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T H E OS C H OL A R S
May I Say Nothing?
November 2016
Satire in the Fin-de-Siècle: Oscar Wilde as a Satirist
Antonio José Couso Liañez (University of Oregon)
The first problem when analyzing satire is its versatility, which makes it impossible to define it as a genre or
subgenre, or to use any other literary label. In general terms, we could argue that what distinguishes satire is the
use of a comic, light or mocking tone in order to criticize a certain issue or person. Authors speak today of the
satiric discourse and also name it a spirit, rather than using the terms genre or subgenre, as for example George
Test, who claims: ‘Satire, from the beginning of recorded literature, existed in its own right as a spirit expressed
hrough other forms (poetry, drama, fables) as well as a reaction to literary forms (epic, drama)’ (10).
Another problem when dealing with satire is the existence of many related forms and concepts, such as comedy,
burlesque, spoof, irony, or parody, among others. Due to the lack of a precise definition of these concepts,
sometimes they are used in an improper way. Many articles and many authors have dealt with this issue,
among which we can mention George Test and A. E. Dyson, whose points of view we will analyze
subsequently.
Satire is an old form; in the Greco-Roman world we have such examples as the plays of Aristophanes, who
ntroduced critical political and societal commentaries in his comedies. In Rome, Quintilian was the first to deal
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critically with satire, mainly focusing on Lucilius, and other examples are Horace or Persius. English satire, in its
urn, lived its golden age in the 18th century, during the so-called ‘Augustan period’, with authors such as Swift,
Pope or Fielding. Dyson argues that this is due to the rationalism and morality of the age:
Augustan culture in particular, with its organized social hierarchy, its undisputed core of deist
belief, and its faith in common sense and enlightenment, was the right soil for satire, comedy, and
ridicule of every kind. (225)
However, it is generally agreed that satire declined in the 19th century during the Victorian period. Thackeray is
considered to be the only satirist in the 19th century, although some post-Augustan authors write radical satire,
ike Churchill or Janus, and other critical writers like Byron or Peacock could be considered satirists in a way.
Thackeray introduced a new way of writing satire. He was very fond of the 18th century, especially of Fielding.
He mixed elements from the sentimental stream, serial traces, and melodramatic aspects, included descriptions
of progress and its implication to social classes, and proposed a skeptic view of society, an anti-heroic view,
although maintaining a subtle didactic intention.
Taking into account the formalistic approach to satire, proposed by Mary Claire Randolph, we should divide the
satiric composition into satiric scene, where the situation and the criticism are displayed, and the satiric norm,
where we see the advice or guidance of the author. However, in some productions (especially in more recent
ones) we can only apply the first part. There has been a debate about the necessity of that second part. For
example, N. Frye is one of the authors in favour of including the satiric norm: ‘Of course a moral norm is
nherent in satire: satire presents something as grotesque: the grotesque is by definition a deviant from a norm:
he norm makes the satire satiric (9); on the other hand, W.S. Anderson claims that it should be left to the
audience to extract the satiric norm: ‘Like most good art, it leaves to its audience the function of interpretation’
5).
Taking all these aspects into consideration, we may conclude that satire has many different faces, so perhaps,
what scholars considered a decline of satire in the 19th century was just another form of satire, an evolution of it.
n analyzing this issue, we will concentrate on the figure of Oscar Wilde, one of the major figures in the fin-de-
siècle in England. The questions to discuss are: Could we argue that Oscar Wilde used satire? To what an extent
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did he use satire? And, how did he make use of satire in his writings? In order to answer these questions, we
will focus on two of his major literary works, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as
well as in some of his critical writings.
