The decay of morals: os questionamentos de Oscar Wilde acerca de valores vitorianos

Abstract

Nineteenth-century England, under the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901, presents itself as the social context for the beginning of the industrial revolution, which promotes technological, material and production means development. Consequently, this same prosperity model drives the emerging capitalism of the time, increasing the difference between classes, where highly patriarchal and exclusionary values prevail. Summarizing this historical clipping, Oscar Wilde-along with other authors such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë – presents relevant criticisms about the ongoing system. This denunciation of moral oppression and the exclusion of minorities ends up even resulting in the marginalization of the authors themselves. In particular, for various reasons, in the pantheon of great authors marginalized for producing works of challenging content, the figure of Wilde appears: dandy, flâneur, homosexual, who breaks with the aristocratic conformism to which he could have safely accommodated himself, preferring to use wit and talent to express a worldview that values beauty and satirizes – as seen in works such as The Importance of Being Ernest, The Decay of Lying or even The Soul of Man Under Socialism – the status quo of his time. The general theme of this research, therefore, encompasses several aspects of moral nature defined in Oscar Wilde's comedies of society in the 19th century. Such a spects deal with critical and social characteristics of the texts, that is, their intention regarding the aristocratic system in Victorian England. The research shall explore, therefore, about the false morality satirized by Wilde, approaching the Victorian institutions (such as the Church, the School, etc.) that corroborated and strengthened the questionable morality and the patriarchal system of the time. This study also pursues philosophical aspects through the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as aesthetic-literary aspects, such as the use of figures of speech, antithesis, irony, sarcasm and, especially, paradoxes, which point to the marks of the author's literature, as well as to his position in relation to Victorian British morality. The aesthetic-literary aspects are directly related to the critical and social arguments insofar as these are used as language tools to satirize and mock the contradictions of society at the time, exposing the fragility of its so-called virtues.