Subversion of Victorian Gender Roles in Oscar Wilde’s Selected Plays

This book elucidates how the late Victorian author, playwright and artist Oscar Wilde both mirrors and subverts the artificial gender roles of Victorian society in Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, eventually introducing morally tangled definitions of womanhood and manhood. Apart from the common literature concerning Wilde’s homosexual identity, it examines the invalidation of morality through a specific reading of the two established genders, and hence, brings in a particular dimension. Wilde destroys all moral balances while creating a new perception where no strict borders exist to separate the proper gender traits from the improper. The book is a reference source for undergraduate and graduate students, academics, and anyone interested in Wildean studies and the moral codes of Victorian society.