Social Discontent and Oscar Wilde

Abstract

Oscar Wilde, the most often quoted writer after Shakespeare possessed a keen insight and good judgment of people and society of his times. His comedy of manners or 'Society plays' as they are called in the literary circles are replete with criticism of his contemporary society. His comedies display the hypocrisy, the shallowness and artificiality of his society which seems to be hidden under a façade of respectability and aristocracy. Wilde seems to be fed up with these aspects of his society. Farce and Satire are the weapons with which he strikes his chief target, the upper-class society that is the London society, which is considered the 'Mecca' of the fashionable and the affluent. This is the society which he observed closely. He does not hang back to portray the snobbery, the corruption, fraud, the idleness and the lack of genuine moral scruples. He strives to mirror the manners of his society which was permeating with double standards, bubbling with depravity and was full of 'beautiful idiots' and 'brilliant lunatics'.