The first distinction we have to make clear for our purpose is that between satire and comedy. A. E. Dyson dealt
with this distinction in his article ‘Satiric and Comic Theory in Relation to Fielding’. He believes that ridicule
plays a part in both the satiric and the comic mode and that there is a very thin line separating them, as he
exemplifies in the case of Fielding, who fused satiric and comic elements. According to Dyson, the positive
standard implied by satire is usually an ideal, whereas that implied in comedy is a norm (226); the tone of satire
s more militantly moral, as it intends to ‘hurt and sting its readers into self-knowledge and amendment and
claims to be born in a mood of bitter moral indignation’ (226); he points out that satire concentrates its attention
on the wrongs committed, in a mood of bitter denunciation and a spirit of exaggeration, and that the satirist
does not have the sort of understanding that brings sympathy and forgiveness (227). In regards to comedy,
Dyson points out that it makes use of a ridicule that is more natural, for it uses as its background the normal
assumptions, ethics, and tone of society (227); and he distinguishes three aspects in which the comic is made
clear:
[…] In the first place by its subject matter, which is admittedly the very instincts and attitudes
that society has agreed to stigmatize or exile. […] In the second place, comedy seems often to
exploit the fascination that licentious, animal, or abnormal behavior has for the human mind.
And in the third place, it has a clear kinship with erotic and pornographic types of writing […].
(228)
Thus, following these ideas, we can distinguish a pattern to differentiate satire from comedy according to Dyson
n his aforementioned article entitled ‘Satiric and Comic Theory in Relation to Fielding’: satire is harsher than
comedy; it goes against established social morality in contradistinction to comedy, which usually goes against
hose values that threaten social morality; and it is more likely to provoke rejection on the part of society, as it
directly attacks its values. Applying this to the case of Oscar Wilde, we can see clearly that he is much closer to
satire than to comedy, something obvious if we take into account the subversion of moral values that he carries
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out both in his literary and in his critical works. A clear example of this is the preface to The Picture of Dorian
Gray, or even his very attitude towards art (art for art’s sake), and his pose of aesthete and dandy, whereby he
subverts the utilitarianism of the Victorian age that said that all things had to be useful. We can use the
ollowing passage of De Profundis in which Wilde addresses Bosie to illustrate this: ‘I loathed your regarding me
as a ‘useful’ person, how no artist wishes to be so regarded or so treated; artists, like art itself, being of their very
essence quite useless’ (1048).
Moving on to a closer analysis of satire, we should comment on George Test’s article ‘Elliot’s Bind; or, What is
Satire, Anyway?’ While he acknowledges the difficulty in dealing with the concept of satire, he proposes to
solate four elements (aggression, play, laughter, and judgment) that all works and expressions of satire have in
common, each element being present to some degree although combined in different ways and each having
varying importance depending on each specific work.
The first element Test discusses is aggression, satire as an attack. He considers that the aggression can be direct
or indirect, increasing the degree of indirectness as the elements of fictionality (characters, scene and plot) also
ncrease. As regards characters, he says that they ‘do ridiculous things, are subjected to reprehensible acts. […]
he characters and their actions stand for what the satirist is attacking’ (16). In this line, we should comment on
wo different styles of Wilde’s writings, his literary works on the one hand, and his critical works on the other
hand. In the first case, his attack is more indirect. Let us take for example The Importance of Being Earnest.
Characters obviously ‘do ridiculous things and are subjected to reprehensible acts’ to use Test’s words, and the
scene and the plot are very prominent, in contrast to his critical works, where plot and scene go almost
unnoticed. Likewise, the voice of the author is the one that is prominent, despite the fact that he sometimes uses
wo characters engaged in a dialogue, as in The Critic as Artist, or The Decay of Lying among others. Thus, the
aggression in Wilde’s critical works is more direct than in his literary works, as we can see in the following
passage from De Profundis: ‘We call ourselves a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing.
We have forgotten that Water can cleanse, and Fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all’ (1057). This
may be due to the fact that in his literary works, in contradistinction to his critical works, Wilde wanted to reach
success, so he could not portray a direct attack against social values if he wanted to engage a wider audience. As
Test says, in these attacks the satirist shows some of the least acceptable social emotions: anger, indignation,
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rustration, righteousness, hatred, and malice, and ‘the venting of such emotions, or the pose of venting these
emotions, as in satire, tends to generate more of the emotion of being vented, and what is more obvious, creates
an adverse reaction in the audience’ (17).
