{"id":168,"date":"2022-02-12T19:51:29","date_gmt":"2022-02-13T00:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/?p=168"},"modified":"2022-02-12T19:54:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T00:54:26","slug":"wilde-and-thackeray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/02\/12\/wilde-and-thackeray\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilde and Thackeray"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am interested in Wilde\u2019s idea in <em>The Decay of Lying<\/em> that Art imitates Life, rather than Life imitating Art.&nbsp; In his essay, he claims that \u201cLife is Art\u2019s best, Art\u2019s only pupil\u201d (Wilde 983), and provides several fictitious examples of this.&nbsp; The example I found most humorous was his reference to Becky Sharp of <em>Vanity Fair<\/em>, which was written by \u201cgreat sentimentalist\u201d William Makepeace Thackeray and originally published in 1848 (Wilde 984).&nbsp; Wilde\u2019s character Vivian describes that well after <em>Vanity Fair<\/em> was published, the governess who was a loose inspiration for Becky\u2019s character \u201cran away with the nephew of the lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley&#8217;s style, and entirely by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley&#8217;s methods\u201d (Wilde 984), following the exact trajectory of Becky after her disastrous marriage to Rawdon Crawley.&nbsp; I find Wilde\u2019s reference to Becky interesting because she was the ultimate liar.&nbsp; A vicious social climber, she is cunning and seductive, and uses her intelligence to take advantage of wealthy men.&nbsp; If art is lying, Thackeray\u2019s biting satire is evidence of this.&nbsp; It presents heavily exaggerated characters and weaves together their stories in a ridiculous manner.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is interesting to consider, then, how writers of Wilde\u2019s time were turning away from Victorian literature.\u00a0 Certainly, <em>Vanity Fair<\/em> is not an example of art for art\u2019s sake, but Becky\u2019s interest in all things beautiful and her desire to live a pleasure-filled life seems to align with the code of the Decadents.\u00a0 Becky put on a show in society, masking her true background and creating a glamorous fa\u00e7ade.\u00a0 She reminds me of some of the characters in Wilde\u2019s short stories, particularly Lord Arthur Savile and the Canterville ghost.\u00a0 Lord Arthur creatively plots several murder attempts to maintain his position and relationship to his fianc\u00e9e, creating a life based on deception and crime.\u00a0 The Canterville ghost initially is interested in putting on masks to terrorize the Otis family and maintain his fear-based position of power in the household.\u00a0 Their scheming and cunning for the sake of comfort cause them to act similarly to Thackeray\u2019s Becky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am interested in Wilde\u2019s idea in The Decay of Lying that Art imitates Life, rather than Life imitating Art.&nbsp; In his essay, he claims that \u201cLife is Art\u2019s best, Art\u2019s only pupil\u201d (Wilde 983), and provides several fictitious examples of this.&nbsp; The example I found most humorous was his reference to Becky Sharp of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/02\/12\/wilde-and-thackeray\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Wilde and Thackeray<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[533943],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victorian-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","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\/4168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}