Individualism In Oscar Wilde

Looking through Wilde’s whole life, we find rather difficult to comment a man complicated as he is with few words. He once possessed all but eventually lost all. Richard Ellmann appreciates that “His name buoys up the heart and rouses instant expectation that what will be quoted in his name will make the language dance.” (Ellmann:1994,Introduction).Truly, nobody can deny his contribution to English literature as the figurehead of Aestheticism just as nobody can defend for his immoral homosexuality deeds. His rebellious dandical pose to fight against the materialism and morals of the Victorian society made him the target of all criticism and attack. The popularity of hypocrisy in moral-sensitive Victorian England made Wilde difficult to accept.

In retrospection of his complicated emotions towards Alfred Douglas, he deeply agonized over not only the wrongdoing this relationship brought to his life but also a catastrophe to nearly all of his family members. Wilde disdained the orthodoxy marital morality of Victorian society because he believed men and women married for money and reputation not for love. Intuitively, he shunned domestic responsibility. Nevertheless, after he witnessed a series of family accidents especially the death of his mother, divorce from his wife and his children being taken from him, a kind of moral sense as a son, a husband and a father rises in his mind. He learnt to glorify women’s virtue in keeping the harmony of a family, affirmed the significance of marital love and parental love. What’s more, he expounded his attention beyond domestic affairs to all humanity’s love and hatred. He decided to reward with love for whoever hurts you because love can purify your soul but hate only brings destruction. Thrown into jail and confronted with bankruptcy owing to Alfred Douglas and his father, Wilde could still eliminate hatred to his foe. Perhaps it’s one of the highest forms of

He did somewhat correct his radical standpoints in his real life and his literary composition also did cultivate more moral senses to help him learn to concern for others. But such ethical changes should not be exaggerated because he couldn’t become moralist in traditional sense in any way. If so, that will not be Oscar Wilde anymore. We must notice that his changes of ethics in prison are largely out of the misery of the circumstance and outburst of too many indescribable emotions. His death after the release didn’t give readers chance to measure whether he really changed. He is just self-contradictory person who makes anybody hard to grasp. If permitted, we would like Wilde still to be that happy prince in his art’s empire with a child’s innocent dream. But since he was a man living in the turmoil reality, he had to face the imperfect world with a master’s humanistic concern and