oscar wilde disobedience essay

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Civil Disobedience — Oscar Wilde’s Views on Disobedience as a Valuable Human Trait

Oscar Wilde's Views on Disobedience as a Valuable Human Trait

• Categories: Civil Disobedience Oscar Wilde

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Words: 770 |

Updated: 7 December, 2023

Words: 770 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

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18th century of American history, Oscar Wilde’s claim, example of the colonists rebellion, prime example of disobedience, Disobedience, start of the American Revolution, American Revolution, colonists, social progress, act of disobedience, Boston Massacre, American history, demonstration of disobedience, incidents of disobedience

Prompt Examples for “Oscar Wilde’s Views on Disobedience” Essay

• Oscar Wilde’s Perspective: Examine Oscar Wilde’s perspective on disobedience and its value as a human trait, as expressed in his writings and philosophy.
• Defining Disobedience: Define the concept of disobedience and discuss its various forms, considering whether it can be a valuable trait in certain contexts.
• Historical and Social Context: Analyze the historical and social context in which Oscar Wilde lived and wrote, and how it may have influenced his views on disobedience.
• Examples and Counterarguments: Provide examples from Oscar Wilde’s works and literature to support the idea that disobedience can be valuable, while also considering counterarguments that oppose this view.
• Relevance Today: Discuss the relevance of Wilde’s perspective on disobedience in contemporary society, examining whether his views still hold value in today’s world.

Works Cited

• Hedges, C. (2009). Empire of illusion: The end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle. Nation Books.
• King, M. L. (1963). Letter from a Birmingham Jail. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
• Arendt, H. (1972). Crises of the Republic: Lying in politics; civil disobedience; on violence; thoughts on politics and revolution. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Thoreau, H. D. (1854). Walden. Ticknor and Fields.
• Chomsky, N. (2013). Masters of mankind: Essays and lectures, 1969-2013. Haymarket Books.
• Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
• Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of peace research, 6(3), 167-191.
• Foucault, M. (1997). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books.
• Gandhi, M. K. (1961). Non-violent resistance (Satyagraha). Dover Publications.
• Tarrow, S. (2011). Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge University Press.

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1 Oscar Wilde: Anarchist, Socialist, and Feminist

• Published: July 1996
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Disobedience, rebellion, and resistance to the decrees of authority were the central tenets of Oscar Wilde's personal philosophy. The young Wilde viewed rebellion against authority as essential to human advancement and social development. As he observed a few pages later: ‘Progress is simply the instinct of self-preservation in humanity, the desire to affirm one's own essence’. Wilde's belief in the overriding importance of disobedience, self-assertion, and dissent endured throughout his life and formed the basis of his individual code. His interest in radical politics, his sympathy with women's struggle to assert their individual rights in opposition to the strictures of Victorian convention, his distrust of all forms of government, influence, and control, can all be seen as logical consequences of his belief that ‘Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority’.

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Oscar Wilde Wasn’t Just a Satirist. He Was a Socialist.

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Much more than just the wit and satirist of his posthumous reputation, Oscar Wilde was a radical thinker who posed a fundamental challenge to the conservative mores of late Victorian England. His thinking on liberation led him to imagine a socialist future in which creativity can flourish across all of society.

Oscar Wilde in 1882. (Napoleon Sarony / Metropolitan Museum of Art)

When a cultural figure feels as familiar as Oscar Wilde , reconsidering and repackaging their works becomes a genuine challenge. Verso’s new anthology In Praise of Disobedience: The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Other Writings , edited by novelist and playwright Neil Bartlett, takes an innovative approach, focusing on Wilde’s output of a single year: 1891.

This was a year when Wilde was at the height of his creative powers, confirming his growing reputation as a talented yet scandalous author by publishing the final version of his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray . He built on it with two volumes of short fiction, an essay collection, and “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” — his most serious attempt at bringing his well-documented interest in aesthetics into political theory.

It’s impossible to read Wilde today — especially the barely concealed homoerotic relationships of The Picture of Dorian Gray , which feature in the extracts in this collection — without thinking about his trial and imprisonment for “gross indecency” in 1895 and his attendant public disgrace. Hoping to rehabilitate him, Wilde’s supporters tended to domesticate him and his works — a process that began far more quickly than contemporary readers might imagine. His essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” was reprinted just five days after his conviction — albeit in a private edition of fifty copies, with its text truncated and its title cut down to “The Soul of Man.” Opening with this piece, its title restored, Bartlett reminds us that during Wilde’s lifetime, his “radicalism, not his charm, was at the core of his reputation,” and that for all his aphoristic irony, Wilde’s statements should always be taken seriously.

Annus Mirabilis

Certainly, 1891 was an extraordinary year for Wilde. As well as meeting Lord Alfred Douglas and starting the affair that caused his downfall, he published The Picture of Dorian Gray, serialized the year before, as a longer and revised novel with a new preface. He also released a collection of fairy tales, A House of Pomegranates — one of which, a religious fable called “The Star Child,” features here, along with the title piece from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories . Highlighting his versatility, all four essays from Intentions are included in this collection, which, along with “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” showcase his dominant concern at the time: the liberation of the creative spirit in a country he considered utterly philistine.

