Rotating the Dandies in Oscar Wildes Texts - Essay Example

Rotating the Dandies in Oscar Wilde’s Texts Part One: Switching Characters Oscar Wilde feature as one of the most innovative writers of medieval drama. Wilde not only has an infinite originality in creativity but also spices his works with symbolic innovation of characters and themes. The writer has an inherent ability to give fictional characters unique representation and exact imitation of idealized symbolism. Two of Wilde’s commonly read novels are ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘An Ideal Husband’. Both books are among the highly regarded works of Wilde’s achievements in fiction. The writer confined his artistic progress in expression of contextual themes through superficial representation of both moral and immoral messages. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton is a character known for his allegiance with immoral intentions and boundless sensual desires. Contrarily, Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband is a conservative and morally upright character devoted towards ensuring prosperity of conventional goodness in the society. Admittedly, both Lord Henry and Lord Goring play an instrumental role in influencing the dramas’ outcomes. Lord Henry employs his selfish and hedonistic personality in facilitating Dorian Gray’s downfall. On the other hand, Lord Goring takes Sir Robert out of his troubles by skillfully manipulating other characters through necessary blackmails and proper advices on wanting situations (Wilde, 36). Having acknowledged the instrumental roles played by both Lord Henry and Lord Goring, it is time to switch these two characters. There is a remote yet distinct possibility that switching of characters would lead to a significantly different ending of each play. This idea is inspired by the fact that Lord Henry has opposite personality traits compared with that of Sir Roberts. Lord Henry perpetrates immorality and selfish corruption throughout the drama, while Sir Roberts strives to ensure preservation of goodness and works towards tipping the scale to increase chances of morally accepted outcomes. Succeeding sections of this part conducts an informed prediction of Sir Robert’s fate in an event that Lord Henry assumed the role of Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband. In the first Act of An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert is blackmailed by Mrs. Cheveley as a means to gain Robert’s approval of her canal scheme. Sir Robert is trapped by the blackmail since failure to approve of the scheme would lead to revelation of a secret of which Mrs. Cheveley is a privy to the previously committed corrupt deed. Left with limited options, Robert decides to approve of the project. Contextually, Lord Goring intervenes and provides advices to Sir Robert. In the first instance of Goring’s intervention, he tells Sir Robert, “…no man should have a secret from his own wife” (Wilde, 28). In Response, Sir Robert says he could not tell her wife of the previously performed corrupt deed because he is afraid his beloved wife, Lady Chiltern, will despise and even leave him. Sir Robert values his wife and says, “I would have lost the only woman who has ever stirred love within me” (Wilde, 29). Correspondingly, Lord Goring expresses his remorse for Robert’s predicament and asks whether he should convince Mrs. Chiltern to take the secret lightly upon revelation. In this context, Goring lays the foundation of a morally right outcome of the play. Undeniably, Lord Henry would have offered a contrary advice to Sir Robert. Lord Henry is always fond of elaborately expressing his delight in poisonous and perverted theories about life. Throughout his conversational progress in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry strives to undermine conventional morals by introducing fascinating and seductive counter opinions. On one instance, Lord Henry says “One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends—those were the fascinating things in life” (Wilde, 64). This quote insinuates that Lord Henry would never approve of the idea of love possessed by Sir Robert towards his wife. In fact, Lord Henry reinforces his opinion by saying, “Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love” (Wilde, 68). In this regard, Lord Henry would encourage Sir Robert to indulge himself in selfish ambitions and neglect any troubled conscience resulting from Mrs. Cheveley’s blackmail. In this regard, an immoral advice for Sir Henry concerning the underlying blackmail would plant a seed for a correspondingly immoral outcome of the drama. Aside from the distinct conceptions of love held by Lord Goring and Lord Henry, the two characters also differ in terms of their willingness to help people out of their troubles. Inasmuch as Lord Goring does not side with expectations of the society, he still emphasizes on the beauty of healing hurtful wounds between conflicting persons. At some point in the play, Lady Chiltern learns of Sir Robert’s demeaning act. Consequently, Mrs. Chiltern feels betrayed when she was forced to embrace the fact that her husband, Sir Robert, was not an ideal husband as she always thought. In the midst of displeasure between Sir Robert and his wife Lady Chiltern, Lord Goring offered to help the couple sustain their treasured marriage. At one instance, Lord Goring tries to win Lady Chiltern’s favor towards her husband by telling the Lady, “I think that…often you don’t make sufficient allowances. In every nature there are elements of weaknesses, or worse than weaknesses” (Wilde, 87). In this context, Lord Goring is trying to support Sir Robert’s marriage by adjusting Lady Chiltern’s idealized perception of her husband. Lord Henry would have responded differently to the potentially threatened marriage between Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry is known to manipulate situations towards his perverted favors rather than helping settle disputes between disagreeing partners. In fact, every situation presenting itself to Lord Henry is a means of achieving his pleasure-seeking ends. The concept of friendship means little to Lord Henry. As an illustration of Lord Henry’s lack of willingness to help his friends, the Lord says, “The basis of optimism is sheer terror”. Furthermore, Lord Henry expresses pessimism towards Dorian Gray’s imminent marriage. In his defense, Lord Henry says, “I have the greatest contempt for optimism…as for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other more interesting bonds between men and women” (Wilde, 184). In this case, Lord Henry would express little concern about Sir Robert’s threatened marriage. Lord Henry would ask Sir Robert to consider other delightful things. In this regard, a perverted advice that could facilitate separation between Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern would cause a significantly different ending of the drama. Lastly, switching the two characters would invariably change the outcome of An Ideal Husband because Lord Goring and Lord Henry have different degree of association in their endeavors. Lord Goring shapes situations favorably because he is inherently involved with the outcome. Towards the end of the drama, Lord Goring asks Lady Chiltern to convince Sir Robert in changing his decision regarding to retirement from politics. Fortunately, Sir Robert gets convinced by his Lady (Wilde, 119). Lord Goring would benefit from this outcome because he needed Sir Robert’s approval of his intention to marry Mabel Chiltern. Eventually, Sir Robert approves of Lord Goring’s request leading to a happy ending for both couples. With respect to Lord Henry, the outcome of Sir Robert’s future career as a politician would be in jeopardy. First, Lord Henry holds limited or even no regards to success of others. In fact he shows an involuntary despises to the progress of his friends because he admitted that he greatly despised optimism. In addition, Lord Henry would have no intentions to marry Mabel like Lord Goring did in the drama. Eventually, Lord Goring would ask Lady Chiltern to even discourage Sir Robert from entering politics again. With respect to Mabel, there would be no marriage for the woman at the end of the drama (Wilde, 121). Therefore, Lord Henry’s role in An Ideal Husband creates a totally different ending because there would be absence of Lady Chiltern’s concept of “…a new beginning”. Part 2: Essay as an Experiment In thinking of this essay as an experiment, I would comment that it progressed procedurally. As do all experiments, analysis of Oscar Wilde’s dramatic plays started with a directional idea assuming the role of a thesis statement. The directional idea is that switching the role of Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband with that of Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray would change the outcome of the play. The next procedure involved manipulation of variables, which in this case is the change in outcomes with respect to corresponding change in characters. Sir Robert was treated with predictable advices from Lord Henry and a probable outcome on each situation determined. Lastly, it emerged that switching the characters leads to a profound change in the story’s outcome. After manipulating the story’s progress, I learned that a single character plays an instrumental role in shaping a story’s outcome. At first, I would have assumed that replacing Lord Goring with Lord Henry in An Ideal Husband would yield infinitesimal changes in the outcome. However, it emerged that replacing the role of Lord Goring in the story will invariably restrict the possibility of getting a similar ending. In addition, I had to appreciate the fact that innovative development of characters in a play leads to easy prediction of their thoughts and actions. Oscar Wilde is quite intelligent and skillful on matters of character innovation. The writer not only personified both Lord Goring and Lord Henry in the two stories but also gave them symbolic inclinations to moral philosophy. Consequently, it was easy to predict the tendency of Lord Henry’s actions in his new role together with their potential outcomes. In conclusion, I would admit that reading and thinking skills are influential in the writing of good essays. Reading helped in objective identification of the character’s traits. In addition, proper thinking facilitated manipulation of An Ideal Husband into accepting Lord Henry as the central influencer of Sir Robert. As a result, I was able to combine both reading and thinking skills in putting the story’s predicted outcomes in from of writing. Works Cited Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 2nd Ed. Pittsburg: Interactive Media, 2011. Print. Wilde, Oscar. An Ideal Husband. Pittsburg: Interactive Media, 2012. Print. Read More