Topic 51: Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw

Introduction & Historical and Literary Background

• Around the end of the 19th c/ beginning of the 20th Victorian values are challenged by a new generation of writers and intellectuals

• End of the 19th c

  • Imminent end of the reign of Queen Victoria (apprehension about the future)

  • Growth of the Labour Party (people were growing more socially aware, more interest in the health, education and happiness of the citizens)

  • Women get into universities, beginning of the fight for suffrage

  • The Irish question

    • The Irish Nationalist Movement grows in strength and fights against the subjugation to the British Government

      • Claim of independence on ethnic, religious and social grounds

• These writers are referred to as “The First of the Moderns”

Oscar Wilde (life)

• orn in Dublin, son to a surgeon father and a poet mother

• His mother was a fervent Irish nationalist. She and her husband were keen on Irish legend, folklore and history

• Educated in Dublin, won an scholarship to study at Oxford, where he took his first classes in Greek and Roman literature, history and philosophy

  • Influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pater

  • Earned a first-class degree and a prize for his poem Ravenna

• Self-published a collection of poems

• Started to make contacts to impulse his career, embarking on a successful lecture tour of the United States

  • Compared the new preoccupation with lifestyles with the aspirations of the Italian Renaissance and the Romantic movement

• In 1891 he began an association that would lead to his downfall: he met Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas son to the Marquis of Queensberry, a married man. Wilde was already married, and this put strain on his marriage

• As homosexuality was illegal, both in public and in private, Wilde felt threatened by his lover’s father, a violent and irrational man, capable of harming both parties. It didn’t help that Douglas insisted on flaunting his relationship to annoy his father

• The Marquis left a note at Wilde’s club that alluded to his homosexuality, which ruined the poet. After suing Queensberry for criminal libel, the case went against Wilde, who was convicted on homosexuality charges and spent two years imprisoned with hard labour. He wrote the letter De Profundis and the poem The Ballad of the Reading Gaol about his experience in prison.

• When he was released he took residence in France, but he never really recovered and died three years later

Oscar Wilde’s poetry

• His initial poetry has not been well-considered. He was often accused of being a plagiarist, a rather unfair judgement, as he reproduced poems he greatly admired

• His poetry is full of charm and vitality, but comes in a period when Romanticism has become classic

• His most ambitious poems are those dealing with Hellenic themes (The Garden of Eros)

Oscar Wilde’s Essays and Prose

• Also renowned for his works as a perceptive critic, questioning institutions, moral imperatives and social stereotypes

• The Decay of Lying and The Critic as an Artist feature aphoristic dialogues that would become famous in his later comedies

• His longest and most serious essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism, he defends human freedom focusing on the liberation from the drudgery and rule of machines

• He wrote fairy tales, obtaining brilliant results, such as The Canterville Ghost

• His best known novel is The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Faustian adaptation where Wilde tries to demonstrate that morality and Art are quite divorced

Oscar Wilde’s Drama

• Wilde was at his best with drama

• Wrote two biblical dramas of not much importance (Salome and Herodias)

• The zenith of his career were his comedies of manners

  • Lady Windermere’s Fan: Wilde’s first success in London. About a woman who is about to leave social position, husband and daughter to run off with his lover, but she is dissuaded by her (unknown to her) mother

    • Defence of individualism against ethical or socially-acceptable behaviour

  • A Woman of no Importance: descriptive commentary on British aristocracy and the hypocritical way Victorian society viewed woman.

    • About the concealment of a secret: a man with limited prospects due to his social class wants to take up a job as a secretary of a Lord, but his mother implores him not to due to a shameful secret: the young man is an illegitimate son to the Lord

  • An Ideal Husband: centred an honourable and happily married man whose life is altered when a money-hungry business woman blackmails him with proof that he cheated on his wife

  • The Importance of Being Earnest: climatic demonstration of Wilde’s paradoxical and witty character. The story revolves around two friends with imaginary acquaintances they use to escape family commitments. They find themselves into a massive muddle when one of them chooses to make the other’s fake brother into a reality

Bernard Shaw (life)

• Born in Dublin, Protestant background

• After a youth of poverty, he moved to London, where he became an active socialist and brilliant platform speaker

• He became one of the founders of the Fabian Society, dedicated to the promotion of Socialism

• He figured as a pamphleteer and a serious economist and philosopher

• He also earned fame as a journalist, as an art critic and as a drama critic. He was too an accomplished musician and music critic

• He published a major study entitled The Quintessence of Ibsenism about the Norwegian dramatist

• Wrote on many social aspects of the day, such as Common Sense about the War and The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

• Wrote two novels, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales and Cashel Byron’s Profession

• He began a career as a dramatist, but none of his ten plays met success on the stage

Bernard Shaw (literary background)

• Many of his plays fell victims of censorship

  • The Widower’s House, The Philander and Mrs Warren’s Profession: Shaw consciously adapted Ibsen’s perspective on the functionality of drama, forcing spectators to face unpleasant or controversial facts and to think of them from different points of view

    • In Mrs Warren’s Profession Shaw confronts two contemporary women’s issues: the future professional career of an educated woman and the controversial profession of her mother: prostitution

  • Candida: inspired by Ibsen’s Doll’s House, but within the context of a Christian Socialist household

  • You Can Never Tell: happy and liberating victory of a new generation over the old

• Between 1904-07 Shaw became successful in London

  • Man and Superman: a gallery of Shaw’s dramatic strategies. Only a small percentage of the text is devoted to conventional drama, the main focus is the symbolic dream that acts as a counterpart to the main story

  • John Bull’s Island: rare play in which Shaw focuses on Ireland and the Irish

  • Major Barbara: conflict between a strong-willed father and his equally strong-minded daughter

  • Pygmalion: departure from politics and philosophy to focus in the relationship between the creator and his creation and the problems women find to maintain their individuality in a society which only suits men

Relevance of this topic in the classroom

Curriculum Element	Topic 51 Contribution
Specific Competences	Focused on 3, 4, 5, 7 (out of the 7 in Decreto 107/2022)
Key Competences	CCL, CP, CPSAA, CC, CD, CCEC (especially CCEC)
Operating Descriptors	Comprehension strategies, literary production, mediation, plurilingual awareness
End-of-Stage Profile	Effective communication in diverse contexts; cultural appreciation; critical thinking
Basic Knowledge	Conceptual (Wilde, Shaw, late Victorian era, Irish Question), Procedural (analysis, interpretation), Attitudinal (respect for cultural diversity)
21st Century Challenges	Globalisation, Digital Transformation, Education, Inequalities, Migration, Sustainability, Gender Equality
SDGs	4, 5, 10, 16