Oscar Wilde as dandy has become by now a familiar theme, both in biographies and
Oscar Wilde as dandy has become by now a familiar theme, both in biographies and in criticism of his plays. “The Divided Self in the Society Comedies of Oscar Wilde,”[1] by Arthur Ganz, is the first of two essays by Ganz and several pieces by other contemporary critics on this important subject. In fact, Ganz is writing centrally about The Importance of Being Earnest as well as about the three society comedies. The great difference between the society comedies and The Importance, in Ganz’s view, is that the society comedies contain two worlds, set off in contradistinction to one another—the Philistine and the dandiacal—whereas The Importance is set fully and solely in the latter. In order to achieve the unity of this play, Ganz argues, Wilde had to suppress “half his nature.” That other half may be discovered in the Philistine world of the society comedies.
That world is one of sentimental plots, in which ladies with mysterious pasts make commanding speeches and where “fates of empires hang on intercepted letters and stolen bracelets.” In opposition to that world the members of the dandiacal world are witty, elegant persons tossing off Wildean epigrams but taking scant interest in the action going on about them. Each of the three plays contains a crucial character, the woman with a past. And in each, Wilde arranges for the redemption of that woman. Ganz sees reflected in her Wilde’s own homosexuality; she shares with him the secret situation “forced upon Wilde” and so benefits from “the plea for acceptance and forgiveness” that ultimately emerges through the character who has most to learn. Ganz cites the contemporary French critic Robert Merle’s study of Wilde, who suggests this point, but who also makes the strongest case for Mrs Arbuthnot, the mother in A Woman of No Importance, because “her sin, like his, is sexual.”[2] Ganz goes on to show how the three crucial characters in each of the three plays are dramaturgically parallel, though An Ideal Husband introduces a variation, in which Mrs Chevely is made the villainess, Sir Robert Chiltern is the sinner who must be pardoned, and the Puritan who must undergo conversion is his wife. As for Lord Goring, he is at the last the messenger of love and forgiveness.
At this point Ganz reminds us that his subject is the Wildean divided self, and that the Philistine and dandiacal worlds in conflict in the three society plays are a reflection and indeed are “deeply expressive of the isolation of an artist and an individual man.” Providing a coherent summary of the evolution of the dandy and the theory of dandyism as a philosophy of life, Ganz explains how sympathetic dandyism was for Wilde and how it underlay his individualism and its first condition of absolute freedom. He reviews this value as it emerges in the three comedies, including in the character of Mrs Allonby, who like the dandy seeks out of life “a series of exquisite sensations to enjoy.” Ganz proceeds with a convincing exposition of how the