gaietygirl: There’s something I’d like to say about Oscar Wilde. First of, Wilde used t

gaietygirl:

There’s something I’d like to say about Oscar Wilde. First of, Wilde used to be my favourite writer throughout my teens and he still holds a special place in my heart. Back when it was still possible, I even went to Paris and placed a rose at his grave. That’s how much I adore Wilde. I’m sure he did some problematic stuff. I actually know he did. He was a Victorian after all. But there’s this one thing that keeps happening over and over and I’d like to see it stop. “Oh my god, Oscar Wilde was so sexist.” That. That right there. I see this backed up with quotes like, “Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.” I also see this quote and other sexist quotes attributed directly to Oscar Wilde on websites and such. But please, consider this:

Oscar Wilde never said this. You know who said this? Lord Henry Wotton did. “Who exactly is Lord Henry Wotton?”, you might ask. Well, Lord Henry Wotton is a character from Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891. He is an important character and you should really read the novel if you want to know more about this, but the question is: Are we supposed to like Wotton? Many modern readers sure do. They love him. He is portrayed by Colin Firth in the 2009 film adaption and shown to be the real hero of the film (this is very different in the book. Just saying in case you only know the film). Truth is, I think you’re not supposed to like him. He is sexist. He talks about rebelling against society but he never does, just tells his friends to and watches whilst they crash and burn. And he is safe, never risking anything, never stepping out of line. There’s a subtle irony to whatever he says and does and I don’t think it was lost on Wilde’s fellow Victorians as it is lost on most modern readers.

Lord Henry Wotton, witty Henry Wotton who everyone seems to adore these days with his sexist comments and boasting personality is not supposed to be liked at all. I’m pretty sure a lot of interpretations of his character tell you exactly that – whatever he says in these books, whatever he does, the advice he gives leads to absolute catastrophe in the end. Lord Henry is not supposed to be taken seriously and actually listened to. And yet I see him quoted all the time and – worse – I see his quotes attributed to Oscar Wilde as though he said these things, as though he really believed them, when in fact he never did. We, as modern readers, read Dorian Gray differently from how Victorians read it. Society changes, it’s perfectly normal. But I think this is well worth knowing before we go: “Ugh, Oscar Wilde was such a misogynist.” He was very much not.

I don’t want this post to continue on forever, so let’s just look at some stuff: When Oscar Wilde became the editor of the Lady’s World magazine, he renamed it Woman’s World and instead of just writing about fashion as the magazine did before, he added articles about politics, culture and the likes. Topics that in Victorian England were thought to be too much for a woman’s mind, topics that were not thought of as women’s topics at all. Wilde, along with his wife Constance, also was an advocate of rational dress – meaning dress that didn’t endanger women’s health and lives. Oscar Wilde lost both his half-sisters when their impractical, wide skirts caught fire during a party and they burned to death, so I guess he knew what he was talking about here.

And Lord Henry Wotton’s quotes? I guess it’s safe to say that Wilde fully intended each and every thing Lord Henry says to be utter rubbish. Victorian England was sexist and Lord Henry Wotton is supposed to be a mirror of that exact society – Wilde however (who never fit in himself) held a mirror up to exactly that society. The whole of Dorian Gray is actually just Wilde saying: “This is you, this is our society and this is what it does to people.” And Victorians understood that. There’s a reason Dorian Gray was harshly criticised after it was published and contrary to popular belief it was not just about the homosexual subtext (which also plays into Wilde’s critique of Victorian society as a whole) but also about how Wilde was not playing by the rules of Victorian society which made the book “immoral” in the eyes of many a reader.

So before going and declaring Oscar Wilde a big old misogynist maybe consider this and consider too that the sexist quotes you can find attributed to Wilde were actually said by his characters and meant to criticise the exact thing modern readers accuse Wilde of. There’s this lovely quote (this time by Wilde himself) about how Lord Henry Wotton is how people see him, Basil Hallward is how he sees himself and Dorian Gray is what he would like to be – in other ages perhaps. And we still make that mistake today: We take Lord Henry Wotton to be a carbon copy of Oscar Wilde himself when in fact the two are nothing alike. And I think people should know this. Oscar Wilde is often mistaken as some kind of air-headed, shallow hedonist, when in fact he was highly critical of his own society and its morals which led to his spectacular downfall only a few years after Dorian Gray was published.

I’m pretty sure all of this has been said before and said better than I ever could too but it’s been bothering me lately. I saw Wilde being misquoted and people holding up Lord Henry Wotton as some kind of witty, lovable character a lot lately and this just feels so wrong. I could say so much more but this is already too long so I’ll stop right here. Please note that I’m no literary critic, I’m a historian who really loves Wilde and researched him, his works and his significance to Victorian society and social changes a lot. I’m no literary critic but I know this: Authors and their characters are not the same thing, they’re not interchangeable. Characters are more like tools writers use to communicate messages. Lord Henry Wotton is not Oscar Wilde. Lord Henry Wotton is Wilde’s tool to criticise Victorian society and I think it’s a shame that so many people keep misreading this.