{"id":450,"date":"2022-04-10T22:57:54","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T02:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/?p=450"},"modified":"2022-04-10T22:57:55","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T02:57:55","slug":"oscar-wilde-class-and-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/04\/10\/oscar-wilde-class-and-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Wilde: Class and Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While thinking about my final paper topic, I found myself thinking a lot about morality and social classes in terms of Oscar Wilde and his works. We came across morality with <em>The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em> through the corruption of Dorian Gray as well as the characters of Basil Hallward and Lord Henry. Also with these characters, we were able to see Wilde\u2019s perspective on the differences of social class, with Hallward representing a certain innocence and artistry of the lower class whereas Lord Henry of the higher class indulged in hedonism and actively corrupted Gray. <em>The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em> once more offered Wilde\u2019s commentary on class through the portrayal of Jack and Lady Bracknell. Along with the snobbish arrogance they carried as members of the higher class, Wilde imbued a pretentiousness and the injustice of class as a whole. The characters of Gwendolen and Cecily are also mocked by Wilde as he ridicules them and their characters as superficial and ignorant. He derides the upper class by exaggerating their fixation and enjoyment of superficialities such as style or food. Through <em>De Profundis<\/em>, we once more see this entitlement and hedonism through Wilde\u2019s portrayal of Lord Alfred Douglas. He also mentions Douglas\u2019s mother extensively in convincingly creating this image of Douglas. As shown through his two works, as well as <em>De Profundis<\/em>, there is a certain obsession Oscar Wilde carries with hedonism and arrogance, especially concerning the wealthy upper class that he is always eager to shun. It seems that his works utilize the portrayals of certain characteristics he sees in the upper class heavily to show larger themes of morality and ethics; as a whole, these works do actively illustrate Wilde\u2019s own mentality on the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While thinking about my final paper topic, I found myself thinking a lot about morality and social classes in terms of Oscar Wilde and his works. We came across morality with The Picture of Dorian Gray through the corruption of Dorian Gray as well as the characters of Basil Hallward and Lord Henry. Also with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/04\/10\/oscar-wilde-class-and-morality\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Oscar Wilde: Class and Morality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","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\/4160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}