30 pages • 1 hour read
Oscar WildeThe Soul of Man Under Socialism
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1891A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Oscar Wilde
Content Warning: This section references institutionalized anti-gay prejudice.
A well-known satirist, playwright, and poet, Oscar Wilde was born to Irish intellectuals in 1854. He would go on to become a celebrity figure before being tried and convicted for his sexual relationships with other men—a crime under 19th-century English law. Incarceration seriously damaged Wilde’s health, and he died in 1900. His best-known works include his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, and several plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and An Ideal Husband.
“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” is Wilde’s most overtly political text, but it also speaks to Wilde’s aesthetic sense—particularly his concerns about how moral judgment inhibits artistic expression. He indirectly references criticisms of his work in this essay, particularly in the sections dealing with the tyranny of public opinion and the role of journalism in perpetuating it. Prior to publishing this essay, Wilde had been a journalist himself; it was while reviewing work and spending time with Paris playwrights that he transitioned into theater writing. The essay is a marriage of these diverse interests to Wilde’s growing interest in anarchism after reading Kropotkin. Wilde had started his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas the same year, and this relationship likely informed the essay as well—e.g., his concerns over privacy and his defense of the obsolescence of marriage in a socialist society.
This essay represents Wilde’s general style: satirical and witty, the tone lighthearted but the critique scathing. As a wealthy man, Wilde wrote from a place of privilege and was a champion of pleasure and indulgence, which his essay argues ought to be accessible to all people. This essay was not well-received by his wealthy peers, and it was considered too radical for many socialists at the time.
Sir Henry Irving
Henry Irving began his career as a renowned actor before taking over management of a theater in London’s West End named the Lyceum. He was a contemporary of Wilde’s. As both an actor and a manager, his unique takes on various characters had a profound influence on other theaters; his interpretations of Shakespeare were particularly famous. This is the kind of individuality that Wilde celebrates in his essay, writing that Irving’s style, departing from the “standard,” is a perfect example of creating art that originates in the self instead of responding to others’ expectations. Moreover, Wilde argues that in embodying The Cultivation of Individualism, Irving helps the public develop toward greater individuality. Wilde discusses Irving’s theater as a place where “the public seem to come in a proper mood” (64). That mood, Wilde argues, is one of receptivity—a willingness to experience art rather than exert authority over it. Wilde implies that this exposure to novelty is one way in which the desire to embrace one’s own unique personhood can awaken.
George Meredith
Another contemporary of Wilde’s, George Meredith was a novelist and poet who worked during the late 1800s. His notable works include The Egoist and The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times. Wilde had written favorable reviews of Meredith’s novels, and he reiterates those points in this essay, praising his style, which he says developed independently of the “popular novel” and retains its unique character regardless of any attention Meredith receives: “[Meredith] has never allowed the public to dictate to him or influence him in any way but has gone on intensifying his personality, and producing his own individual work” (69). Personality and art again intertwine in this quote, underscoring Wilde’s claim that only a true individualist can produce beautiful works.
Related Titles
By Oscar Wilde
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