Oscar WildeDorian Gray and Earnest

• Born in Dublin in 1854.

• He won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford.

• He was attracted by the Aesthetic Movement (Pater and Ruskin).

• He won the reputation of the most refined and provoking of the

‘aesthetic young men’ in London

• He became the leader of the Aesthetic Movement.

Early Life

• In 1883 he married Constance Lloyd, who bore him two children.

• The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

• A House of Pomegranates (1891)

• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

• Comedies:

a. Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)

b. A Woman of No Importance (1893)

c. An Ideal Husband (1895)

d. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

First Works and Literary Success

• 1895 he was arrested and sent to prison (Reading) because of his

homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.

• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

• De Profundis (1905)

• 1897 he left prison and went to Paris.

• He died in 1900.

The Final Years

It best sums up Wilde’s aesthetic theories:

Life of sensation and pleasure = the supreme form of art

man of taste artist

above common morality

The Picture of Dorian Gray

• An American publisher commissioned it with one of the Sherlock

Holmes stories.

• Mystery is visible throughout the story.

• The end of the story is in line with horror and crime stories.

Although there seems to be no moral basis, the ending of the story is

intensely moral.

there is a price to be paid for a life of pleasure.

A Mystery with a Moral Purpose

• Dorian Gray is a young man of outstanding beauty.

• Lord Henry Wotton introduces him to a life of pleasure based on

Youth and Beauty.

• Basil Hallward paints a portrait of Dorian, who is enchanted by his

perfect beauty.

• Dorian wishes never to grow old.

• His dissolute life leaves no sign on his own face, but disfigures the

painting.

• Dorian finally tries to destroy it but, as soon as he does, he dies.

• The portrait resumes its perfect beauty.

The Story

The cult of beauty

He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the

world.

The purity of his face

His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the

innocence that they had tarnished.

Life as the Greatest of the Arts

Dorian Portrait

fair young face the evil and ageing face his own beauty the corruption of his own soul

hideous lines…wrinkling forehead heavy sensual mouth

white hands coarse bloated hand misshapen body failing limbs

Dorian and His Portrait

• Staged in February 1895

• Brilliant dialogues

• Irony, sarcasm, nonsense, puns, paradoxes

• Humour derives from what the characters say and how they say it

• Wilde treats ‘all the serious things of life with sincere and studied

triviality’

• The superficiality of the upper class

The Importance of Being Earnest

• First Act - London

Jack Worthing is a rich man, who discovers Ernest when he is in

London.

He is in love with Gwendolen: he proposes to her and she accepts,

because she wants to marry someone by the name of Ernest.

The girl’s mother is happy about the marriage, but she changes her

mind when she discovers that Jack does not know who his parents

are.

The Story

• Second Act - Jack’s country house

Algernon Moncrieff, Jack’s friend, arrives and introduces himself as

Ernest, Jack’s wicked elder brother.

Algernon meets Cecily and they fall in love.

Both girls believe they are engaged to

a man called Ernest.

This causes a series of misunderstandings.

The Story

• Third Act - Jack’s country house

Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother, recognizes Miss Prism: she had

been her dead sister’s governess and had disappeared with her

sister’s baby.

Miss Prism confesses she had accidentally put the baby in a handbag,

which she had then left at Victoria Station.

Jack is the baby she had lost and his original name was Ernest.

The Story

The two girls meet for the first time at Jack’s country house.

Gwendolen Cecily

Lord Bracknell Mr Worthing’s ward

They are in love with a man called Ernest.

The very soul of truth and honour.

Two Girls, One Ernest