Prose contexts

The picture of Dorian Gray context

Oscar Wilde

• Born 1854 Dublin
• Born when Ireland was still recovering from the great famine
  
• Father was a notable surgeon, the mother wrote nationalistic poetry and journalism.
• Flamboyant and eccentric couple notated literary and political circle.  

• Wilde went to Oxford in 1874
• He loved Catholic ritual all his life but there were doctrines he could not accept and there were social implications he preferred not to endure in the religiously prejudice England. 
• An extrovert at Oxford marketed himself as an exponent of aesthetics. 
• Contacts in the art world, including many actresses such as Ellen Terry.

• Lectured about Aesthetics all across America.
• Was in Paris where he was introduced to the decadent movement. 
• Adopted the belief criticism was an art form itself. 

• Married Constance Lloyd, they shared an enthusiasm for the suffragette movement (she was part of the Rational Dress Society, against corsets).
• Wrote for Women's world, commissions female emancipation articles. 

• 1886 met first male lover Robert Ross. 
• Had a creative burst of Energy.

• Dorian Gray red appeared in the 1890 July US edition of Lippincott's. 
• Controversial England, withdrawn from some newsstands. 

• Father died and the family was seriously in debt. 
• Wilde wrote a few plays.
• E.g. 'A women of no importance' had a witty aristocratic circle like Dorian Gray, even recycling some of the jokes from it. The Importance of being earnest. 

• Fell in Love with 'Bosie' (Lord Alfred Douglas) he was manipulative and unstable, preventing Wilde from working. 
  
• Bosie and Wilde had affairs with other men whilst together. But it was Bosie's carelessness that doomed Wilde. 
• Wilde was blackmailed when someone found a love note in a cast-off suit of Bosie's.
• Wilde resolved it quickly. 
• Wilde tried to break with him, but Queensberry's son committed suicide 1894.
• Maddened by grief, Queensberry made a scapegoat of Wilde, sending an insulting card to Wilde's club.
• Wilde was ambivalent about suing for libel. But Dumb *** Bosie wanted his father in the docks.
• Queensbury pleaded justification. His detectives located several of Wilde's lovers so Bosie did not have to appear in court. 
• Wilde went to jail for 2 years, with hard labour. 
• Wilde wandered Europe.
• Wilde died of Cerebral Meningitis.

Historical Background

Wealth and Dissidence

• Wilde's era was named the Fin de Siecle, meaning the end of a century.
• For the British Empire, it had been an era of great stability, symbolised by the Great Exhibition of '1851'. 
• USA/Germany becoming powerful rivals. 
• E.g. many wanted to marry rich Americans such as Lord Henry's brother.
• Wealth gap grew political unrest, e.g. Bloody Sunday m***acre. 
• Ugly legacy, colonialism, Ireland suffered. Also, Opium wars, went to war with China to force them to import opium.  Only a handful of 'opium houses' such as in Dorian Gray. Growing intolerance of smoking it recreationally. 

New sciences 

• Age of invention: the telephone, the wireless telegraph, electric light etc. 
  
• Darwin's origins of species 1859.
• the public anxiety that evolution could regress. People become more ape-like (Jack the Ripper…