictory, pretense, they cared a lot of about what economic or social rank a person is, and people were not allowed to express their sexuality. Oscar Wilde was seen as an icon of the Victorian age. In his plays and writings, he uses wit, intelligence and humor. Because of his sexuality he suffered substantially the humiliation and embarrassment of imprisonment. He was married and had an affair with a man, which back then was an act of vulgarity and grossness. But, that was not what Oscar Wilde was only known for; he is remembered for criticizing the social life of the Victorian era, his wit and his amazing skills of writing. Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” typifies the Vi...