Because a reference to an Oscar Wilde character can say a lot more about a person than a few plain sentences can to someone who has read Oscar Wilde. The same may be true of a reference to a Dickens character or even a Seinfeld character.
The reason many great works of literature have the status they do is people have recognized, sometimes over several generations, that they skillfully express a great deal of truth about people, society, or the like.
Because the city slicker isn’t used to dealing with reality, only hypothetical and easy.