Indeed, it was in 1891 that Wilde traveled to Paris, where he met André Gide, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marcel Proust, and shifted his focus to theater, writing Lady Windermere’s Fan — not included in this book, as it was first staged in February 1892 — and beginning work on Salomé . It is for these plays above all that Wilde has been canonized as the author of light, charming works. But in 1891, and especially in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Wilde’s radical sympathies and strategies — not to mention his queerness — are hidden in plain sight. Even the plays presented a profound challenge to the moral, social, and political norms of Victorian England, given Salomé ’s searing, sacrilegious eroticism and the exploration of the pleasures of leaving a husband in Lady Windermere’s Fan .

Political Aesthetics

What is remarkable about “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” is that it proposes no political action. It does not mention Wilde’s contemporaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, nor any of France’s nineteenth-century radical thinkers, from Louis Auguste Blanqui to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, despite his engagement with French writing. Wilde is purely concerned with how an artist might live after private property has been abolished and socialism has been secured, with the freedom of the individual and the collective being intrinsically linked.

Wilde argues that “no government at all” would be preferable not just to monarchy but also to representative democracy. As such, he sits within a tradition that focuses more on capitalism as a force that stifles creativity than as a driver of inequality, although these two effects are inseparable. Spanning socialist, communist, and anarchist theorists and politicians, this tradition can be traced back to the French utopian Charles Fourier — whose fantastical, proto-surrealist Theory of the Four Movements may have intrigued Wilde, although, sadly, he never wrote about it — and the Situationists. When Jeremy Corbyn used his electoral campaign to emphasize that everyone was capable of making art if only social conditions allowed it, he was drawing on this tradition as well.

By the late Victorian period in the UK, especially in London, where Wilde lived, poverty and starvation were rampant, with property ownership “still the test of complete citizenship” (and a condition for suffrage). Under “existing conditions,” Wilde argued in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” a few men of private means, such as Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Baudelaire, and Victor Hugo, were “able to realise their personality more or less completely,” because none of them “ever did a single day’s work for hire.” Wilde provides a strong critique of the prevailing liberal philanthropy by insisting “altruistic values” have sought (largely unsuccessfully) to maintain a slightly nicer status quo, obstructing the reconstruction of society “on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”

Such reorganization would only be the start. Wilde laments that, despite wealth granting them freedom, Byron and Shelley still had to deal with “the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the English,” which they did by emigrating. Once artists took notice of the demands of the market, they turned into craftsmen or tradesmen. But these demands, Wilde argued, came from the public; the solution was therefore to make people more artistic, capable of appreciating culture as much as the most cultivated of critics. Wilde doesn’t spell it out, but implicit in his essay is the argument that universal education, motivated by utopianism rather than utilitarianism, is the path to a better society, one in which the individual artist and the enlightened public would endlessly improve each other in a virtuous cycle.

The Need for Critics

In “The Decay of Lying,” the opening essay from Intentions , Wilde confirms that his interests lie more in art than activism. For Wilde, the fact that, after publishing The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), Charles Reade used his novels to highlight issues like the state of convict prisons or privately run asylums was a tragedy; he had little time for socially engaged realists such as Charles Dickens or Émile Zola.

At first glance, Wilde’s argument that artists should “avoid modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter” seems quite reactionary. But rather than an argument to turn away from the contemporary world, Wilde deploys a strategy drawn from the Impressionists: he notes how they did not seek to represent the world as it was but change the way we see it. His is a call for literature to do the same, years before the modernist movement reached its zenith with radical experiments in structure, style, and narration. One cannot help but wonder how Wilde, who was fatally weakened by his time in prison and died in poverty in Paris in 1900, at the age of forty-four, might have reacted to the works of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and others.

Several of these essays are presented as dialogues between two characters, which has the effect of distancing Wilde, to some extent, from the opinions expressed — and accounts for one reason, perhaps, why his work has often been read “within implied quotation marks,” as Bartlett puts it. “The Critic as Artist,” the essay that provides perhaps the fullest account of Wilde’s aesthetics, does at times read like it’s written to be quoted, such as in the typically Wildean aphorism: “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.” But the essay, especially its second half, is primarily a discourse on the nature of art and of criticism, including Wilde’s famous line about aesthetics being higher than ethics, elevating creative works that aim simply “to create a mood” over political action.

Having posited in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” that everyone needs to become a critic, Wilde lays out some core principles. He reiterates that accurate representations of reality are not, in themselves, desirable, as life is “terribly deficient in form” and a failure “from an artistic point of view.” With his characteristic dismissive wit, Wilde asserted that “anyone can write a three-volume novel” of the type popular in the mid-nineteenth century, but that doing so “requires . . . complete ignorance of both life and literature.”

There is a reason why novelists structure their narratives in order to omit the duller parts of life and concentrate on its dramatic tensions — the epic novel trapped critics into becoming “reporters of the police-court of literature,” getting bogged down in its numerous characters and endless detail. Rather, they should use criticism not to chatter about “second-rate work” but as “a record of own’s one soul,” giving insight into their own cultural and political concerns and experimenting with form as an artist would.

