In light of some of the reversals of the text, this then seems to be the most crucial and serious criticism Wilde is leveraging in this piece, a questioning of the rigidity of moral assumptions, and perhaps just assumptions in general. His little domestic reasons for killing his wife, that make his crime seem particularly petty, distract from the ghost’s preceding point, “Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics” (196). Though the ghost killed his wife, for seemingly very little, Wilde doesn’t seem to wholly condemn him for that action. His wife couldn’t starch his ruffs properly and couldn’t cook so naturally he took family matters into his own hands. When confronting Virginia near the end, the ghost explains his reasons for killing his wife and remarks that “it was purely a family matter, and concerned no one else,” (196) an interesting framing considering he’s most directly haunting another family. Focusing on the trivialized darker details, the crime of the ghost itself is quite interesting. That humor however, is distracting from the more sinister aspects of the tale, which is something Wilde seems to have a talent for - trivializing or distracting from the sinister when it suits the story, a misdirection from the actual end of the tale. The interactions between the twins and the ghost, that it’s this big, brash American family that can’t be flapped by the spirit - there’s something so charming about the subtle reversals of expectation Wilde is working with. Or if hilarious is too strong, at least extremely amusing. I thought “The Canterville Ghost” was hilarious.
0 kommentar(er)
