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Victorian mores, class distinction & Wilde’s ‘anarcho-cynicalism’ (cont.) Cours 4
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A reminder of Gagnier’s argument (reading Wilde as a Victorian ‘modernist’) Progress as a moral & political category, (as well as a technological or economic one) 3 pursuits : Bread (material well-being) Freedom (of thought) Knowledge (& education) … to be incl. in WIT
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Views on marriage (cont.) Opprobrium on the adulterous &/or ‘fallen’ woman farcical version with Jack’s misunderstanding (wrongly assuming Miss Prism is his mother) Unmarried! I do not deny this is a serious blow. But after all, who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered? Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Why should there be one law for men, and another for women? Mother, I forgive you. (Jack, Act 3, 57) Violence at home The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life. (Lady B., Act 3, 58)
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Gender 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 ? And I don’t like that. It makes men so very attractive. (Gwendolen, Act 2, 39)
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Organisation / plan 1. Classes & Masses 2. ‘Keeping up Appearances’ 3. Duplication & Duplicity
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Key-words Codes Rules Law / Name Manners / fashion /style Conformity Re-presentation Repetition Simulacrum
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1. Classes (& masses) Mr Worthing ! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous. (Lady B., Act1, 16) The chin a little higher, dear, style largely depends the way he chin is worn. (Lady B., Act3, 51) - J. : …the late Mr. Thomas Cardew of 149 Belgrave Square, S.W.; Gervase Park, Dorking, Surrey; and the Sporran, Fifeshire, N.B. - Lady.B. : That sounds not unsatisfactory. Three addresses always inspire confidence, even in tradesmen. (Act 3, 50)
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Either/or // Us & Them / town & country Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility (Algernon, Act 1, 6) Never speak disrecpectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that. (Lady B., Act 3, 51) You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country. (Lady B, Act 1, 18)
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Of spades Cecily : …When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen :I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our socialspheres have been widely different. (Act 3, 41) --- “Everyone calling a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.”
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distinctions Who was your father ? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy ? (Lady B., Act 1, 18)
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2. Appearances & propriety If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated. (Algernon, Act 2, 34) People always seem to think that they are improper and either look shocked, which is vulgar, or laugh, which is worse. (Lady B., Act 1, 14)
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Private/ public I hope you will always look at me like that, especially when there are other people present (Gwendolen, Act 1, 16) (Cecily is about to retort. The presence of the servants exercise a restraining influence, under which both girls chafe) (Act 2, 41)
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Conformity … a recognized position in society (Lady B. Act1, 19) to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent before the season is over. (Lady B, Act 1, 20) …. To marry into a cloak-room and form an alliance with a parcel (id.) In families of high position strange coincidences are not supposed to occur. (Lady B., Act 3, 56)
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Words: indiscretion vs style and surface A cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion (Lady B, Act 1, 19) In matters of grave importance, style not sincerity, is the vital thing (Gwendolen, Act 3, 47) We live in an age of surfaces (Lady B., Act 3, 51)
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Looking vs being I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened.I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else. […] I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy. (Cecily, Act 2, 27)
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MASKS or Duplication & Duplicity Cours 5 1. Looking / being 2. Lying
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Cecily & Gwendolen (Act 2, 40) C. (…) Our country newspaper is sure to chronicle the fact next week. Mr. Ernest Worthing and I are engaged to be married. G. My darling Cecily, I think there must be some slight error. Mr. Ernest Worthing is engaged to me. The announcement will appear in the Morning Post on Saturday at the latest. C. I am afraid you must be under some misconception. Ernest proposed to me exactly ten minutes ago. G. It is certainly very curious, for he asked me to be his wife yesterday afternoon at 5.30
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Jack & Algernon (Act 2, 45) Jack : My dear fellow, the sooner you give up that nonsense the better (...) and I naturally will take the name of Ernest. Gwendolen would wish it. We can't both be christened Ernest. It's absurd.
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In 'Alias Bunbury' Wilde duplicitously introduced into Earnest a parodic account of his own double life … as well as a trenchant critique of the heterosexist presumption requiring that such a life be both double & duplicitous. (Craft-150) Cf. slide 23, a divergent reading by Eltis
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BOTH ? (Act 1, 18) J. I have lost both my parents. Lady B. Both ? … To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune ; to lose both looks like carelessness.
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The 2 Cecilies With deft,unself-conscious expressiveness, Cecily firts announces her arrogation of the roles of both author and audience and then goes on to demonstrate her powers as a writer and her sensitivity as a reader. (…) She represents for us the way that characters within the play routinely function on multiple levels. Gillespie (in Oxford Companion to OW, 102)
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Engagement (Act 2, 36) Cecily … Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree. The next day I bought this little ring in your name (…) Jack My letters ! But my own sweet Cecily, I have never written you any letters. Cecily You need hardly remind me of that, Ernest. I remember only too well that I was forced to write your letters for you.
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a. Wildean anarchy: a socio-political reading No [classical] unmasking ends Earnest: Cecily, Algy and Jack become their own fantastic doubles, permanently granted the freedom which their fictions allowed them. (…) Wilde, whose own sexuality was outlawed by the rigid and inhuman legislation of Victorian society, had created a fantasy world in which such laws had no power and double lives like his own no longer had to be kept secret. (see slide 19) (Eltis, 196)
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Revising Wilde (Oxford, 1996) In Earnest, there is no division between chaos and order, fact and fiction. It is not a civilized society temporarily disrupted but a perfect anarchic state in which the characters live, luxuriating in its benevolent lack of rules, moral and principles. (Eltis, 172).
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From the earlier to the final version As the younger characters are transformed from callous infants into charming willful individuals, so the role of the authoritarian, moralistic older generation is undermined. In the final version there is no call for a restraining authority, for Wilde has created an anarchic idyll. All attempts to assert authority seem ridiculous and ineffectual. (Eltis, 193)
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b. About lying / Aesthetic & metaphysical dimensions The proper form of art is the lie. (OW in ‘The Decay of Lying’) The deliberately provocative recommendation of lying, however, is really only the valuing of creative invention over imitation. (A. Warwick)
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Cecily / Algernon (Act 3, 47) C. Why did you pretend to be my guardian’s brother ? A. In order that I might have an opportunity of meeting you. C.(to Gw) : That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not ? believe Gw. Yes, dear, if you can believe him. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer C. I don’t. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer.
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Truth as ‘terrible’ flaw (Act 3, 58) J. Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but he truth. Can you forgive me?” Gw. “I can, for I feel that you are sure to change”.
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Lying for pleasure and art only … the discourse’s determination to discourage interpretations based upon linear, exclusionary methodologies. Its insistent depictions of the suppleness of language take the form of a range of enthusiastically self-contradictory points of view that serve as the basis for the play’s humour. (Gillespie, 107)
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c. Psychoanalytical reading in 'Alias Bunbury' … the displacement that ‘grounds’ experience and identity neither in nature, nor in the disclosure of absolute origin but rather in the dizzying oscillation of persons and representations. (Craft 139) What Wilde seeks in desire is not the earnest disclosure of a single and singular identity, the deep truth of sex, but rather, something less and something more: the vertigo of substitution and repetition. (Craft, 140)
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