Akiva Reads

by Oscar Wilde

Lord, what a way to end a play!

I was thinking about whether this is "historical fiction" given that it was contemporary at the time and I'm just reading it as historical. There's all kinds of historical romances you can read now about this period, and when you're reading them you're like "ah yes, these aristos are the most repressed people on the planet, they're definitely doing premarital heavy petting." Nah, it's more like if word got out that your estranged divorced mother was found fully dressed in tens of pounds of restrictive clothing in another man's house it'll be enough to ruin your entire fucking life. Wilde lampoons the deep and deeply absurd misogyny of his upper class Victorian society, but it's still chilling to read about.