Wilde: Forming the Paper

So, now that I have finished my two major work, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as some literary criticism, I have chosen to explore how Wilde highlights the destructive/amoral nature of Victorian society. As it stands my thesis is: Wilde uses The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray as a platform to display the destructive nature of Victorian society. (This will likely change as I go through more of the writing process and begin to more deeply explore my evidence.)

From PDG, one of the main points that I plan to emphasize is the societal obsession with youth and beauty, and the one place that people can real see that is through Dorian himself. Even, Basil Hallward, perhaps the book’s most moral and sane character, is completely intoxicated by Dorian’s beauty. However, simply because people feel inclined to assume Dorian is moral, because he is beautiful he devastates so many people in the book. A perfect example of this is Sybil Vane. She falls to the charm to Dorian’s graces, ends up obsessed with him, and ends up killing herself, showing how destructive the obsession turns out to be. This message is further amplified by the strife of her brother, James, and her mother.

A societal flaw that appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest is that of deceit. Nearly every character in the play lies. One of the key component of the play is the concept of “bunburying”. Bunburying is a concept invented in the book by Algernon Moncrieff. It involves create a person with some issues in his/her life for which he/she needs constant assistance. For example, a dear friend who is an invalid and needs help around the house. One would then use this character to escape the responsibilities of everyday life and those present in your life (friends and family). This may seem harmless, but ends up leading to a lot of mistrust and manipulation throughout the book over this deceit.