Brahm Stoker and Oscar Wilde: Sexual and Social Identity in "Dracula" and "The Importance of Being Earnest"

Essay by HawthornesPupil April 2006

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Gender and identity were two of the main issues criticized by some of the most popular writers of the Victorian time period, but none of the authors were as straightforward as Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. Oscar Wilde focused mainly on the dual-identity that existed in Victorian society, not only in the social aspect applied to the way every-day Victorian men and women were expected to act, but also when it came to sexual identity, and suppressing true sexual identity to conform to Victorian societal standards. Stoker's views on social identity were similar to Wilde's, but placed more emphasis on sexual identity and gender roles. Stoker was more concerned with the fear Victorian society had of sexual expression of females, and the expression of desire that males would have towards female sexual expression. Though their ideologies on gender and identity roles weren't identical, both Stoker and Wilde conveyed one main shared view through "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "Dracula": that Victorian society feared the expression of true sexual and social identity.

Oscar Wilde was a homosexual author during the Victorian time period that used his characters as tools to show how society suppressed sexual and social identities. In "The Importance of Being Earnest", Wilde makes evident through characters such as Jack and Gwendolyn the hypocrisy in society, giving them an "earnest" and morally upright ideology in their every day lives, but writing them completely opposite in their true form of identity. Jack creates an alter ego named Earnest to keep his honorable image intact in Victorian society, when in fact creating Earnest was not at all an honorable act. Gwendolyn, whose image consciousness is blurred by the ideals instilled in her by society, can obsess on nothing but marrying a man named Earnest because the name "inspires absolute...