Wilde wrote in his new preface for Dorian Gray that he did not think critics should distinguish between “moral” and “immoral” books, only good and bad ones. When his libel suit against Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, for calling him a sodomite, failed in April 1895, bankrupting him, Wilde was arrested and charged with “gross indecency.” The court did not take Wilde’s advice about moral and immoral works, using his writings as evidence of his “gross indecency,” an outcome he perhaps had hoped to forestall by making this statement.

He did state, however, that effective criticism needed to understand the social conditions under which a work was made, requiring the critic to think historically and politically as well as artistically. He felt that, ultimately, criticism could bring about a better future by making everyone more cosmopolitan, making people reluctant to go to war with other countries that they knew to have produced great literature. Again, one cannot help but wonder how Wilde might have felt about the great writers and artists who enthusiastically signed up for World War I in 1914, such as Guillaume Apollinaire, whose “Désir ” records the poet’s ambivalence about firing at the trenches of Goethe — incidentally named by Wilde as the first person to realize the pacifist potential of cultural exchange — and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Wilde often feels so modern, as a writer and personality, that it’s easy to forget he didn’t make it out of the Victorian period. The two short stories and the Dorian Gray extracts offered in this volume remind us of his literary talent, but that was never seriously in doubt — as the fact of his plays continuing to be staged in the years immediately after his imprisonment shows. In Praise of Disobedience is at its most interesting — and surprising — when it reveals Wilde as a radical thinker, tearing down the boundaries between art and criticism and demanding artists think about their working conditions to a far greater extent than most of those who idly quote him would ever tell you. As Wilde himself put it: “Society often forgives the criminal. It never forgives the dreamer.”

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Oscar Wilde in his favourite coat. New York, 1882 . Picture taken by Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896). ( Public Domain / WikiMedia Commons )

Oscar Wilde: ‘In Praise of Disobedience’

Being humble and peaceable are not virtues, according to Oscar Wilde, as seen in his collection of essays, In Praise of Disobedience, disobedience and rebelliousness against inequality and tyranny are much more valuable to humankind.

Many know Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) by name, but few have actually read him. When we think of him, it’s generally to associate him as a Victorian-era queer writer who achieved notoriety in a still repressive and homophobic era.

He was all that, of course. A wildly successful and prolific playwright, he also wrote short stories, poetry and a novel and was a dashing if sometimes controversial member of creative avant-garde society in Victorian London. His plays were immensely popular, if sometimes controversial for depicting sordid situations that gave the Victorian-era establishment heart palpitations.

Ultimately, he was a victim of the period’s violent homophobia, one of those who rightly saw no reason for the period’s backward repressiveness and didn’t realize just how violent it could turn. The Marquess of Queensbury, father of one of Wilde’s lovers (Lord Arthur Douglas) denounced him for his homosexuality, and rather than brush it off Wilde went on the attack and sued him for slander. The one defense against slander is the truth, so the Marquess proceeded to hire a team of detectives and witnesses who presented incontrovertible evidence of Wilde’s homosexual activities. Wilde soon found the tables turned and himself the one facing charges, yet despite the urging of his friends he refused to flee London for the more enlightened European continent, where he might have escaped consequences. Instead he was found guilty of what was then still a crime, and given a prison sentence of two years’ hard labour. For Wilde, a sensitive artist with a weak constitution, the judgement was virtually a death sentence and the imprisonment destroyed his health and spirit. Within three years of his release he was dead.

Reading his work, one can almost understand why the flamboyant, defiant Wilde failed to either remain discreet or flee the country. One can full well imagine his total and utter disbelief that a supposedly modern and civilized nation would persecute its brilliant writers and thinkers for something as silly as their sexual preference for other men. Wilde was right to view the situation with astonishment and disbelief; unfortunately this did not change the violence of the repressive backlash that targeted him.

Wilde is widely recognized today as one of those brave martyrs of Europe’s shameful and repressive homophobic era; a brilliant writer whose career was cut tragically short. But while many people have some familiarity with Wilde and the broad outlines of this sorry tale, few today have actually read his work. Those who have, may have read his plays or his one novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in English literature courses.

Yet Wilde also wrote political articles, and these are now collected in one place in an outstanding new volume from Verso Books. In Praise of Disobedience : The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Other Works collects Wilde’s more political-themed works, ranging from political essays to short fiction and even a children’s story.

Wilde the Socialist

The first titular essay in the collection contains Wilde’s sympathetic, Utopian reflections on how socialism would improve the world. Wilde isn’t only interested in how socialism would improve the material conditions of society. He also argues that it will improve “the soul of man” – it will create a nobler iteration of humanity. He’s interested, too, in how it will improve society’s creative impulses, and its effect on art and philosophy.

Wilde’s attraction to socialism had nothing to do with its collectivist aspects. Quite the opposite – he held that socialism was the system most likely to produce a flourishing individualism, which is one of the things that attracted him to it. It is through socialism, he says, that we will achieve true individualism.

