I. Wilde’s society plays in context II. Modernity AND post-modernity of Victorians (Gagnier’s Lyotardian persp.) 1.Bread / material well-being / 2. Knowledge/education / 3. Freedom(of thought…) III. Wilde’s ‘anarcho-cynicalism’

 “Dear Uncle Jack is so very serious ! Sometimes he is so serious that I think he cannot be quite well” (25 - Cecily-Miss Prism)  “A. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that! J = Serious Bunburyist! Good Heavens! A = Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.” (44)

 Peer Gynt-1867  A Doll’s House-1879  Ghosts  An Enemy of the People – 1882  Hedda Gabler  A Doll’s House : critical attitude toward 19th century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint ".

 p. 27 act 2  the exchange btw Cecily & Gwendolen act 2, p. 41  p. 17

 Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)  A Woman of no Importance (1893)  An Ideal Husband (1895)  The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

 p12 : A. You don’t seem to realize, that in married life 3 is company and 2 is none. / J. That… is the theory that the corrupt French drama has been propounding for the last 50 yrs / A : Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.)  = Gagnier’s ‘anarcho-cynicalism’

 The woman with a past ( Miss Prism ! )  The dandyish aristocrat  The innocently idealistic young woman We live, as I hope you know, Mr Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the most expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits I am told: and my ideal has always been to love someone in the name of Earnest.  (Act 1, 15)

There is something Chekhovian in this study of England, which exposes the immorality and hypocrisy, and immense self-satisfaction, of the English ruling classes (*), and which yet contrives to show glimpses of the charm and elegance, the allure, of a way of life which has no future. (Raby- CC°-154)

 Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady  T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of Alfred Prufrock ---  The habits of the tribe have been adjusted, subtly exaggerated and heightened, until they are made transparent and so exposed to ironic scrutiny. (Raby, 146)  « A fantastic masquerade, highlighting aspects of English public life which themselves inhabited the world of theatre »

 Progress as a moral & political category, (as well as a technological or economic one)  3 pursuits : Bread / material weel-being Knowledge / Education Freedom / of thoughts & opinions…  names : Adam Smith, J. Stuart-Mill, Marx, Ruskin, William Morris

 … circulation and consumption of knowledge in market society, in which knowledge is never pure of its packaging, the message never separable from its medium (Gagnier- 27)  Ruskin desired a world free from poverty, Morris a world free from hierarchy, or the fixed hierarchy of the class system, and Wilde a world free of intolerance, or the oppression of conventional thought and behaviour. (…)

 On food :  When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in great trouble… I refuse everything except food and drink! (Algy - 45)

On money :  “ Algernon… In fact it is an aristocratic name. Half of the chaps who get into the Bankruptcy Court are called Algernon.” (37)  If it was my business, I wouldn’t alk about it (…) it is very vulgar to talk about business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.” (45)

Money …  “Dear child, of course you know that Algernon has nothing but his debts to depend upon.”(51)

 On marriage : Lane : “I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand” Algernon : “Is marriage so demoralizing as that?” (6) ---- The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public (11)

 :“ how absurd to talk about the equality of the sexes! Where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.” (Gwendolen, Act 3, 48)  “The home seems to me the perfect sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties, he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not ? (Gw., Act 2, 39)