The second element discussed by Test is play. The presence of imagery and wordplay and its animating the
essence of the satiric composition is what constitutes play according to him. It entails repetition, exaggeration,
miniaturization, changed register, stock characters, special location and guaranteed illusion (19-20).
Extrapolating this to the specific case of Oscar Wilde, the element of play is present in his puns; in his reversion
of expectations, as in this quotation: ‘Literature always anticipates life, it does not copy it, but moulds it to its
purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.’ (The Decay of Lying, 1083-
1084); the element of play appears also in his plots based on the ridiculous (especially in his plays, as in The
mportance of Being Earnest or in An Ideal Husband); and in his reversing of popular sayings, as in The Importance of
Being Earnest, where he, for example, transforms ‘the truth is pure and simple’ into ‘the truth is rarely pure and
never simple’ (13).
The next element that Test mentions is laughter. Satire is intended to provoke laughter, and it can incorporate
according to him such modes as farce, parody, black humour, burlesque, the grotesque, surrealism, or other
modes that are comic in themselves or that tend in that direction (26). In Oscar Wilde’s writings, his use of
aughter is largely related to his use of play. In his plays, the element of laughter is evident in the comedy of the
plot and in the ridiculous situations Wilde presents, but we must also take into account that some of his puns
provoke laughter (as for example the very title of The Importance of Being Earnest), as well as his aphoristic
witticisms: ‘The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius’ (1108).
Finally, the last element highlighted by Test is Judgment. In other words, satire is intended to criticize and to
censure. The satirist’s truth, according to him, ‘may be not only moral, but also ethical, political, aesthetic,
common sense, or shared prejudices’ (29). In Oscar Wilde’s writings, we find a censure of morality, common
sense, and of the dominant aestheticism of the time. There are also different methods of portraying judgment, of
which we find two in Wilde: the satirist addresses the audience through a voice or persona (this is specially so in
his critical works); or, he ‘presents the targets at their most ludicrous, stupid, hypocritical, or disgusting’ (Test
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30), in which case the reader has to be more active in extracting the judgment. This is clear in Wilde’s literary
works, such as The Importance of Being Earnest or The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the first one, we are shown
different situations in which many topics like marriage, hypocrisy, or morality are addressed. We see characters
engaged in dialogues and situations that show a deep concern regarding affectation or hypocrisy. The whole
play revolves around that idea of hypocrisy and pretending-to-be, which characterizes the aristocracy that
appears in it. For example, in act II, when Algernon and Cecily meet for the first time, they exchange some ideas
about pretending to be wicked and about hypocrisy:
ALGERNON: Oh, I’m not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn’t think that I am wicked.
CECILY: If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable
manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really
good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
ALGERNON: (looks at her in amazement). Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless.
CECILY: I am glad to hear it.
ALGERNON: In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.
CECILY: I don’t think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very
pleasant. (31)
Algernon is pretending to be earnest/Ernest, when in fact he is not any of those. When he confesses to Cecily
hat he has been bad in his ‘own small way’, her reply implies that being bad is pleasant, even though it’s not
something to be proud of. That is one of the key points in the play: moral constraints force the characters to
adopt a pose of earnestness, when in fact they are just the opposite. The important thing is to look earnest, not to
be earnest. We, as readers, are in charge of extracting that judgment from the society that is portrayed in the
play.
n the case of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the reader is again in charge of judging the words and actions of the
main characters. We see the effects of the corruptive ideas of Lord Henry Wotton on Dorian Gray and how this
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one becomes morally perverse, seeking his own pleasure, even if that means going against anything or anyone
else. Lord Henry Wotton states these hedonistic ideas in the many dialogues in which he takes part, as for
example in this one:
‘To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,’ he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass
with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. ‘Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s
own life—that is the important thing. As for the lives of one’s neighbours, if one wishes to be a
prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one’s moral views about them, but they are not one’s concern.
