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Abstract
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This research has examined Oscar Wilde’s society comedies and the characters representing figures of Dandy and New Woman in response to the Victorian social standards. The aim has been to achieve a deeper understanding of Wilde’s comedies by maintaining a new perspective that has not been adopted by other studies on the dramatist’s works. Under a careful examination of the characters in the plays, the principal purpose has been to find out how the dandy and the New Woman function in relation to each other and with other characters in order to demonstrate Wilde’s understanding of gender. To do so, the gender theory of R.W. Connell and her special observations about gender relations have been utilized to analyze Wilde's characters' relationship. The results show that the dandies and the New Women of these three plays have fluctuated between the stereotypical gendered patterns and the deviant personalities depending on the contexts they were in. The contexts, also, varied a lot including certain areas such as loyalty, friendship, marriage, jealousy, rivalry for love, political morality, etc. that were essentially related to the Victorian society but not limited to that era. Whether they acted defiantly or in concordance with the social norms was dependent on the individual they were in relation with in any of these contexts, which, consequently, determined their masculinity or femininity.
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