Throughout his life, Oscar Wilde preached aestheticism, a stylistic movement that upheld the importance of art for art’s sake. This literary movement and style celebrates beauty as taking precedence over moral concerns; or, in other instances, eschews a didactic structure for a more humorous or indulgent narrative. While “The Canterville Ghost” does not exhibit an overly indulgent aestheticist style in terms of figurative language or description, it does reject the more didactic elements of Gothic fiction by way of satire.
Gothic fiction often imposes a narrative on natural landscapes, using the supernatural realm to tell a story of human morality. Wilde avoids the moral posturing often found in these novels. The ghost brings up this ethical storytelling to Virginia when she agrees to help bring him to rest in Chapter 5:
Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics! My wife was very plain, never had my ruffs properly starched, and knew nothing about cookery. Why, there was a buck I had shot in Hogley Woods, a magnificent pricket, and do you know how she had it sent up to table? However, it is no matter now, for it is all over, and I don’t think it was very nice of her brothers to starve me to death, though I did kill her.
In this passage, the ghost exhibits a clear preference for aesthetic concerns over "abstract ethics," as do many of Wilde's characters.
