What criticism of Victorian education is made by Oscar Wilde in his short story "Nightingale and the Rose"?
Oscar Wilde's short story The Nightingale and the Rose is written in the fairy tale style about a lovelorn student and a high-class girl for whom a nightingale sacrifices her life. Victorian education is one of the main themes which is critically treated by the writer.
Education is given a fairly negative value in the short story. It is represented through the self-consuming study of Philosophy and Metaphysics. Though the Student peruses the nature of existence, truth, life and the universe it has not taught him of human emotions. He is unable to discern between true love and infatuation.
The education received by the Student is symbolized by "great dusty books‟. Theoretically, it is great as it contains knowledge which comes down from renowned philosophers in the world. But the term dusty denotes that it is ancient knowledge which theoretically searches for meaning, in addition to other things, of human life such education has left the Student's defining his short experience in love as a "quite unpractical‟, shallow emotion. Furthermore, as far as human behavior is concerned, he states that "in this age to be practical is everything‟. This is lopsided philosophy.
Wilde‟s technique carefully keeps the Student away from responding or feeling the stronger emotions of mankind. His reaction to the beauty of the rose is "I am sure it has a long Latin name'. He has no qualms about plucking it. Wilde makes him see the rose but not the Nightingale "dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart‟. Symbolically he may be suggesting that the form of education the student is engaged in has left him blind to sacrifice and selflessness. Additionally, he lacks an aesthetic sense which is concerned with beauty and art. This is heightened by his cynicism towards artists
Thus the system of education undergone by the Student has left him an unbalanced individual. Devoid of the fine-tuning of his aesthetic sense, education has created a human being who is "practical in everything‟. Wilde is critical of an education system that is unbalanced. As symbolized through the Student it spews out insensitive human beings lacking the higher forms of human emotion.
Thus Wilde suggests that intellectual development devoid of aesthetic development results in an individual with a shallow viewpoint towards life. This story also throws some light on our present system of education which is increasingly distancing itself from the basic tenets and principles of education and veering towards unsympathetic materialism.
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