Besides, Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the
standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a
form of the grossest immorality’ (92).
There is a latent judgment here, once more, on the part of the author, who gives the reader a vision of the
corrupted) upper class standards. This can also be seen in Dorian’s actions further on in the novel. We see his
process of corruption and decadence until his end. Again, there is an attack on the hypocrisy of this upper class.
While everyone, because of his appearance, respects Dorian, he shows a completely depraved morality.
These four elements combine in different ways depending on the type of satiric discourse. Other related forms,
however, share some of theses elements with satire, but not all. For example, according to Test, humour shares
with satire the elements of play and laughter, but aggression is minimal, and there is no judgment; social
criticism contains judgment and attack, but lacks laughter and play; and comedy emphasizes play and laughter,
has some judgment, but there is no aggression. Most of Wilde’s writings have these four elements, so, following
Test, Oscar Wilde is a satirist. However, he combines the elements in different ways according to the type of
writing. Laughter and play predominate in his literary works, whereas judgment and attack predominate in his
critical writings, although in some of his critical writings the element of laughter is very subtle and thus these
pieces will be on the verge of being considered satire or something different, as for example The Rise of Historical
Criticism or The English Renaissance of Art. This could be also related to Griffin’s distinction of four processes in
he creation of satire: the inquisitive process (finding details and analysis); the process of provocation (to
defamiliarize ways of exposing reality); the narcissistic process (to take the text as an exercise of wit and
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erudition); and the comic process (to provoke laughter). The first three are clearly distinguished in all of Wilde’s
writings: he analyses reality in depth, mainly morality, aestheticism and social values; provocation is something
attached to his very figure, not only to his works; and the narcissism is also evident in his works, mainly in his
witty aphorisms. As regards the comic process, it is more evident in his plays, although it is also present in The
Picture of Dorian Gray and in many of his critical works, again in the form of witty aphorisms, and also in his
nversions of expectations.
n order to analyze any example of satire, we should comment on three aspects: the author, the text itself, and
he audience. As regards the author, we have to distinguish the real author and the persona or mask, and to
differentiate the properties of the mask: his tone, the focus of his attack… We have to see if the real author has a
sense of reformation, if he wants the audience to feel guilty, for which he exposes a truth, but a distorted truth,
n which he exaggerates, using such strategies as caricature or hyperbole among others. In the writings of Oscar
Wilde we have three different degrees of the presence of the real author. In those of his critical writings that are
not presented as a dialogue Wilde’s voice as the real author is more evident, as we may see in the cases of De
Profundis, The Rise of Historical Criticism or The English Renaissance of Art, although in these cases, as we have
pointed out formerly, the element of laughter is very subtle, and thus they are on the verge of satire, according
o Test. The second degree of the presence of the author is formed by those of Wilde’s critical works that are in
he form of dialogues, as The Critic as Artist or The Decay of Lying. In these cases, one of the characters is the mask
and the other little more than an excuse to pose questions to be answered by the mask, or to state commonly
held beliefs that are to be overturned. Finally, the last degree is found in his literary works, in his plays and in
his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In this case, the voice of the author is subtler than in the rest, as he
akes characters as his mask. In The Picture of Dorian Gray we could argue that, rather than the narrator, Lord
Henry Wotton is the mask Wilde uses to introduce satire, as we may see in his witty comments, his puns and
some other aspects, although it would be controversial to affirm that all that Lord Henry claims is also Wilde’s
standpoint. In The Importance of Being Earnest the character that is closer to being the mask is Algernon, although
Lady Bracknell can be said to introduce satire as well, as for example when she speaks about marriage: ‘To
speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each
other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable’ (59). Thus, in Oscar Wilde’s writings we find
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a gradation of the presence of the real author, but the element of laughter is more evident when the mask is
more prominent, and as a consequence, satire is more evident in those cases.