His vision of socialism is simple and straightforward: “converting private property into public wealth, and substituting cooperation for competition.” He opposes any form of authoritarian socialism; a prescient warning, as it turns out. In positioning himself against the use of totalitarian force in any future socialist state, he asserts that the goal of socialism must not be to enforce a communitarian tyranny, but rather to ensure the development and fruition of individuality.

Wilde and the Poor

In this essay, Wilde decries charity, which he feels merely perpetuates inequality and injustice, and instead argues for a socialist welfare state that would ensure no one has to waste their time at the sordid and ultimately non-productive task of making money.

“[I]t is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought,” he famously wrote, observing that people are quick to give money to the poor yet fail to think through and bring about the simple changes that would eliminate poverty entirely. These misdirected philanthropists, he writes, “do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it…The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”

Wilde points out a contradiction – many of the wealthy folks most responsible for income inequality and therefore responsible for poverty are also among the biggest philanthropists giving to charity. He lashes out at them: “It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.” Charity, writes Wilde, is “a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution” that is accompanied by efforts on the part of the givers “to tyrannise over [the poor’s] private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.”

People praise the poor for being thrifty, he notes, and it disgusts him. “It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less… Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal.”

It is here that Wilde gets to the point of his essay’s subtitle: “In Praise of Disobedience”. There’s no nobility in suffering, he argues. When people talk about “the noble poor”, that’s nonsense. He disdains poor people who accept their lot; the truly noble poor, he says, ought to rebel against their situation. Being humble and peaceable are not virtues, according to Wilde: disobedience and rebelliousness against inequality and tyranny are much higher virtues. Anyone who would accept poverty and misery, he says, is a useless brute. “Disobedience… is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”

It is better to steal than to beg, says Wilde, deploying one of those clever aphorisms for which he was so well known: “it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.”

Wilde rages against the obedient poor, arguing that “one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy… They must also be extraordinarily stupid.” He says he can understand why someone would accept capitalism and private poverty if they benefit from it and grow rich, but he cannot understand why those who suffer from it and remain poor accept the state of affairs without rebelling: “it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.”

Wilde goes on to reflect on why and how this impulse toward disobedience and rebellion gets smothered. “Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading,” he writes, “that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering.” He holds very much to the notion that it takes outsiders and external agitators to reveal to a group the extent of its own oppression and suffering (this has become an unfashionable perspective today, for better or for worse).

Although Wilde is talking about disobedience and rebellion against social norms in the context of income inequality and poverty, one cannot help but reflect on the fact he applied the same principles in his sexual life, refusing to acquiesce to society’s homophobic morals of the time and reacting with a combination of rage and bewilderment when he fell victim to them. Unfortunately, while he was prepared to embrace and advocate for socialism as a counter to the inequalities of capitalism, there was no similarly ready-made sexuality liberation movement for him to embrace and turn to for support when he was targeted for his homosexuality.

Socialism and the Creative Arts

His was a socialism very much fashioned from an arts and humanities perspective. Humanity’s greatest fulfilment, he felt, lay in thinking and creating – and the sordid task of making money just took time and resources away from these far more important pursuits. Wealth generation even debased the wealthy, he felt, since it deprived them of the ability to pursue more noble and fulfilling goals in their lives: “in the interest of the rich we must get rid of [property].”

Private property “has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses,” he writes. “It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false.”

He goes on for pages in such a vein, however his words are so simple, clear and beautifully put that he’s far more of a joy to read than most socialist writers. Socialism needs, perhaps, more poetic souls like Wilde, writing from an accessible and philosophical grounding, rather than a dense and theoretical one focused on economics. It is only when we abolish private property, he writes, that “we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Wilde’s take on socialism would appeal to contemporary advocates of Universal Basic Income. His call for socialism is grounded in the notion that society ought by now to be able to provide for everyone’s basic needs, so that individuals can get on with the process of doing the much more interesting things they want to do, from writing plays and poetry to being inventors, mathematicians or philosophers. Having to earn income and worry about one’s material security is a distraction which has deprived us of much of our true potential, he says.

There’s also an element of left-accelerationism in Wilde’s thinking; although he was writing in the late Victorian era he’s clearly of the mind that by now technology ought to be able to meet humanity’s most basic needs, and thereby allow us all to lead dignified lives and not have to engage in menial tasks when we could be engaging in far more enlightened pursuits. “[T]here is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve,” he writes, attributing this to “our property system and our system of competition… At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man.” If this was Wilde’s thinking in the late 19th century, he would doubtless be horrified to learn that a century’s worth of technological innovation later we are still no closer to improving the basic division of labour in society and the need to perform work we do not find fulfilling or desirable.

