The Soul of Man Under Socialism

An allusion is a reference to a well-known work, person, or event. As a poet, novelist, and playwright in dialogue with his peers, Wilde uses allusions liberally. Early in the essay, he lists several people he considers to be “great men” (Darwin, Keats, Renan, and Flaubert), and only a few paragraphs later he lists several writers he considers to have attained something like fully realized personalities (Byron, Shelley, Browning, Hugo, and Baudelaire). Wilde’s praise for these figures, whom he assumes readers will recognize, tallies with his point about The Cultivation of Individualism. Of the writers Wilde lists, four—Hugo in France, and Keats, Byron, and Shelley in England—belong to the Romantic school, which stressed the primacy of the inner self. Wilde’s allusions to artists also demonstrate his knowledge of the subject, establishing himself as an educated authority to foster trust.

As the inclusion of Darwin’s name demonstrates, Wilde’s allusions are not limited to the world of art; Wilde references a range of topics from religion, history, and science. Some allusions are casual, if he were only half-recalling them: “[S]omebody—was it Burke?—called journalism the fourth estate” (57). The reference is to Edmund Burke, a conservative political philosopher, but the substance of the allusion is less important than its tonal effect; the parenthetical creates a friendly rapport with the reader. Wilde’s historical allusions often buttress his claims about the movement of human society toward socialist individualism across time: Referencing Socrates, he writes, “‘know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written” (23). Many of Wilde’s allusions are to the Bible, which was not only the religious but cultural touchpoint of 19th-century England. Such allusions place Wilde’s radical ideas in a familiar context to make them more palatable to readers.

Satire often uses hyperbole—pronounced and obvious exaggeration—to make its points. Wilde uses both. About the lower classes, for example, he writes that “there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life” (7). This is an exaggeration; Wilde does not mean that literally every person living in poverty lacks these traits, but the generalization communicates the extent to which Wilde sees material want as degrading. Besides adding emphasis, hyperbole can also be humorous—e.g., Wilde’s remark that “democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people” (32). Though Wilde does view all forms of government as oppressive, he overstates that oppression with the graphically physical verb “bludgeoning.” This creates a comical disjunction with both democracy’s positive reputation and the otherwise stately language (“of the people by the people for the people”—a phrase borrowed from Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”).