Oscar Wilde 2

Oscar Wilde's Magnum Opus, "The Importance of Being Earnest," is a perfect example of social satire. Wilde's play focuses on wealthy and pompous Londoners and the relationships between them while criticizing, in my opinion, arrogance of wealthy Victorian lives. The incredibly rigid class distinctions between the wealthy aristocracy and the lower classes is shown in the statement by Algernon: "If the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?" (Wilde 849). This line shows two aspects of the mind set of the wealthy Victorian the statement belongs to, one being that the aristocracy, according to Wilde, are more like irresponsible children while the lower classes have to be mature and adult like and that the aristocracy have great contempt for the lower classes and that the aristocracy fails to perceive of them as anything but useless. Perhaps I am reading too much into a single statement, but this is merely my interpretation of context. The importance of being Earnest is a play and as such I am of the opinion that it seen and heard, rather than read like a book. When it comes to inventive and humorously witty dialog, there are none who surpass the creativity of Wilde. As such, the I believe the wittiness and the comedy of the satire has a tendency to distract viewers or readers of the underlying issues Wilde is attempting to point out. I believe Wilde was attempting to show the inadequacy, pompousness, and foolishness of the wealthy who controlled Victorian culture and that, much like in Ibsen's own writings, the relationships people have between each other should be founded on much more than the simple whims and meaningless aspects which were deemed by popularity to be supremely important.

Oscar Wilde 1

Perhaps no Victorian is as well known or as well read as the late and great Oscar Wilde. The world renowned satirist renowned for the plethora of witicisms he crafted over a lifetime of writing and his rebelling against against society has left Wilde a legend amongst social historians and playwrights alike. In "The Decay of Lying" Wilde presents two inept and most likely aristocratic Victorian era women discussing the state of lying in modern affairs. Wilde's use of satire to attack the elites of his own culture can be seen in the sentence "How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy natural disdain of proof of any kind!" (Wilde 833). Wilde presents the two characters of his play, Cyril and Vivian, as caricatures of actual Victorian blue bloods. They are, essentially, like clowns in a circus. They are meant to make people laugh at the foolish interchange of argument between the two of them. Yet, towards the end, something more is revealed about the "lying" which the play is about. I believe it is Wilde's intention not to condemn lying, but rather to embrace one of its forms. There is a possibility, or so I believe, that this poem was influenced by an essay by Samuel L. Clemens entitled: "On the Decay of the Art of Lying." It would be possible, as there is a lengthy portion of the play that deals with the use of art and artistry in lying. Clemens's essay concerning lying espouses the idea that lying can be used for the betterment of society rather than for selfish gain or pleasure. Lying can be used to protect others or help others find happiness, even if the happiness is false. In Wilde's play the character of Vivian takes a surprising change when she delivers an impassioned argument for a rebellion against realism and about the decay of imagination. The lying I believe Wilde wants is one in which the world is more fantastic merely for the existence of lies and the imagination that these lies feed upon.

Robert Browning

Reading from the Longman Anthology is not the first time I have encountered Robert Browning's poetry, and more specifically: "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." Anyone familiar with Steven King's writing may know of his famous book series: The Dark Tower. There are seven novels of this series and the series is in many ways an interpretation, at least to King, of Browning's poem. In the novels the main character is Roland Deschain: a knight. Except where the Childe Roland of Browning's poem assumedly used a broad sword, the Roland of Steven King's Dark Tower series used a pair of six-shooters. In the novels, King excerpts certain portions of Browning's poem for his own uses. This has provided me with a somewhat indirectly extensive relationship with this poem, as I have read all seven of the Dark Tower novels.
Moving away from the lackluster style of horror writing of Steven King and moving on to the enigmatic and most likely allegorical writing of Robert Browning, I can say that I was deeply satisfied with this particular poem. While I may haven no clue what Browning meant in the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" I do think I grasped the general mood depicted in the poem. In the line "All the day had been a dreary one at best, and dim was settling to its close, yet shot one grim red leer to see the plain catch its estray," Browning provides a sense of moroseness and acerbic anger at the world that pervades the entire poem. While I am unsure of what the intended allegory actually is, and I am only assuming there is one, I do understand the mood of the setting and the tone of the poem. In my opinion, the mere tone of this poem makes it far more frightening than the novels of King. The world is seen by Browning's Roland as a terrible and dreary place and the picture Browning paints with his words are most impressive.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tennyson was, amongst all the Victorians, the writer whom I liked the most. His poetry was ambivalent concerning the changing times and the issues facing his society. Split between science and religion, evolution and creationism, and, in his poem: In Memoriam, life and death. The poem of his that I liked the most was definitely In Memoriam. I cannot rationalize why I like this poem above the others Tennyson wrote, I simply felt that I most associated with the ideas Tennyson was expressing. Perhaps its because I at one point doubted the existence of God in favor of more intellectually accepted rationalizations about the universe. Perhaps its also because I have had someone very close to me die and was left without the means to express how I felt when it happened and this "In Memoriam" seems to remind me of how I felt during that very difficult time in my life. My favorite quote in this poem is without a doubt "A warmth within the breast would melt the freezing reason's colder part, and like a man in wrath the heart stood up and answer'd "I have felt" (Tennyson 613). What I like most about this particular quote is, in addition to what I have said about my emotional connection with it, is the idea that seems to be expressed in it. I do not simply mean the idea of God against reason, what I mean is the defiance of this statement. In spite of the oppressiveness reason has upon the heart, the heart fights back. The heart may not have a great argument for defending its actions, but at the very least it knows what it wants.