Wilde’s words were written for an era in which poverty and suffering was much more pronounced in democratic-leaning societies than it was for much of the subsequent 20th century. As we once again slip back toward levels of inequality and poverty more reminiscent of Wilde’s era, his call to revolt surely resonates more profoundly as well. Rebelliousness and disobedience are prime virtues, he argues, especially when harnessed in the pursuit of human improvement. We should not despise or fear those who rebel, he says, but consider why they are disobedient and rebellious and judge them based on that. Simple adherence to the law is not a sign of virtue, he warns. “A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection.” (Again, one cannot help but reflect on Wilde’s private rebellion against society’s sexual mores of the time, and the extent to which this also probably influenced his thinking on disobedience and rebellion.)

He considers various forms of political organization, including democracy. Democracy, he says, was a political system that held promise and potential, but its greatest strength lies in the degree to which it encourages the spirit of revolt against tyranny. When democracies smother that spirit of rebelliousness and individualism, they become just as dangerous as any other despotic regime, he warns, offering a sort of theory of hegemony decades before Antonio Gramsci ever coined the term. “People [in demoralized, tame democracies] are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realizing that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. ‘He who would be free,’ says a fine thinker, ‘must not conform.’ And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism among us.”

He also reflects on crime, arguing that punishment is counter-productive and that “starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.” He means this quite literally: poverty renders crime necessary, he says, and only when we eliminate poverty will we eliminate crime. Even crimes that appear unrelated to poverty, he argues, stem from “the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding.” When we have eliminated property and inequality, he says, such crimes as remain will be recognized as mental health issues instead, “to be cured by care and kindness.”

Wilde and Journalism

Wilde is, interestingly, averse toward journalists. One cannot help but reflect once more, however, the role journalists played—especially during his lifetime—in reinforcing the repressive mores of a homophobic society. Indeed, it is the role journalism plays in retrenching public opinion that Wilde despises. He reflects on the damage it has caused Art: he was a sort of artistic purist, who despised subjective standards of decency and argues very much in favour of provocative experimentalism. But his arguments, again, are phrased with such a beautiful flow and at times light-hearted grace that they are thought-provoking, compelling, and a pure joy to read, even when it sounds like he’s toying with deliberately extreme statements. “In centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump,” he writes. “That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse.” Remember, again, that it is largely the role journalists of his era played in giving force to mainstream public opinion, and exposing the private lives of individuals, that Wilde objected to. Given that the activities he was involved in in his private life were quite illegal (by the era’s backward standards) one can’t blame him. Perhaps a more rebellious, disobedient journalism would have been more to his liking.

As for public opinion, Wilde has some interesting perspectives. Although his work was (prior to his arrest) very popular in many regards, he also went against the grain of public opinion in both his art (his writing was frequently censored by publishers) and his private life (the homosexuality that would eventually send him to jail). So his strident critique of public opinion is unsurprising. But as so often, rather than mincing his words, he goes on the attack:

“[T]here is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of the public than there is in favour of the public’s opinion. The former may be fine. The latter must be foolish. It is often said that force is no argument. That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove. Many of the most important problems of the last few centuries, such as the continuance of [the monarchy] in England, or of feudalism in France, have been solved entirely by means of physical force… It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brick-bat.”

Wilde the Utopian

Wilde anticipated that one of the principal arguments against socialism was the notion that it doesn’t work in practice, that it’s not practical, that it goes against human nature.

“This is perfectly true,” he admits simply. “It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.”

Wilde was forward-looking; optimistic about the ability of humankind to grow and change. Governments and political systems fail, he warns, when they assume human nature is static and unchanging, and when they fail to provide room for humanity and its social structures to grow and to change.

Was Wilde a Utopian, with his socialism and his appeal to rebellion and disobedience? He was, and proudly so.

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing,” he writes. “And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.”

The Virtues of Lying

The second essay in the collection – “The Decay of Lying” – is presented in the form of a dialogue and takes aim at our society’s growing obsession with “truth”. Does it really make things better? Not so much, suggests Wilde in his typically whimsical style. Whimsical it may be, but it harbours an important point. Representing truth in art – visual art, poetry, fiction – is only one way of producing art, and Wilde argues it’s the inferior way. The true value of art lies in its ability to embellish, to render prosaic realities with fanciful, romantic or even sordid characteristics. We live the truth every day; the purpose of art is offer us something better and more interesting.

Of course, some might argue that the truth is interesting. “Dullard,” Wilde would reply, with a pout of disdain at those who are crushing humanity’s spirit and inventiveness with their obsessive clinging to reality.

Our age suffers from an excessive obsession with truth, or with deep-seated subjectivities which are presented as truths. In an age when identity politics has increasingly come to suffuse artistic production, Wilde would find himself diametrically opposed to those who argue that only certain identities should write about, or depict, those same identities; or that the representation of identities and histories ought to be in any way factual or authentic. He would disagree that historical fiction ought to be factual, or that a film about a place, period or people ought to authentically represent that place, period or people. It is more important for art to produce beautiful fakery, he would argue; representing the truth kills the imagination and creative artistic spirit.

Wilde’s argument is that fiction is more interesting than fact, and it is the responsibility of artists to create a more ennobling fiction out of the mundane facts of the world. He decries the modern attraction to truth and accuracy: what matters is how a story, a fable, a beautiful creation can inspire us, change us, make us think differently, feel differently, and perhaps make us act differently too. What matters is not what happened, but how we can imagine and re-imagine what happened in what ways that change us for the better.

