Oscar Wilde’s Masterpieces: Themes and Narrative Analysis
The Importance of Being Earnest: Plot
The Importance of Being Earnest is one of Oscar Wilde’s most famous plays. The story revolves around two young aristocratic men, Ernest and Algernon, who fall in love with two young women, Gwendolen and Cecily.
Ernest, now called Jack, is the name assigned to him when he was adopted. He is the guardian to his granddaughter, Miss Cecily, who lives in the country. Jack has invented an alter ego, a younger brother called Ernest, who lives in the city. Algernon also pretends to have a friend called Bunbury, whose invalidity requires frequent attention, thus ensuring his departure to the country.
The story develops around the two young men’s attempts to marry Gwendolen and Cecily. They have to overcome a lot of obstacles, but in the end, both men, who discover they are brothers, succeed in marrying their sweethearts.
A New Comedy of Manners
Wilde’s theater was a sort of new comedy of manners, in which the problems of his age were reflected through his witty remarks.
The Institution of Marriage
The play presents an aristocratic society whose members are typical Victorian snobs; they are often arrogant, formal, and concerned with money. The story is based on the problems of marriage. Wilde makes fun of the institution of marriage, which he saw as a practice surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity. He shows that the aristocracy doesn’t see marriage as the result of love but rather as a tool for achieving social stature.
Irony and Imagination
The whole play is built on witty dialogues, amusing puns, misunderstandings, and paradoxes. The title is a pun in itself: the name Earnest evokes the adjectives “earnest, honest, and sincere”, while none of the characters are truthful.
The characters are used to criticize Victorian prudery and exaggerated seriousness. Irony is a dominant feature of the play.
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Plot
The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to portray him. Once the picture is finished, Dorian expresses a wish for eternal youth: the portrait would absorb all the signs of age while he remained forever in his youthful perfection. The wish comes true; over the years, the portrait grows old and ugly while Dorian’s appearance remains unchanged.
Dorian lives only for pleasure, making use of everybody and letting people die because of his insensitivity. When Dorian, totally corrupt and evil, sees the corrupted image of the portrait, he decides to destroy the portrait and begin a new life. But in doing so, he kills himself. The portrait is magically restored to its original image of Dorian’s youthful perfection, while the real Dorian’s features in death become those of a hideous, disgusting old man.
Narrative Technique
The story is told by a third-person narrator. The settings are vividly described, and the characters reveal themselves through what they say or what other people say of them (a typical technique of drama).
Allegorical Meaning
It is an allegorical story with a Faustian theme. The myth of Faust is the story of a man who sells his soul to evil so that all his desires might be satisfied.
Wilde believes in the Renaissance idea of a correspondence existing between the physical and spiritual realms: beautiful people are moral people; ugly people are immoral people. So, in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, the picture is the dark side of Dorian’s personality and records the signs of time, the corruption, the horror, and the sins of Dorian. The picture is a symbol of the immorality of the Victorian middle class, and Dorian, apparently pure and innocent, is a symbol of bourgeois hypocrisy.
The picture, restored to its original beauty, signifies that art survives people and is eternal.