{"id":114,"date":"2022-02-03T13:06:24","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T18:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/?p=114"},"modified":"2022-02-12T20:46:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T01:46:39","slug":"wilde-and-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/02\/03\/wilde-and-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilde and Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While reading Lord Arthur Savile\u2019s Crime,<\/em> I was struck by how the story seemed to be almost void of morality as we traditionally understand it. I do not mean that there is no right or wrong in the story, but that audience expectations are not met. In my experience, people come to expect stories like Poe\u2019s \u201cThe Tell-Tale Heart.\u201d When the main character does something wrong, he gets his comeuppance, even if it is at his own hands. However, in Wilde\u2019s story, Lord Arthur Savile never even acknowledges that he did anything wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is fair to state that murder is wrong without needing to explain why, and I would argue that most people would agree with me. The average person reading Lord Arthur Savile\u2019s Crime <\/em>would see Savile\u2019s actions as morally reprehensible. Yet, he still gets his \u201chappily ever after\u201d and does not so much as acknowledge that what he did was wrong. The narrator is explicit: \u201cnever for one moment did Lord Arthur regret all that he had suffered\u201d (182). Not only does Lord Arthur not show guilt for his actions, but he sees them in the lens of his own <\/em>suffering. Throughout the story, Lord Arthur treats murder as a task he must complete in order to live the life he wants, not as a moral question. That is an uncomfortable reality for the reader to face, especially because Lord Arthur clearly shows no remorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story does not seem to want <\/em>the reader to look deeply into questions of right and wrong, yet I could not stop myself. Wilde seems content to represent a world in which people can do awful things with no punishment while innocent men–like the chiromantist–suffer for no reason. Arguably, that world is as akin to our own as the one of moral judgment that I choose to read into the story, even though it is difficult to accept. It is a concept for which I do not actually have an answer, and it paints a picture of an almost arbitrary world in which morality comes second to people\u2019s desires–or doesn\u2019t come up at all. I\u2019ll be interested to see whether this notion is reflected in Wilde\u2019s other work, particularly in The Picture of Dorian Gray.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While reading Lord Arthur Savile\u2019s Crime, I was struck by how the story seemed to be almost void of morality as we traditionally understand it. I do not mean that there is no right or wrong in the story, but that audience expectations are not met. In my experience, people come to expect stories like … Continue reading Wilde and Morality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}