Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, short story writer and Freemason. One of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day, known for his barbed and clever wit, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after being convicted in a famous trial for gross indecency (homosexual acts).

Two prose pieces of Wilde's that may appear on the GRE are “The Decay of Lying” and “The Critic as Artist.” However, I was unable to secure synopses of either of these works.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel by Oscar Wilde first published in 1890. In his preface to this, the only novel that he ever wrote, Wilde remarked "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

The novel begins with Lord Henry Wotton observing the artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome, young man named Dorian Gray in his London studio. Dorian arrives to sit for the artist, and Lord Henry tells him that youth is the only thing worth having, and that Dorian will soon age and lose his beauty. Once the portrait is finished, Dorian looks at it and wishes that he would stay like the picture, and it will bear his age for him.

Under the influence of Lord Henry, Dorian begins an exploration of his senses. He begins by discovering a brilliant actress, Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare in a dingy theatre. Dorian approaches her, and very soon, proposes marriage to her. Sibyl, who only knows Dorian as "Prince Charming", rushes home to tell her sceptical mother and brother. Her brother tells her that if Dorian harms her, he shall kill him. Dorian invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl, whose only knowledge of love was through the theatre, loses all her abilities after experiencing true love with Dorian, and performs very badly. Dorian rejects her, saying that her beauty was in her art. Once he returns to his apartment, Dorian notices that Basil's portrait of him has changed. The smile on his mouth has become crueller and less friendly. Dorian realises that his wish has come true, and the portrait is bearing his sins. The next morning, Dorian decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Lord Henry arrives to say that Sibyl has killed herself by swallowing prussic acid.

Dorian accepts his fate, and over the next eighteen years indulges in the seven deadly sins, under the influence of a "poisonous" French novel given to him by Lord Henry, probably Joris-Karl Huysmans's À rebours (Against the Grain). One day, Basil arrives to question Dorian about rumours of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny the debauchery, and endeavours to show Basil his soul. He takes Basil to the portrait, which is revealed to have become montrously ugly under Dorian's sins. Dorian blames the artist for his fate, and stabs him to death. He then blackmails an old friend into destroying the body.

Dorian seeks escape from the deed he has done in an opium parlour. After being rejected by the proprietor, who calls him by the name "Prince Charming", he leaves. Sibyl Vane's brother, who is in the parlour, recognises the name, and follows him. He attempts to kill Dorian, but is deceived when Dorian tells him that he would have been too young to have been involved with his sister. The sailor goes back to the opium den, where the woman tells him that Dorian has never aged for the past eighteen years.

At a shooting party at a country house, Dorian sees the brother stalking the grounds. However, an accident occurs during the shooting and the brother is shot. After returning to London Dorian informs Lord Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not eloping with a vicar's daughter. At his apartment, he wonders if the portrait would have changed, now that he has changed his ways. He unveils the portrait to see that it has got worse: there is blood on his hands. He has been vain in imagining that he could redeem himself. In a fit of rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil Hallward, and plunges it into the painting. His servants send for the police, who find a bloated, ugly old man with a knife in his heart, and the portrait of Dorian, as beautiful as he was eighteen years ago.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, a wealthy young Londoner, pretends to have a friend named Bunbury who lives in the country and frequently is in ill health. Whenever Algernon wants to avoid an unwelcome social obligation, or just get away for the weekend, he makes an ostensible visit to his "sick friend." In this way Algernon can feign piety and dedication, while having the perfect excuse to get out of town. He calls this practice "Bunburying."

Algernon's real-life best friend lives in the country but makes frequent visits to London. This friend's name is Ernest...or so Algernon thinks. When Ernest leaves his silver cigarette case at Algernon's rooms he finds an inscription in it that claims that it is "From little Cecily to her dear Uncle Jack". This forces Ernest to eventually disclose that his visits to the city are also examples of "Bunburying," much to Algernon's delight.

In the country, "Ernest" goes by his real name, John Worthing, and pretends that he has a wastrel brother named Ernest, who lives in London. When honest John comes to the city, he assumes the name, and behaviour, of the profligate Ernest. In the country John assumes and more serious attitude for the benefit of Cecily, who is his ward.

John himself wishes to marry Gwendolen, who is Algernon's cousin, but runs into a few problems. First, Gwendolen seems to love him only because she believes his name is Ernest, which she thinks is the most beautiful name in the world. Second, Gwendolen's mother is the terrifying Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell is horrified when she learns that John is a foundling who was discovered in a handbag at a railway station.

John's description of Cecily appeals to Algernon who resolves to meet her. Algernon soon gets the idea to visit John in the country, pretending that he is the mysterious brother "Ernest." Unfortunately, unknown to Algernon, John has decided to give up his Bunburying, and to do this he has announced the tragic death of Ernest.

A series of comic misunderstandings follows, as Algernon-as-Ernest visits the country (as a dead man, as far as the hosts are aware), and John shows up in his mourning clothes. There he encounters John's ward, Cecily, who believes herself in love with Ernest - the non-existent brother she has never met. After Lady Bracknell arrives, it is discovered that John is a nephew of Lady Bracknell who was lost by Miss Prism, Cecily’s governess, who was then working for Lady Bracknell’s sister. It is also discovered that John’s real name is Ernest. It is suggested at the end of the play that Ernest/John will marry Gwendolyn and Algernon will marry Cecily. The play contains many examples of Wilde's famous wit.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Somewhat confusingly, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is not the work that Wilde wrote while imprisoned for moral (in his case, homosexual) offences in 1895. That work was De Profundis, published five years after his death, in 1905. The Ballad of Reading Gaol was written after his release and in France, in 1897, though it was published in 1898. His works during this exile were published under the name Sebastian Melmouth, and this is the most famous. He would die in 1900. The poem is written in memory of "C.T.W." who died in Reading prison in July 1896 and it traces the feelings of an imprisoned man towards a fellow inmate who is to be hanged. They are "like two doomed ships that pass in storm", and Wilde creates a solemn funereal tone in his rhyme made sad and familiar by certain repeated phrases ("each man kills the thing he loves", "the little tent of blue/ Which prisoners call the sky"). The narrator’s emotions are filtered through an uncertainty about the law that has condemned them although he is certain that they are joined together in sin. There is a longing for the outside, innocence and crucially beauty, the last of which is undermined in the latrine-like cells. The poem seems to offer some limited comfort in the possibility of the thief’s entrance to Paradise. It is a work of startling contrasts between light and shade, drawn together with a keen eye and a sense of the beauty in sadness itself.

It begins:

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.