Moving to the analysis of the text itself, we should define the type of text (in this case critical writings, plays and
a novel) and the strategies and characteristics of it. Feinberg says that all strategies in a satiric text are unfair
methods and he lists three characteristics of it: irony, parody, and caricature. However, these elements, specially
he first two, are not very much present in the case of Oscar Wilde. More than irony we find cynicism, whereas
parody is not predominant in his works. As regards caricature, Wilde makes use of it, in a very subtle way (we
do not find overt caricatures in his works), to indicate moral distortion, as in the case of Lord Henry Wotton in
The Picture of Dorian Gray or Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, which, curiously enough, he uses as his
masks to a great extent, and this makes contradictions arise, making most of the times extremely difficult to
perceive the real judgment Wilde proposes.
Finally, concerning the audience, the text should be grounded on reality in order for the audience to perceive the
ocus of the attack and the judgment. Wilde’s texts are obviously grounded on reality and the focus of his attack
are: the standard values and mentality of the Victorians, such as that of utilitarianism; the upper classes, and
mainly the aristocracy and the obsession with money and social status, as we can see in the plots and the
characters of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray; and social institutions such as
marriage, as for example in this passage of The Importance of Being Earnest in which Algernon speaks of marriage
as a business:
JACK: I’m in love with Gwendolen. I have come up to town expressly to propose to her.
ALGERNON: I thought you had come up for pleasure?... I call that business. (9)
We have analyzed satire and its elements in depth and tried to apply that to the case of Oscar Wilde in order to
claim his usage of satire, but in order to make the assertion more precise, it is necessary to align himself with a
certain tradition within satire. Leaving the classics aside, although we should not forget Wilde’s great
knowledge of them, we will concentrate on the English satiric tradition, and more precisely on the 18th century
as the golden age of English satire, and on the 19th century in order to have a look at Wilde’s own time. In the
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18th century we should mention Fielding, who portrays the keys of his satiric dogma in his preface to Joseph
Andrews (1742). The link between Wilde and Fielding arises in the focus of attack. In the preface to Joseph
Andrews, Fielding establishes affectation as the focus of his attack, and claims that affectation comes either from
vanity or hypocrisy:
Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes, vanity or hypocrisy: for as vanity puts us on affecting false
characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid censure, by concealing
our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. And though these two causes are often confounded […]
so they are clearly distinct in their operations: for indeed, the affectation which arises from vanity is nearer to
ruth than the other, as it hath not that violent repugnancy of nature to struggle with, which that of the
hypocrite hath. It may be likewise noted, that affectation doth not imply an absolute negation of those qualities
which are affected; and, therefore, though, when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet
when it comes from vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation. (16)
n Oscar Wilde we find the same focus of attack, affectation, but in this case he centers his attention on the kind
of affectation that derives from hypocrisy, and besides this, his scope is more restricted, as he deals mainly the
upper classes, the aristocracy, a class that has become more and more impoverished at that time, but still clings
o its artificial standards and sets of values and morality. We can find an example to illustrate this in the third
act of The Importance of Being Earnest, where Lady Bracknell, a member of the aristocracy, rejects the engagement
between Jack and Gwendolen on the grounds that he lacks family status, and when she also rejects the
engagement between Algernon and Cecily until she hears that Cecily is the heiress of an important fortune:
LADY BRACKNELL: […] Gwendolen, the time approaches for our departure. We have not a
moment to lose. As a matter of form, Mr. Worthing, I had better ask if Miss Cardew has a little
fortune?
JACK: Oh! About a hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds. That is all. Good-bye
Lady Bracknell. So pleased to have seen you.
