Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
Quote:
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde
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Wilde could certainly pontificate, couldn't he?
There's nothing wrong with re-reading. But then there's nothing wrong with not re-reading either. Statements like Wilde's are just pompous and condescending to me. And I find it hard to get past his pedophilia and give him any respect at all. |
Paedophilia? Given that the age of consent in Great Britain was 12 when Oscar Wilde was born in 1854, raised to 13 in 1875 and to 16 in 1885. In the summer of 1894 when he was still having his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, they were involved with several teenage boys. One of those boys, Alphonse Conway, whom he was later accused of having relations with was 16, coincidentally the age of consent. This makes it hard to accuse Oscar Wilde of paedophilia by the standards of his time or our time.
For the USA, by current standards in 31 American states, he would not have been guilty of paedophilia since the age of consent in those 31 states is 16. At the time in the late 1800's, most of the USA had the age of consent at 10 or 12 except for Delaware where it was 7 (dropped from 10 in 1871).
For Canada, the age of consent was raised from 14 to 16 in 2006 together with a fine collection of near-age (aka Romeo and Juliet) exemptions to keep down the ridiculous cases such as when a 13 year old girl's father insisted on charging her 13 year old boyfriend with statutory rape and his parents retaliated by having her charged under the same law (~4% of statutory rape cases in Canada involve a female offender in 2012).