When it comes to the witty repartees and biting social commentary of Oscar Wilde, few characters stand out as vividly as Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Earnest." With her sharp tongue and even sharper observations, she serves as both a comedic figure and...
Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is often hailed as one of the greatest comedies in English literature. With its sharp wit, intricate plot, and unforgettable characters, the play has captivated audiences since its debut in 1895. But what exactly makes this work so...
The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Oscar Wilde, is one of the most celebrated plays in the English language. It first premiered in 1895 and has since been recognized for its sharp wit, playful satire, and exploration of social norms. At its core, the...
Disobedience can influence a person and show them a new way of thinking or a new solution. Throughout centuries, people have participated in disobedience in order to achieve a goal. Disobedience is a form of feeling, and is a feeling humans get when they feel...
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde many different themes are shown throughout. But the theme I feel is most important is beauty and appearance. At the beginning of the book we are introduced to Basil, a painter, he paints a portrait...
“People like to say that the conflict is between good and evil. The real conflict is between truth and lies.” Mexican author Don Miguel Ruiz’s words of knowledge are widely expressed throughout Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest as the characters experience the consequences in...
Although created in different eras, Oscar Wilde’s 1980 gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Damien Chazelle’s 2014 drama film Whiplash are comparable in the exploration of obsession, destruction and control by the text’s creators. Chazelle and Wild analogously explore the concept of obsessions...
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde utilizes parody to deride the social standards of marriage, love and mentality which were inflexible during the Victorian Age. Since it utilizes parody to mock these institutions, it shows the aberrance from the social request by making...
Throughout ‘An Ideal Husband’, the “battle of life” is portrayed in numerous ways by numerous different characters. For example. Robert Chiltern deceives those around him by selling a cabinet secret, and Mrs Cheveley wears the mask of good intentions when in reality she only wants...
“It’s a curious thing, Duchess, about the game of marriage – a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion – the wives hold all the honours, and invariably lose the odd trick”. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay...
The Victorian Era was a time of stark contrast in Great Britain. Great Britain had suddenly exploded into an industrious powerhouse and engaged in wide spread imperialism. The cities began to become overrun as rampant migration from rural to urban areas occurred. The massive influx...
The Picture of Dorian Gray can be considered as one of the most controversial novels of the aesthetic movement. Oscar Wilde was one of the leaders of the aesthetic movement during the 1890s. Wilde’s novel takes us through a lifestyle of someone who lives without...
Throughout the Gothic novel Dracula, Stoker uses symbology and imagery to reveal social anxieties and fears of the late Victorian era, for example the use of animalistic description and blood. Wilde, in his own Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray uses imagery to explore...
Social class, in its simplest terms, is a way to divide a populace into strata based on their wealth, or access to power, or some combination of the two. It is also a subjective measurement which often needs only to be implied to exist, so...
Love and friendship were major themes for Society Drama during the 1890s. An established ‘stock storyline’ of the period was that of domestic life affected by a predicament, concluding in the reassertion of common ideas: fidelity, duty, forgiveness, etc. Although An Ideal Husband adopts these...
Oscar Wilde differs from other modern dramatists, and such difference makes him distinctive as a modern writer. Not only the themes in his works but his life shows his modernity, and he benefited from the modern flow in the British theatrical world in the 1800s....
“Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland”. He gained a degree from Oxford University. “While at Oxford he was captivated by the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin and Walter Pater… Emphasizing aesthetics over social and moral “utility” or usefulness…”. The Picture...
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) explores the divide in London in the 19th Century. The divide between the ‘the east and west which was being perpetrated through poetry and novels’ reflects the duality in Dorian Gray. Dualism is ‘the condition or state...
Author Shannon Alder once said, “Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.” Essentially what Alder is saying is that the things we find fault with in other people are really the things that we do not have and therefore desire. In their...
Introduction My main idea is to compare and contrast the following three literary elements: settings, symbols, and theme, of the two short stories read in class, “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Nightingale and The Rose”. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each...
The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay Thomas...
Identity is fluid. Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (first performed 1895), affirms this concept. The play asserts the notion that we, as humans, carve our own identity through conscious decision. In doing so, Wilde interrogates the idea of identity rigidity – that human beings are...
In “Anatomy of Criticism”, Northrop Frye explains a formula that describes the structure of dramatic comedy. Two key points in the formula are the use of “obstructing characters” and the “movement from pistis to gnosis”. An “obstructing character” is anything physical or intangible that blocks...
Oscar Wilde hails from the Victorian generation, a set of writers known for its dogmas and oppression. In many of his works, he negates these austere ideas with his own particular brand of humour; however, Helas! and The Ballad of Reading Gaol are different. Unlike...
Not many Literary Figures have retained notoriety quite as splendidly as Oscar Wilde has. His illustrious body of work continues to be heavily debated to this day. Although renown for his plays and sole novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote an influential collection...
The long, antepenultimate paragraph of “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” neatly interrupts the dialogue that has just revealed the true nature of the death of Erskine, a friend of the narrator. The narrator is taking in the shocking news that Erskine had died naturally of...
Introduction «The book gives a person the opportunity to rise above himself» Andre Maurois Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay Books are our guides to life. They...
How do your chosen authors explore Victims and Villains? Within the supernatural victims and villains will most likely appear as main plot devices. Throughout The picture of Dorian Gray many fall to his charm and beauty then paying the price with their death for example...
What lengths might one person go to stay forever young? Would they enter a Faustian pact? A Faustian pact is where a person trades their soul with the devil for something they truly believe they cannot live without. In Oscar Wildes the Picture of Dorian...
Even with limited knowledge of Oscar Wilde’s work, one probably doesn’t expect his stories to begin with a “Once upon a time” and conclude with a neat, reassuring “happily ever after.” There is simply no room for such authoritative, didactic lines in his decidedly amoral,...
Epigram, drama, short story, criticism, journalism
Literary monement
Aesthetic movement, Decadent movement
Notable works
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Importance of Being Earnest
Quotes
"True friends stab you in the front."
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell the truth."
"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."
"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."
Date
16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900
Activity
Oscar Wilde was an Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake, and he was the object of celebrated civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment (1895–97).
Works
The Canterville Ghost, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Ravenna, Salomé
Themes
Aestheticism is Oscar Wilde's overall theme that beauty is the secret to life, later to become that suffering is the secret to life. He also employed the themes of depravity and duplicity, truth, responsibility, art, eternity and life.
Style
Oscar Wilde's writing style incorporates the vivid descriptions, aesthetic appearance, conversational style, repetitive pattern, simple and clear language.
Legacy
Indeed, Wilde was a giant presence within the Aesthetic movement, promoting its values through his writing, and his seemingly single-handed invention of the "cult of personality". He offered as much as anyone in defining the alternative culture of Victorian London. Oscar Wilde challenged societal formalities and showcased human morality in Victorian England that transcends generations through his poetry, plays, and novels.
Quotes
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
