Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Oscar Wilde

“I’m posting this LitSalon Short as a ‘taster’ for anyone considering joining the full study of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, starting on Thursday, 12 November, 6.30–8.30 pm (UK time). Participants will also get a feel for my facilitation style.”

Nancy Goldstein

In this LitSalon Short we’ll be discussing Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime (1891), one of Wilde’s most deliciously cynical short stories. A society fortune-teller reads Lord Arthur’s palm at a London dinner party and discovers something so alarming that Lord Arthur resolves to act on it immediately — before he can be held responsible for the consequences. What follows is a comedy of manners so dark it is practically a thriller, and a satire of upper-class Victorian morality that barely needs to exaggerate its source material.

Or does it? Wilde’s central joke — that a man of honour must commit a crime in order to fulfil his social obligations — is both absurd and completely logical. The story asks, deadpan, what it means to do the right thing, and arrives at an answer that should perhaps trouble us more than it does.

This Short is also a way in to our upcoming study of The Picture of Dorian Gray — a novel Wilde’s fin de siècle critics denounced as unclean and dangerous, even though Stoddart had already gone through the original manuscript, pencil in hand, crossing out some 500 words to make it acceptable. One hundred and thirty-six years on, Wilde’s central question feels less like Victorian Gothic and more like Monday morning: what are we willing to sacrifice — integrity, authenticity, other people — to keep the image intact? Wilde knew, long before Instagram did, that the real corruption isn’t the sins you commit; it’s the lengths you’ll go to make sure nobody sees them.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single session LitSalon Short on Oscar Wilde’s Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime (which can be downloaded from links in this post) led by Dr Nancy Goldstein
• Thursday 8 October, 5.00–6.30 pm (UK), live on Zoom
• ‘LitSalon Shorts’ are single-session studies (usually slightly shorter than a typical Salon study meeting) in which a facilitator shares with the wider Salon community their enthusiasm for an aspect of literature or culture.
• Shorts are offered free of charge, but numbers are limited so please use the booking form below to reserve a place. Although there is no fee for this Short, Nancy asks you to consider making a donation — perhaps the price of your last G&T or flat white? — to José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, which feeds hungry people in war and emergency zones all over the world, from Gaza and Ukraine to Pakistan and areas struggling with natural disasters.