The criticism of American culture

In “ The Canterville Ghost “ , Oscar Wilde makes the criticism of the American culture .
Since the first chapter, he describes and compares it with the British culture .
The American people are more connected to the progress, the technology, the industry, and they believe in the values that this culture produces .
These people are pragmatic, rational , material; they don’t believe in ghosts , in the occult .
The only thing in which they believe is the power of reason and….money. We can see this throughout the book, in particular in the first chapter when Mr. Otis buys the Canterville Chase: for example Mr Otis says “ I come from a modern country , where we have everything that money can buy “.
The British culture is different. These people are more connected to other values that are not in the American conscience, for example tradition intended both as history and legend and consequently also superstition and popular beliefs .
For all this we can consider the British culture as based on ancient and traditional background, so in many aspects opposite to the modern American culture.

The criticism is made with humour. We can see a good example with the character of Washington. When we analyse his psychology, he looks terribly stupid. He is ridiculous. He is sure that any American inventions are working and we feel that for him, American people are the bosses anywhere in the world, which is absolutly false. We can also see humour in the character of Mrs Otis. She just makes fun of Sir Simon which is in fact a sort of "icon of English tradition".

We can conclude by this that American people like to make fun of foreigners. And this can be considered as a lack of respect by other societies.

That is probably what Oscar Wilde wanted to denounce in his ghost story and he did it with that kind of humour so that the American society doesn't feel insulted.

By Fleur and Léa, Mauro and Francesco