Wilde’s View Of Freedom

The critics hold different views about Wilde’s view of freedom all the time, but asystematic exposition has never existed yet. Through organizing Wilde’s theory,literature and life, this article expounds the origins, the connotation, as well as therealization manners and the gains & losses of his free mind; this article also probesWilde’s view of freedom. The full text is divided into four parts.The first part expounds the origins of Wilde’s thought of freedom Three originsare summarized; the first is the critique on the modernity of bourgeois civilization; thesecond is the internal demand of being a "marginal man"; the third is the anxiety onthe personality losses of people.The second part expounds the connotation of Wilde’s thought of freedom. Twokinds of free personality existed in Wilde’s heart; one belonged to an ideal world, andthe other belonged to the real world. Although the two worlds’personality bothpointed to freedom, but their generate manners were different. The generation of freepersonality in an ideal world was peaceful, natural, and relaxed, while the freepersonality in the real world which generated heavily and had rebel meaning requiredindividuals to give very great efforts. This part mainly expounds these.The third part mainly discusses Wilde’s theory about the realization manners ofpersonality freedom. Wilde not only gave personality freedom a unique connotation,but also designed a variety of realization manners of personality freedom. TakingWilde sent to jail for the mark, his life can be divided into two stages: earlier stageand later stage. In earlier stage Wilde pursued happiness and excluded pains; therealization manners of personality freedom he proposed mainly included being happy,being guilty and being painful. In later stage, Wilde had new thinking for life inextreme pains. This period, the realization manners of personality freedom he putforward were mainly being love, being painful and being guilty. Here we should payattention to two points. One is that publicizing love spread throughout Wilde’s life, though Wilde emphasized the factor particularly just in his later stage. The other isthat Wilde mentioned the role of guilt for realizing personality freedom in both twostages; however, the starting points were different. Earlier, Wilde emphasized the roleof guilt mainly based on the revolt against society; but in jail, it was the salvation ofthe soul, and what was focused is the meaning of confession.The fourth part expounds the significance and limitations of Wilde’s view offreedom. For this problem, this article discusses from two levels: the art and thereality. In the artistic level, Wilde had defended the independence of art on one hand;but on the other hand he went to an extreme of art, and completely cut off the art andthe reality, so that the art lost its original social significance. In reality, positivemeaning was that it expressed a kind of criticism of reality; negative meaning was thatit was a kind of shading of reality which only made the situation inherent, and finallyhollowed out the spirit force of freedom.