The Decay of Living

This excerpt from Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Living” challenges the Victorian belief that art should work to imitate reality and teach moral lessons. Wilde argues that “Art never expresses anything but itself,” giving art its own identity rather than making it adhere to society’s expectation that art should be realistic, respectable, and morally instructive. Contrary to these expectations, Wilde argues that art can exist for beauty and imagination alone. His statement that art is “not necessarily realistic in an age of realism” directly objects to Victorian society’s emphasis on faithfully representing the real world. In wilde’s eyes, art does not serve society. Rather, art can exist for its own beauty and expressive purposes.