“Art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and refashions it in fresh forms,” Wilde writes. True art, he says, “is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment.”

Wilde fears a world that falls prey to an obsession with facts and truth, a world where “Life gets the upper hand, and drives Art out into the wilderness.” “[I]f something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and Beauty will pass away from the land,” he writes.

(Wilde also later comes out fully in favour of plagiarism, considering it also an important form of creativity. He disdains artists who object to their work being copied and plagiarised, unless the result is of poor quality. Accusations of plagiarism, he writes, “proceed either from the thin colourless lips of impotence, or from the grotesque mouths of those who, possessing nothing of their own, fancy that they can gain a reputation for wealth by crying out that they have been robbed.”)

Deep down, humanity recognizes the virtues of lying, he says. This is evident in the fact that we consider it okay for parents to lie to children, for the sake of either their comfort and security, or their social education. Yet as we become adults, we then shed this acknowledgement that there is a place for creative untruths, and it is to our detriment. “Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art,” he asserts.

These two opening essays are the most powerful and thought-provoking of the collection, but the remainder of the book contains fascinating material as well. Director, author and performer Neil Bartlett provides an excellent introduction to the pieces, placing them in their respective historical contexts, while Mark Martin (who selected the works) provides thorough annotation and sourcing for the various (now obscure) references that Wilde includes in these pieces. There’s a piece of Wilde’s own journalism, in the form of a magazine article he wrote exploring the life and work of Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, a 19th century writer, art critic and poisoner who was eventually caught and jailed in a dramatic saga. There’s a children’s faery tale, “The Star Child”, with a fairly obvious moral to it. There’s an essay on the role and importance of costuming in theatre (which dips again into his philosophizing on truth and representation), and there are some key excerpts from The Picture of Dorian Gray , including Wilde’s manifesto-like Preface, which he wrote in part as a defense of the book following criticism of its themes when it initially appeared in magazine form. And there’s the brilliant, hilarious short story “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”, which is also a bit of satirical social commentary.

The Critic as Artist

Finally, there’s a lengthy and fascinating reflection – again in the form of a literary dialogue – on the importance of art criticism. Here too Wilde waxes iconoclastic, but in such a way as to warm the heart of any critic or reviewer. Criticizing art, he muses, can be a more creative process than creating art in the first place.

“As a rule the critics… are far more cultured than the people whose work they are called upon to review,” he writes. The mere creative instinct by itself, he suggests, often simply consists of reproducing things. It is the critical instinct which goes one step further, to create something really worthwhile from a creation. “I would call criticism a creation within a creation,” he explains, elaborating on the point in fascinating detail.

This two-part essay on “The Critic as Artist” is powerful and moving. In addition to reflecting on the virtues of art criticism, it engages in a spirited defense of the importance of art, which, Wilde explains, enables us to fully develop our emotions without being harmed by them. “We weep, but we are not wounded. We grieve, but our grief is not bitter… It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.” Art and intellectual criticism also allow us to rise above backward and violent impulses like nationalism and patriotism, he argues—we cannot truly hate people or cultures whose art and creative works we also admire.

Here again he dips into his disobedient, rebellious streak, combining it with his appreciation for artful, creative untruths and his Utopianism. “The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it,” he says. “What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless.”

Wilde was the master of the aphorism – clever statements, which cause the reader to think. “What is the difference between literature and journalism?” asks a character in his dialogue “The Critic as Artist”. “Journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read,” replies the other. Or “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” Or “We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.” Or “There is only one thing worse than Injustice, and that is Justice without her sword in her hand. When Right is not Might, it is Evil.”

He also turns accepted sayings on their head. “It is always more difficult to destroy than it is to create,” he writes, especially when what one is trying to destroy is “vulgarity and stupidity”.

In some of his political writing, Wilde sounds like he’s writing for contemporary readers. Writing in 1891, Wilde laments the very things that burden so many of us today.

“With us, Thought is degraded by its constant association with practice… Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the undereducated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid. And, harsh though it may sound, I cannot help saying that such people deserve their doom. The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.”

Reading Wilde’s political essays is a refreshing exercise. The 21st century has brought us full circle, it seems, with the 19th, in so many ways: the resurgence of tyranny and efforts to limit democracy; the resurgence of dramatic income inequality and poverty on a national as well as global scale.

At such a time, Wilde offers us an important reminder of virtues we as a society may have for a time lost: the need to strive for Utopias; the inevitability of socialism if our world is to survive; the need to reinvigorate humanity’s spirit of rebelliousness and disobedience, and to challenge, not accept, the injustices and inequalities we see all around us.

The world needs Oscar Wilde and his daring, beautiful ideas today more than ever.

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• AP English Language and Composition Exam Sample Essay Questions

April 9, 2024

After an hour of answering multiple-choice questions , you’ll have two hours to write three essays : 

• A synthesis essay in which you use sources to argue your point of view on a given issue. 
• An analytical essay that examines, interprets, and explains the meaning and structure of prose passage. 
• An argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or qualifies an opinion expressed in a statement or brief passage. 

