Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Wrightings

The metaphorical effect of this sentence is based on the personal feelings of Mrs.Arbuthnot. Her sad experience of life sounds in this phrase. When she was young, she had a great love. But her passion had left her and “her life was ruined.” That is why this metaphor has a true effective power when it is pronounced by Mrs.Arbuthnot.

e.g. “I am a ship without a rudder in a night without a star.”(p.242)The speaker of this phrase Sir Robert Chiltern gets lost, he does not know what to do in such situation. He says that he is a “ship without a rudder”, i.e. he does not know where he must go and what to do for better future.

Oscar Wilde is always concerned with society. His fine metaphors play an important role in portraying his heroes, their feelings and thoughts.

e.g. “I had a wild hope that I might disarm destiny.”(p.209)

“I keep science for life.”(p.281)

“Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they are better.”(p.85)

“The fire cannot purify her. The waters cannot quench her anguish.”(p.150)

“Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.”(p.283)

Thus, we can see the unlimited power of the artist in showing his imagination. The emotional colouring is made by an ample use of bright metaphors. Metaphor takes one of the most honourable places in Wilde’s art. The main purpose of the author is to affect the reader emotionally through the images. The charm of O.Wilde’s plays is due to the mixture of poetic metaphors and real images. The author does not convince the reader to make the resulting points, but he makes him indirectly judge the heroes and clear the situation.

Metaphors, like all stylistic devices, can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness. Thus, metaphors which are absolutely unexpected, that is are quite unpredictable, are called genuine metaphors. Here we can see some of them:

e.g. “She is a work of art”.(p.175)

“She has all the fragrance and freedom of a

flower. There is ripple after ripple of sunlight in

her hair. She has the fascinating tyranny of

youth, and the astonishing courage of

innocence”.(p.175)

“Divorces are made in Heaven”. (p. 283)

In genuine metaphors the image is always present and the transference of meaning is actually felt. These metaphors have a radiating force. The whole sentence becomes metaphoric. The metaphors, which are commonly used in speech and therefore are sometimes even fixed in dictionaries as expressive means of language, are trite metaphors.

e.g. “My farther really died of a broken heart”. (p.85)

“Love is easily killed! Oh! How easily love is killed”.

(p.86)

“The moment is entirely in your own hands”. (p.344)

Wilde’s metaphors develop the reader’s imagination. At the same time the author reflects his own point of view.