Wilde's Effort of Empowering the 18th-Century Woman - Essay Example

OSCAR WILDE’S MAGAZINE "THE WOMANS WORLD"(1887-1889) CONTRIBUTION TO FASHION CRITICISM By Historically, the 18th century was an era of male dominance because men viewed women as inferior beings. The reason why women were inferior is that they could not participate in the development of the world’s progress. This was evident through vast arts that portrayed at the time that included Sydney Grundy’s play “the glass of fashion” that was produced in 1883. The play depicts how men through a certain prince took advantage of women sexually. More so, the play discouraged women from becoming celebrities or even venturing into anything progressive. Grundy’s play is one among many artistic works that depicted the woman’s position in the society. Another evidence of womens inferiority in the 18th century portrayed through the manner in which the “lady’s world” magazine was edited before Oscar Wilde came took over the editorship (Tusan 2005, P.68). Oscar Wilde claims that the magazine had no motivational content that concerned women because content mostly contained gossips, music, art, fashion, and other common issues. Nevertheless, things changed when Oscar Wilde joined the publishing company as the editor of the magazine. The content and the appearance of the magazine never made much sense to him and that is why he transformed every bit of the magazine including its name (Schaffer 2000, p. 9). The name changed from “the lady’s world” to the “woman’s world”. Additionally, the magazine acquired a better appealing look that contained fancy pictures of modernized fashionable women. The magazine also changed its contents by including empowerment issues that aimed at uplifting women, which included women’s need for progressive education, women’s indulgence in politics, women’s involvement in the businesses of society and above all women’s equal share in dominating the world (Fortunato 2012, p. 30). This meant that the magazine transformed from its usual boring article into an empowering and informative article shunning the usual fashion content (Böker 2002, p. 44). Though critics base their critics on the fact that Wilde transformed the magazine by erasing the fashion issue, which is not the case because Oscar Wilde did not completely erase the fashion issue but rather refined it by adding more content, because evidently, he only reduced the fashion section from four to two. Prior to Wilde reducing past issues in the magazine and adding up empowering content, Wilde also incorporated women authors who greatly contributed in writing the magazine (Tusan 2005, P.68). Generally, the aim of Oscar Wilde’s transformation was to create a new generation of modern woman who did not have to sit back and watch the men rule over, but instead women who embraced empowerment to battle up with the man in running the businesses of the world through education and other channels of knowledge exposure (Fortunato 2012, p. 34). Nevertheless, Wilde’s effort of empowering the 18th century woman through the “woman’s world” magazine did not send a positive note to everyone. Though majority never came up to criticize the content in the magazine, the artists in various fields emerged to criticize the article. Surprisingly, women artists were among the critics who criticized Wilde’s view on fashion. Most of the critics had no issue with women empowerment content because what disturbed them the most was the editor’s negative stand on fashion. The fashion issue arose during transformation of the magazine where the editor reduced fashion content because he believed that it had no much relevance in the woman’s world as men usually perceive. Oscar Wilde’s stand on fashion irrelevance caught the attention of artists like Mary Eliza Haweis, an editor who authorized in connection with fashion, cosmetics, and decoration (Fortunato 2012, p. 37). She argued that fashion should not be side kicked because fashion was an essential form of art that she claims should be embraced and cultivated through study and artisanship (Cunningham 2003, p. 137). Though Haweis did not criticize Wilde’s empowerment content, she disagreed on Wilde’s view of fashion as a by the way phenomenon that did not influence much on a woman’s life. In this case, Haweis advocated for recognition of fashion as an essential aspect of art that adds up a woman’s life. Prior to Haweis critics, another editor named Mary Stewart, the editor of the famous cosmopolitan magazine criticized Wilde by arguing that the editor was like a “Bloom” because he did not differentiate philosophy from mass culture. She further argued that wild combined both female aestheticism and new journalism. Given that Mary Stewart valued fashion, a major content in her cosmopolitan magazine meant that she had to criticize Wilde’s negative perception of fashion. In this case, Stewart claims that Wilde’s basis of negative perception of fashion was fostered by the lack of solid back up or candid reasoning. Stewarts further argues that this was a fact because Wilde negativity on fashion came from his subsequent collaborate and learning from women through which he gained knowledge on current trends, markets and other exposures. This meant that Wilde could not stand on his own because he solely relied on women for his literature work to progress. Many other artists support stewartt’s argument because they too claim that Oscar Wilde was taking advantage of the woman’s insecurity to stabilize his literature work. Nevertheless, the bottom line of many artists was that women should concentrate on self-cultivation concerning fashion where they are supposed to buy, wear and decorate (Kaplan & Stowell 1994, p.101). However, Oscar disagrees by asserting that the modern woman through education and empowerment should enjoy any kind of leisure that does not necessarily come from culture because as he claimed, artistic fashion never lasted and kept changing unlike self-acquired leisure that fosters a positive attitude and lasts longer (Fortunato 2012, p. 47). Conclusion Oscar Wilde could be named as a renowned female reformist who undertook all the challenges in the 18th century literature field to empower the woman into modernity through intense education shunning the old fashion perception pinned on women. This did not mean that Wilde did not have any ideas in fashion and art, nor did he ignore them, because history claims that he was a frequent attended to art galleries and theater. More so, he was an art, decoration, and dress lecturer and in most cases, he interacted with women. The fact that he lectured about vast disciplines in fashion meant that he knew the importance of fashion and their application, but it seems that the progress and knowledge exposure of the 18tth century woman surpassed fashion and art ideologies (Wilde 2005, p. 429). This explains the reason why Oscar Wilde did not see why women should be covered up on fashion issues that hindered them from progress and exposure; hence, explaining the reason why he took a huge step in shunning all he knew about fashion and indulging into more informative content in his editorial magazine “the woman’s world”. Bibliography Böker, U 2002, The importance of reinventing Oscar: versions of Wilde during the last 100 years. Amsterdam [u.a.], Rodopi. Cunningham, P. A 2003, Reforming womens fashion, 1850-1920: politics, health, and art. Kent, Kent State University Press. Fortunato, L 2012, Modernist aesthetics and consumer culture in writings of Oscar Wilde. Routledge Kaplan, J. H., & Stowell, S 1994, Theatre and fashion: Oscar Wilde to the suffragettes. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press. Schaffer, T 2000, The forgotten female aesthetes: literary culture in late-Victorian England. Charlottesville, Univ. Press of Virginia. Tusan, M. E 2005, Women making news: gender and journalism in modern Britain. Urbana [u.a.], Univ. of Illinois Press. Wilde, O 2005, The prose of Oscar Wilde. New York, Cosimo Classics. Read More