Charles Dickens

Newgate prison of London England is famous amongst many writers in 19th century England for the squalid conditions its prisoners were kept in and for being the site of numerous public hangings. As well as being the prison where a number of famous individuals, such as William Penn and the pirate Captain Kidd. Newgate prison received harsh criticism from many writers, Charles Dickens merely being one of them. I find it unsurprising that Dickens called for more humane treatment of prisoners, especially since one of his most notable characters (Oliver Twist) was a orphan and almost sent to prison himself for falsely accused burglary. While many of the occupants of the prison were in fact legitimately guilty of crimes, such as stealing, the treatment they faced was horrendous and unjustly extreme for the crimes they did commit. In one section of "A Visit to Newgate" Dickens describes "a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary" (Dickens). And when Dickens says "condemned" he means the young man was to be executed. Never has there so clearly been a case, or at least as far as my memory serves, where the punishment did not fit the crime. Dickens was not simply writing about the conditions at Newgate, which were atrocious, but also about the system in which Victorian England had established for itself and its prisoners. Dickens believed, or so I think he believed, that the prisons were a way for the rich and powerful to store and get rid of the human "waste" that clogged the streets of London and for getting rid of anyone who questioned the foundation of Victorian society.

Elisabeth Barrett Browning

Elisabeth Browning was not one of the Victorians I particularly cared for. While she certainly is deserving of the prominence she is awarded for her poems and writing, I personally did not care for them. Perhaps this is merely because I had a hard time grasping what she was saying about her family and herself in her poem "Aurora Leigh." Many of my ideas concerning Browning's poetry are unfounded and are merely suppositions, but still I see fit to describe them. When Browning writes about her Aurora Leigh's life, she says that "Aurora Leigh, was born to make my father sadder, and myself not over joyous, truly" (Browning 533). I believe this to be a confession of sorts on Browning's part about her life with her father. Browning's father apparently did a lot for his daughter, he encouraged her to learn and to express herself and yet he tyranically forbid her from marrying. Perhaps Elizabeth thought of herself as a burden upon her father, a good man who had a daughter not quite to his liking. As I said, this is unfounded, yet they are still the only ideas I have. Also, in the poem Aurora Leigh, the eponymous character's father dies when Aurora is still of a young age. This may yet be another confession of Browning's about her desire for her father to have died when she could still have loved him and when he had not yet become villainous towards her in forbidding her from marrying. Truthfully I have no ideas worth defending in any great extent. As I said, I did not care for Browning nor did I understand her poetry or connect with it to any great extent.

John Stuart Mill

It seems strange to me that a man such as John Stuart Mill, who was raised in the strictest and perhaps ruthlessly efficient manner possible, would become such a considerate and in the more modern sense of the word "liberal" person. Mill, being raised in a Utilitarian household, lived a life without any kind of freedom or play that a normal child (at least by today's standards) would usually be afforded. Because of this harsh early life it might be natural for one to assume that Mills would become a harsh and bitter person, much like his father before him. Mill's politics and not how he grew up, however, are what interest me most concerning this world renowned genius. Mills defended "'liberty of the press' as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government" (Mill 515). He also championed independent thought and action rather than group conformity in a society where uniqueness was practically a crime and class distinction dictated the rules of engagement between individuals all across England. In his quote concerning individuality, Mills states that "He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation" (Mill 518). Mill was, or so I perceive, a forerunner of liberal politics as they are known today. Freedom of choice, freedom of the press, and perhaps most controversal: women's right were the most important issues to Mill and were the topics he most championed.