Up to this point, we
have examined two periods, the Romantic and the Victorian, each of which was
defined primarily in terms of time. The
Romantic period, we said ran basically from 1789 to 1832. (Froisy) The Victorian period which immediately
followed ran on until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. There were some general trends associated
with each period and, by and large, the writers who wrote during those eras
tended to follow them. The thing,
however, that classified a writer as Romantic or Victorian was not whether he
was a trend follower, but when did he/she actually write.
| Oscar Wilde |
Now we
must answer the question about whether a certain writer, namely, Oscar Wilde, was or was not a Victorian. Of course, the immediate answer is that he
was without question a Victorian writer; his heyday was the late 19th
Century, the Victorian era. But we know
the question cannot be answered so simply because we are asked to answer in a
way that tells us that the basis of the question had nothing to do with time
but with things like style, and technique, and the writer’s willingness to
publish things that did not exactly run true to the Victorian ideal.
The suggestion is
that Oscar Wilde was not a Victorian writer because he satirized Victorian
morals, Victorian attitudes, especially toward sex, and Victorian manners and
thinking in general. Two of Wilde’s
poems, Impression du Matin and The Harlot’s House, touch on the theme
of prostitution, the whole idea behind these two satirical poems being that: Hark! here, in the heart of prim and proper,
Victorian England, there are prostitutes and men who frequent them. These are the real Victorian virtues. That is what he was saying.
