Abstract：In additional to various external factors, Oscar Wilde’s life tragedy is attributable to his own character. Brought up in a well-off family, talented, well-educated, he achieved great success; in the meantime, he developed such character flaws as vanity and extravagance, which made him attach too much importance to public assessment and external criteria and thus lost his self-control. Due to his detached temperament, his dandy narcissism and the influences from his womanizing father, he did not believe in heterosexual love, nor did he take marriage seriously. All this went astray in his passionate homosexual adventures. Moreover, Oscar Wilde was so weak-willed that he became absolutely subject to others at those fateful moments of his litigations, resulting in a failure to start a new life after his release from prison. Such were main subjective causes of Wilde's tragedy.

Key words: Oscar Wilde; character; willpower; tragedy

Dr. Chen Ruihong is Associate Professor inCollegeofLiberal ArtsatNanjing Normal University,China. Her research focuses on Oscar Wilde Studies and British Aestheticism Movements. She is the author of “Oscar Wilde and the Problem of Christian Aestheticism”（2009）, “Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Redemption”（2011）and “Momentism in Oscar Wilde’s Works”（2015）. Her monograph Oscar Wilde: Pursuing Aestheticism in the Context of Modernity is to be published by China Social Sciences Press.