Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's Aesthetic Gothic: Walter Pater, Dark Enlightenment, and The Picture Of Dorian Gray Main Thesis Wilde uses several echoes within The Picture of Dorian Gray. This central argument is supported by several examples of Dorian Gray acting as double to not only several characters within the novel but within mythology as well. Wilde merges the Gothic and the aesthetic in the book. “The merger is possible, and inevitable, because of the tendency of Gothic writing to present a fantastic…

nineteenth century author, Oscar Wilde, and toyed with in his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde utilizes cultural elements to…

perceptions toward them. A woman is centrally inborn with her strength, including her body, attitude and behavior. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry views women as "decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly" (Wilde 47). They are depicted as inferior to men and influence men in negative ways. It dehumanizes them as they are compared to objects like paintings, which are wonderful to look at, but can also be damaged. Despite his belief, Sibyl Vane’s beauty…

Everyone has a different point of view on disobedience, some people would see it as a way to express themselves, and fight for what they believe is right. Others may differ in their actions, but I strongly believe it has a good cause to it. Oscar Wilde states it best when he claimed: “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue”. Throughout the early 1910’s, the woman was in a rage of not being treated equally as men. Fighting against the government for…

feels more and more unsolvable and spooks some of them into going insane. In the end Vera Claythorne is driven to hang herself with her own insanity. On the other hand, in Oscar Wilde’s “The Fisherman and his Soul”, Wilde shows us how a fisherman falls in love with a mermaid and will do anything in his power to be with her. Wilde gives us the supernatural feeling when his love fights the evils of his once heartless soul. Even though each story goes down two completely different roads of…

Sincerity is a trait that is many times lacking. People put on a persona they wish to be seen as, while in reality, they are completely different. In The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, one can clearly see an example of people who lack sincerity. In this play, Jack pretends to have a younger brother named earnest so that he may indulge in pleasures while in the city. In the same way, Algernon pretends to have an ailing friend named Bunbury so he can escape his duties in the city. The…

Vanity is the root of all evil. To what extent is this true of American Psycho and Dorian Gray? Compare and contrast how the protagonist are presented in both novels. Both Bret Easton Ellis and Oscar Wilde use protagonists Patrick Bateman and Dorian Gray to explore whether an excessive amount of love towards one's self can lead to an inevitable decline in mental stability. Gray and Bateman, although from different eras, are presented as men who have been placed above others in society because of…

Characters Pretending to be Earnest The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by Oscar Wilde. The setting of the play is during the Victorian age in England. There are many characters in the play that look as if they are displaying earnestness but, three of them stand out from other characters. Algernon Moncrieff, Gwendolen Fairfax, and Cecily Cardew are the characters that on the outside exemplify sincerity and an earnest attitude, but on the inside are lying the whole time. Telling…

Student name Professor Course Date The Importance of Being Earnest: Honesty vs. Lies “The Importance of Being Ernest” by Oscar Wilde was first played in 1895 at the St James’s Theatre in London. The major theme that the play revolves around is trivial notions that critical institutions like marriages are being shown. In other words, it was a satire of the Victorian ways. The play is a farcical comedy, and the protagonists of the play employ made-up personalities to escape their lives. The lies…

In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, the characters often engage in quick, witty remarks towards one another. Yet beneath their comic front, these characters’ words subtly challenge the reality we think we live in, demanding the we see beyond what we have come to accept. When Lady Bracknell asks Algernon how he has been behaving and Algernon replies he has been feeling well, Lady Bracknell remarks, “that’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together” creating…