LADY BRACKNELL (sitting down again): A moment, Mr. Worthing. A hundred and thirty
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thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young lady,
now that I look at her. Few girls of the present day have any really solid qualities, any of the
qualities that last, and improve with time. (58)
Turning to the 19th century, the satiric author with whom we should relate Oscar Wilde is Thackeray, who,
curiously enough, followed Fielding in certain aspects. For example, his focus of attack, which is pedantry and
social pretention, as he makes clear in his preface to The History of Pendennis, so again, he talks about affectation,
n the same line as Fielding. However, he is interested in men and women of high class and in their social
behaviour, similar to what Oscar Wilde does. But if we are to connect Wilde and Thackeray, we would have to
mention their cynicism. Thackeray, despite his cynicism, maintains a peculiar didactic or reforming intention,
which is very subtle. Although he is cynical, he still draws on the tradition of the Augustan writers. His
skepticism was showing the world the way it was, and showing lack of values in his characters, he implies that
here is no God for them, as Mark H. Burch highlights in his article ‘The World is a Looking Glass: Vanity Fair as
Satire’ (268). This is very closely related to what Oscar Wilde does in his literary works; his cynicism and his
satire do not aim to advocate a program of change, he just shows what is wrong. Thus, we also find a subtle
morality, the same as in the case of Thackeray.
Once we have analyzed satire and its different elements, with the implied difficulty it carries due to the versatile
nature of the satiric discourse, and after trying to apply all those elements to the case of Oscar Wilde’s literary
and critical writings, a difficult task too, due to the apparent contradictions in his writings derived from his pose
as aesthete, we can see Oscar Wilde’s use of satire, and actually we could insert him within a certain satiric
radition. We only discussed the possible connections with Fielding and Thackeray, but our study could be even
broader if we consider other satiric authors.
Analyzing it in detail, perhaps his use of satire may not be the prototypical one, but we could argue that this
may derive from the very versatility of the satiric discourse itself, and from the different usages that different
authors make of it. Actually, it is very difficult to talk about a prototypical use of satire precisely because of that.
Moreover, Wilde’s use of satire is different if we consider separately his literary works from his critical works. In
his critical works, his focus of attack is mainly the aesthetic values of the Victorian age, he is less humorous and
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more direct. In fact he uses a mask that is very close to himself as the real author or uses no mask at all, but
addresses the reader himself. In his literary writings, on the other hand, his focus of attack includes not only the
aesthetic values of the time, but also the moral values, the upper classes and social institutions. The element of
aughter and play is also more evident in these cases, and the mask he uses in those works to introduce the
satire cannot be so closely identified with himself as the real author. Moreover, his attack is not as direct as in
he critical works, as in his literary creations he merely limits himself to showing what was wrong. However,
although his use of satire is different depending on the type of writing we are dealing with, we should not
assume that either one or the other is a better satire. Wilde takes the versatile nature of the satiric discourse
tself, and uses it in different ways according to the different nature of his works.
Works Cited
Anderson, William S. ‘Norms, Moral or Other, in Satire: A Symposium.’ Comp. William Stafford. Satire
Newsletter 2.1 (Fall 1964): 2-25.
Burch, Mark H. ‘The World is a Looking Glass: Vanity Fair as Satire.’ Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture (1982):
265-279.
Dyson, A. E. ‘Satiric and Comic Theory in Relation to Fielding.’ Modern Language Quarterly (2003): 225-237.
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews. London: Penguin Classics, 1977.
Frye, Northrop. ‘Norms, Moral or Other, in Satire: A Symposium.’ Comp. William Stafford. Satire Newsletter 2.1
Fall 1964): 2-25.
Test, George A. ‘Elliot's Bind; or, What Is Satire, Anyway?’ Satire: Spirit and Art. Tampa: University of South
Florida Press, 1991. 7-36.
Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis. In Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. 980-
10059.
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Wilde, Oscar. The Critic as Artist. 02/22/2007. http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E800003-007/index.html.
Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying. In Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
1071-1092.
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. London : Penguin, 1994.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin, 1994.
Wilde, Oscar. The Rise of Historical Criticism. 02/22/2007. http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E800003-007/index.html.
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