Marxist Study of Wilde’s The Birthday of the Infanta

Abstract

The present study probes class disparity in Oscar Wilde’s short story The Birthday of the Infanta from the perspective of Marxism. Oscar Wilde is a prolific writer who also penned fairytales for children. Outwardly, these fairytales are bed time stories for children. In reality, they are multilayered like an iceberg providing various interpretations and meanings. They meticulously address the class discrepancy and other socio-economic predicaments of the era. One of his short stories is analyzed with the theoretical lens of Karl Marx. This study is accomplished employing Marx’s viewpoint of the Bourgeois and the Proletariat to analyze the class bigotry prevailing in the short story, The Birthday of the Infanta. Researchers in the past have conducted their research on different short stories of Oscar Wilde from Marxist perspective but this particular work has not been analyzed earlier. This study will add to the contributions made by previous researchers and it will help the future researchers to conduct research from the Marxist standpoint. This study also accentuates the class distinction existing in the era of Oscar Wilde.