![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Instead, they mock Sir Simon, clean up the evidence of his existence, and remain immune to being frightened. For example, the Americans are so practical that they hardly react to the presence of a ghost in the house. Using the Otis family as an embodiment of all Americans, Wilde portrays Americans as grotesquely vulgar and mindlessly practical. Wilde pokes fun both at the pearl-clutching stuffiness of English aristocrats, and at the tasteless practicality of Americans, satirizing the very premise of class warfare by ridiculing both groups equally and showing them engaged in an absurd tussle over a decaying manor.Ĭritiquing both sides equally, Wilde reduces Americans and English aristocrats to absurd stereotypes. While many writers of the period imagined the aristocracy falling to the rising British middle class, The Canterville Ghost depicts irrelevant and powerless aristocrats succumbing to an even worse fate: ceding their place in society to Americans, the group they considered most vulgar. This was a period when the English aristocracy began to see its long-held power in society diminish as the new middle class gained wealth and status. The Canterville Ghost was written in 1887, during England’s Victorian era. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |