A Woman of No Importance by
Devilishly attractive Lord Illingworth is notorious for his skill as a seducer. But he is still invited to all the best houses while his female conquests must hide their shame in seclusion. In this devastating drawing - room comedy, Wilde uses his celebrated wit to expose English societys narrow view of everything from sexual mores to Americans.
“KELVIL. Now, I have never regarded woman as a toy. Woman is the intellectual helpmeet of man in public as in private life. Without her we should forget the true ideals.”
Oscar Wilde tried to use the different point of view including men from two generations to portray the development of modern early feminism. The simile portrays “Woman” as “toy”, shows the fact how men at that time used to treat women as their belongings, which further implied the social status of women during that time.
The Nightingale and the Rose Oscar Wilde by
A nightingale overhears a student complaining that his professor's daughter will not dance with him, as he is unable to give her a red rose. The nightingale visits all the rose-trees in the garden, and one of the white roses tell her that there's a way to produce a red rose, but only if the nightingale is prepared to sing the sweetest song for the rose all night, and sacrifice her life to do so. Seeing the student in tears, the nightingale carries out the ritual, and impales herself on the rose-tree's thorn so that her heart's blood can stain the rose. The student takes the rose to the professor's daughter, but she again rejects him because another man has sent her some real jewels, and "everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers." The student angrily throws the rose into the gutter, returns to his study of metaphysics, and decides not to believe in true love anymore.
“His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like pale ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.”
Oscar Wilde used simile for the readers to have a better understanding of the description he put here. Simile let the color along become more specific and easy to visualize. Through out all his fairy tales, Oscar Wilde used various of simile, which makes his story full of vivid descriptions.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by
Celebrated novel traces the moral degeneration of a handsome young Londoner from an innocent fop into a cruel and reckless pursuer of pleasure and, ultimately, a murderer. As Dorian Gray sinks into depravity, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait reflects the ravages of crime and sensuality.
“Then I feel, Harry, hat I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day”
In this simile, Dorian said that the person he gave his soul to treated is as a ornament. This shows that other people somehow doesn’t care about a person’s soul even if that’s the most precious thing a person could possibly give. This simile is here to imply the fact of love. Somehow, in Wilde’s eyes, love is nothing but a person’s own wishful thinking.
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings by
De Profundis and Other Prison Writings is a new selection of Oscar Wilde's prison letters and poetry in Penguin Classics, edited and introduced by Colm Tóibín. At the start of 1895, Oscar Wilde was the toast of London, widely feted for his most recent stage success, An Ideal Husband. But by May of the same year, Wilde was in Reading prison sentenced to hard labour. 'De Profundis' is an epistolic account of Oscar Wilde's spiritual journey while in prison, and describes his new, shocking conviction that 'the supreme vice is shallowness'. This edition also includes further letters to his wife, his friends, the Home Secretary, newspaper editors and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas - Bosie - himself, as well as 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', the heart-rending poem about a man sentenced to hang for the murder of the woman he loved. This Penguin edition is based on the definitive Complete Letters, edited by Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland. Colm Tóibín's introduction explores Wilde's duality in love, politics and literature. This edition also includes notes on the text and suggested further reading. Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin. His three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and A House of Pomegranates, together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, won him a reputation as a writer with an original talent, a reputation enhanced by the phenomenal success of his society comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. Colm Tóibín is the author of five novels, including The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, and a collection of stories, Mothers and Sons. His essay collection Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar appeared in 2002. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction.
“Of course I should have got rid of you. I should have shaken you out of my life as a man shakes from his raiment a thing that has stung him.”
The “thing that has stung” a man disgusted a man. In this case, Oscar Wilde claim that he should shake Douglas away as he too disgusted Wilde. Use a non-living object to refer to human dehumanized the characteristic of a person. Here, Wilde highlighted Douglas’s callous actions through out the paragraph.
The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde by
The Canterville Ghost By Oscar Wilde."The Canterville Ghost" is a short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in two parts in The Court and Society Review, 23 February and 2 March 1887.The story is about a family who moves to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman, who killed his wife and was starved to death by his wife's brothers.
“His eyes were as red as burning coals; long grey hair fell over his shoulders in mattered coils; his garments, which were of antique cut, were soiled and ragged, sand form his wrists and ankles hung heavy manacles and rusty gyves. ”
When the ghost first appears, Oscar Wilde used many details to describe how the ghost look like. The ghost was all shabby and eerie, with cloths that fails apart. “Coals” can be associated with fire, and fire usually implies violence as long as cruelness. This simile is a classical approach towards gothic elements, where the character’s appearance itself is terrifying as the character got introduced.