Before you’re given the signal to begin writing your essays, you’ll have 15 minutes to read the questions and the sources for the synthesis essay. However, you don’t have to spend the whole time reading. During those 15 minutes you can plan your essay, underline noteworthy ideas, formulate a tentative thesis, or prepare a brief outline. You might even glance at the other essay questions. Essentially, the time is yours to fill as you wish but with one exception: you may not start writing your essay. That begins only after the proctor gives you the green light. 

Write the essays in any order. The choice is yours. The suggested writing time for each essay is 40 minutes.

Sample Essay Questions

The following sample essay questions have been taken from previous AP English Language and Composition exams.

2014 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• In recent years college graduates in great numbers have failed to find jobs for which their education has prepared them. As a result, many people, including high school students and their parents, question whether a college degree is worth the expense required to attain one. Others, however, argue that a college education is not meant solely to prepare students for a job or career. After reading six sources related to this issue, write an essay that discusses whether a college education is worth the cost. Synthesize information from at least three of the sources into your essay. 
• In 1780, Abigail Adams wrote a letter of advice to her son John Quincy Adams, then traveling in Europe with his father, John Adams, the future second president of the United States. Read the letter carefully. Then, write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical strategies that Mrs. Adams uses to advise the young man. 
• Research by experts in education reveals that the creativity of children from kindergarten through sixth grade has suffered in recent years. A decline in creativity is alarming, especially when present and future world problems related to climate, economics, war and peace, and much more will require increasingly creative solutions. One proposal to reverse the decline in creativity is to actively teach creative thinking in school. Opinion is divided on whether this approach is worthwhile. State your view on this issue by writing to your school board. Explain what you mean by creativity and argue for or against starting a course in creativity.

2015 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• Many schools, colleges, and universities have instituted honor codes meant to discourage such practices as cheating, stealing, and plagiarizing. Students violating established codes are subject to a variety of punishments. After reading six sources related to the issue of honor codes, compose an essay that supports your position on whether your school should establish, maintain, revise, or eliminate an honor code or honor system. Your argument should incorporate ideas, quotations, paraphrases, or summaries found in at least three of the six sources that accompany this question. 
• To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, labor union organizer and civil rights leader Cesar Chavez wrote an article that discusses nonviolent resistance as a means to achieve certain social goals. After reading Chavez’s words, write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices he uses to develop his argument. 
• Friendly phrases such as “How’s it going?” and “Nice to meet you” are known as polite speech and are usually not taken literally. In an essay, develop your position on the value or function of polite speech in a culture or community with which you are familiar. To support your argument, use evidence drawn from your reading, experience, or observation.

2016 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• With the spread of globalization in recent decades, English has become the primary language for communicating in international finance, science, and politics. As the use of English has spread, foreign language learning in English-speaking countries has declined, making the use of only one language—English—the norm. Carefully read the six sources accompanying this question and then write an essay that takes a position on the claim that people who speak only English and no other language are at a disadvantage in today’s world. In your discussion, synthesize appropriate quotations, ideas, paraphrases, or summaries found in at least three of the sources. 
• In 2004, upon the death of former president Ronald Reagan, the ex–prime minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, who had worked closely with Reagan, delivered a eulogy to the American people honoring her former colleague and friend. Read the eulogy carefully, and then write an essay that analyzes the rhetoric Thatcher used to convey her thoughts and feelings. 
• Back in the nineteenth century, the Irish author Oscar Wilde noted that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” In an essay, argue your position on Wilde’s claim that disobedience and rebellion promote progress. Support your views with evidence drawn from your reading, studies, experience, or observation.

2017 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• The growth of the Internet has, among other things, changed what and how people read and in so doing has generated controversy about the need for and future of traditional public libraries. Some observers question the relevance of today’s libraries, while others see opportunities for libraries to grow and thrive in new ways. After reading six sources related to the future of libraries, write an essay that discusses your position on the future role, if any, of public libraries. As you develop your argument, be sure to incorporate, or synthesize, material from at least three of the sources that accompany this assignment. Whether you quote directly from a source or put its ideas into your own words, clearly identify each source you use either in the text of your essay or in a footnote. 
• At the beginning of a speech to the Women’s National Press Club in 1960, the American journalist and politician Clare Booth Luce expressed her objections to a tendency of the press corps to give readers sensationalist stories rather than maintain journalistic integrity by writing serious, consequential news stories. After carefully reading her opening remarks, write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical strategies Luce used to prepare the audience for the disapproval that was central to the remainder of her speech. 
• In Empire of Illusion, the author Chris Hedges, referring to the world of politics and the consumer culture, argues that “the most essential skill . . . is artifice.” That is, as Hedges explains, successful politicians “no longer need to be competent, sincere, or honest. They need only to appear to have these qualities.” In other words, deception succeeds. After reading a short passage that develops Hedges’s views, write an essay stating your opinion on the issue. Use appropriate, specific evidence to develop and illustrate your position.

