Wilde, Oscar - Life and the concept of dandy

Oscar Wilde - life

Oscar Wilde was mainly a playwright because he wrote only one novel (“The picture of Dorian Gray”), a lot of comedies and some short stories.
He was irish, in fact he was born in Dublin but he studied at Oxford University in England. As he was very good and brilliant at speaking, he attracted people with his speech. He spent most of his life giving lectures, not only in England, but also in Europe and in the Usa.
(At the customs he was asked ”anything to declare?”, and he answered “anything, only my genius!”, in fact he was mentally brilliant at speaking).
After this episode he became a kind of a star. He was also an artist, and being an artist he felt totally different from the rest of the society, that was a materialistic society (it’s a kind of superiority). He decided to follow the aesthetic movement because his main idea of writing was first of all to please himself. His idea was not that of telling the others about his idea, he was not at all interested in this idea of communication, he was only interested in finding pleasure by himself.

The dandy

As he refused the way of living of his society he was not interested in the society that was around him. So he played an important role in his society, the role of a dandy. Dandy is an artist who comes from aristocracy, with intelligent attitudes and feelings of superiority. Moreover, his way of dressing is always elegant first of all because his aim is that of showing his superiority, but the most important reason is because he wants to shock Victorian society, in order to attract people’s attention (the bohemian has the same attitudes, the only difference is that he comes from common people and not from aristocracy as the dandy). During his career he was accused and persecuted of omosexuality, he also had a wife and two children but at a certain point of his life, he fell in love with a young boy. For this reason, this boy’s father persecuted him, so he spent 3 years of hard work in prison because at the time omosexuality was considered a crime. Then he collapsed because he lost everything (he lost his family, his money, his prestige…)and he became another man. In this period he started to write short stories addressed to his children.
Oscar Wilde was a playwright, so he mainly wrote comedies, one of the most important is “The importance of being Earnest”.
In this comedy Oscar Wilde uses irony through the language, in particular he uses the technique of the pun, that is a language device, a word that sounds in a way but has another meaning. In this comedy there is too much irony.
The word “Earnest” has a double meaning in english, it can be a name, but can also mean “being honest, trusteful, loyal”.
The main character is a woman, called Gwendolen who falls in love with Earnest, because she is strongly convinced that a man having that name should be the best man. Unfortunately his real name is Jack. One day Jack asks Gwendolen if she would love lim despite his name being Jack and not Earnest, and she answers that he isn’t good for her.
(the name is just an appearance, and Oscar Wilde ridicules this Victorian’s attitude with the language, playing with words, he uses “pun”, that is a language device) in order to criticize the victorian society.