ABSTRACT
Mr. Pater once said that Mr. Oscar Wilde wrote like an excellent talker, and the criticism goes to the root. All of The Woman of no Importance [sic] which might have been spoken by its author, the famous paradoxes, the rapid sketches of men and women of society, the mockery of most things under heaven, are delightful; while, on the other hand, the things which are too deliberate in their development, or too vehement and elaborate for a talker’s inspiration, such as the plot, and the more tragic and emotional characters, do not rise above the general level of the stage. The witty or grotesque persons who flit about the hero and heroine, Lord Illingworth, Mrs. Allonby, Canon Daubeny, Lady Stutfield, and Mr. Kelvil, all, in fact, who can be characterised by a sentence or a paragraph, are real men and women; and the most immoral among them have enough of the morality of self-control and self-possession to be pleasant and inspiriting memories. There is something of heroism in being always master enough of oneself to be witty; and therefore the public of to-day feels with Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby much as the public of yesterday felt, in a certain sense, with that traditional villain of melodrama who never laid aside his cigarette and his sardonic smile. The traditional villain had self-control. Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby have self-control and intellect; and to have these things is to have wisdom, whether you obey it or not. ‘The soul is born old, but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.’ Women ‘worship successes,’ and ‘are the laurels to hide their baldness.’ ‘Childrenbegin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.’ And many another epigram, too well known to quote, rings out like the voice of Lear’s fool over a mad age. And yet one puts the book down with disappointment. Despite its qualities, it is not a work of art, it has no central fire, it is not dramatic in any ancient sense of the word. The reason is that the tragic and emotional people, the people who are important to the story, Mrs. Arbuthnot, Gerald Arbuthnot, and Hester Worsley, are conventions of the stage. They win our hearts with no visible virtue, and though intended to be charming and good and natural, are really either heady and undistinguished, or morbid with what Mr. Stevenson has called ‘the impure passion of remorse.’ The truth is, that whenever Mr. Wilde gets beyond those inspirations of an excellent talker which served him so well in The Decay of Lying and in the best parts of Dorian Grey [sic], he falls back upon the popular conventions, the spectres and shadows of the stage.