2018 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• The power of a government to confiscate people’s private property for public use is known as eminent domain. Although eminent domain is centuries old, it remains a contentious issue throughout the world. Read the six sources on the following pages. Then, using at least three of the sources, write a coherent essay that supports, opposes, or qualifies the principle that the govern- mental right of eminent domain is useful and productive. When quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing material, be sure to identify each source in parentheses either with its letter (A, B, C, etc.) or with a description. 
• In 1997, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivered the commencement address at Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college in Massachusetts. After reading a given excerpt from the speech, write a well-developed essay that identifies and analyzes the rhetorical choices Albright made to help convey her message to the audience. 
• In her book Gift from the Sea, the author and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906– 2001) reflects on how people make choices: “We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.” After carefully considering Lindbergh’s position on choosing the unknown, write an essay that develops your own view on the value of exploring the unknown. Support your position with appropriate and specific evidence.

2019 AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions

• Our society’s increasing demand for energy has drawn attention of governments and consumers to large-scale wind power and away from traditional materials, such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Yet, the creation of large commercial wind farms has created controversy for a variety of reasons. Carefully read the following six sources, including the introduction to each one, and then write an essay that develops your position on the most important factors that an individual or agency should take into account when determining whether to establish a wind farm. As you develop your position, synthesize material from at least three of the sources. 
• In 1930 Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi led a nonviolent march in India protesting Britain’s colonial monopoly on the taxation of salt. The Salt March, as it was called, triggered a civil disobedience movement that won India independence from Britain in 1947. Just prior to the march Gandhi had written to Viceroy Lord Irwin, who represented the British crown in India. The passage that follows is the conclusion of that letter. Read it carefully and then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Gandhi made to present his case to Lord Irwin.
• The term “overrated” is commonly used to diminish concepts, geographic places, roles, books, movies, etc., that the speaker thinks fail to live up to their reputation. Choose something that in your judgment is overrated and then write a well-developed essay explaining your views. Use appropriate evidence from your reading, experience, or observation to support your argument.

AP Biology Resources

• About the AP Biology Exam
• Top AP Biology Exam Strategies
• Top 5 Study Topics and Tips for the AP Biology Exam
• AP Biology Short Free-Response Questions
• AP Biology Long Free-Response Questions

AP Psychology Resources

• What’s Tested on the AP Psychology Exam?
• Top 5 Study Tips for the AP Psychology Exam
• AP Psychology Key Terms
• Top AP Psychology Exam Multiple-Choice Question Tips
• Top AP Psychology Exam Free Response Questions Tips
• AP Psychology Sample Free Response Question

AP English Language and Composition Resources

• What’s Tested on the AP English Language and Composition Exam?
• Top 5 Tips for the AP English Language and Composition Exam
• Top Reading Techniques for the AP English Language and Composition Exam
• How to Answer the AP English Language and Composition Essay Questions 
• AP English Language and Composition Exam Multiple-Choice Questions

AP Human Geography Resources

• What’s Tested On the AP Human Geography Exam?
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• AP Human Geography Question Types and Strategies
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Oscar Wilde online

Essays and lectures.

• Art and the Handicraftsman » An essay on art - There is no opposition to beauty except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly. (9 pages)
• De Profundis » A very long, intensely emotional letter written from prison at Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas – Bosie. (28 pages)
• House Decoration » A lecture on house decoration: What is the meaning of beautiful decoration which we call art? (5 pages)
• Impressions of America » Thoughts and impressions after lecture touring the United States in 1882. (4 pages)
• Lecture to Art Students » Lecture about art and beauty: Nothing is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty. (6 pages)
• London Models » An essay on art models: Professional models are a purely modern invention. (5 pages)
• Miscellaneous Aphorisms » A vast collection of Wilde's aphorisms and witty one-liners. (31 pages)
• Pen, Pencil, And Poison » Essay about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794 1847), English artist and serial poisoner. (14 pages)
• Poems in Prose » Six prose poems published in The Fortnightly Review magazine in 1894. (6 pages)
• Reviews » A collection of reviews written before Wilde's fame. (304 pages)
• Selected Prose » A collection prose writings, with a preface by Robert Ross, a Canadian journalist and art critic. (57 pages)
• Shorter Prose Pieces » Short prose collection on various topics and issues. (21 pages)
• Some Cruelties Of Prison Life » Protest letter to The Daily Chronicle, criticism of the prison system. (7 pages)
• The Critic As Artist » An essay on art written in the form of a philosophical dialogue. It contains Wilde's major aesthetic statements. (46 pages)
• The Decay Of Lying » A critical dialogue between two upper-class aesthetes. (21 pages)
• The English Renaissance of Art » Lecture on the English art, first delivered in New York, 1882. (17 pages)
• The Rise of Historical Criticism » Lengthy essay evaluating historical writings and the art of criticism. (40 pages)
• The Soul Of Man Under Socialism » An essay exploring socialism ideas. (24 pages)
• The Truth Of Masks » An essay focusing of dramatic theory. (17 pages)