Oscar Wilde’s style of writing in “The model millionaire”

Oscar Wilde’s style of writing in “The model millionaire”

The Irish writer Oscar Wilde is the most remarkable figure of the aesthetic movement of the nineteenth century. Most of the author`s short stories carry great significance, one of them is “The model millionaire” in which he shows his common style of writing, using dual identities in characters, aestheticism and humour in order to criticize the society of that time and to give us some messages about some important values of life.

As one of the great critics of his society, Wilde used duality. In this story we can notice how the combination of hidden identities catch the reader’s attention, creating expectation and bringing with them valuable messages which discovery impact the readers. In addition, we can see in this short story a contrast between appearance and reality, which are used so as to reveal the character`s personality for example, when Trevor says Hughie , “that old beggar, as you call him, is one of the richest men in Europe. He could buy all London to-morrow without overdrawing his account.”

Oscar Wilde is the founder of the aesthetic movement which advocated art for art's sake. He uses the free expression to create the main character that represents the society’s point of view about art. Hughie is a handsome man but useless in the society “But then he was wonderfully good-looking, with his crisp brown hair, his clear-cut profile, and his grey eyes. He was as popular with men as he was with women, and he had every accomplishment except that of making money”. In spite of that, at the end of the story the writer shows us that art is more than we can see, Hughie’s generosity affects the model`s heart , and this produces generosity too.

Humour is used by Wilde with the only purpose of criticize the upper class behavior, besides using hidden messages. Another objective is making the story more attractive. This character`s expression expresses the author`s point of view to rich people when Trevor says to Hughie “it never entered my mind that you went about distributing alms in that reckless way. I can understand your kissing a pretty model, but your giving a sovereign to an ugly one - by Jove, no!”.Through humour Wilde wants to reflect that rich people are ugly and miserable in values.

In conclusion, the writer has many techniques to make his work beautiful and picturesque. “The model millionaire” is one of his short stories rich in them such as dual identities in characters, aestheticism and humour. We can see that this story has a happy and closed end which is a complement that makes the story more attractive and lovely.

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