140701 assembled Cambridge Companion essay 1997
Jerusha McCormack
WILDE'S FICTION(S)
TELLING TALES
Wilde's first official expeditions into literary fiction are misleadingly slight. From 1887 onwards, he published a series of stories designed as entertainment; most are grouped under the rubric of 'fairy tales'. Like famous one-liners and his parables, Wilde's shorter fictions are oral in origin and are written as performances which explore fissures in Wilde‟s own complex fate: as Irishman turned English; dandy become husband converted to illicit lover.
To some extent, the rubric 'fairy story' does, in all its resonances, respond to each of these categories: as tales from Irish folklore; as fablesfor children, as encoded narratives of homoerotic desire. All, while posingas innocent, were dangerous; all drew their inspiration from a degraded culture, driven underground - whether that of the 'little people', fairies orchildren, or the emerging gay subculture of the 1880s. It is from the margins of society, from the perspective of the poor, the colonised, the disreputable and dispossessed, that these stories must be read.
In composing his stories, Wilde drew on the collection of folk-tales made by his father, Sir William Wilde, and published after his death by Lady Wilde. As one critic observes, when folk-tale collectors such as Sir William Wilde or Douglas Hyde took down the tales of pre-literate peasants in the west, they were 'engaging in something more than an anthropological orliterary exercise; they were making a statement of cultural and political Nationalism'.[14] Oscar Wilde was thus, in publishing his tales, associating himself with such Protestant nationalists as his parents, Lady Gregory,William Butler Yeats and John Synge. By linking themselves with adespised, indigenous and pre-literate culture, these writers identified Ireland with (in Yeats's words) 'the unwritten tradition which binds the unlettered ... to the beginning of time and the foundation of the world'.[15]
Wilde found the form of his tales as he talked them. Writing anintroduction to The Happy Prince and Other Fairy Tales
in 1923, Yeats observed of Wilde that 'when I remember him with pleasure it is always thetalker I remember .... The further Wilde goes in his writings from themethod of speech, from improvisation, from sympathy with some especial audience, the less original he is, the less accomplished.'16 Yeats considered that Wilde had, in writing down what he himself considered 'the best story in the world' („The Doer of Good'), 'spoiled it with the verbal decoration of his epoch, and I have to repeat it to myself as I first heard it,before I can see its terrible beauty'.[17]
What the reader has today in Wilde's shorter fictions is, then, a hybrid: aliterary fairy tale. As such, it reflects accurately the situation of
diglossia in his native culture. Wilde was writing at a turning point for Ireland when, oftwo divergent cultures - the rural and oral, the urban and literate - the balance was beginning to be tipped towards the latter. But insofar as Wilde drew on a tradition considered primitive and degraded, his tales - as a first major literary venture - are also the means by which he invented himself asan Irish writer for an English audience.
In comparison with Yeats's Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry -published in the same year as Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Wilde's construction of his Irishness is circumspect and oblique, refracted through the literary tradition of the Anglo-Irish gentry, rather than drawnfrom the pure springs of native folklore. What marks Wilde as a writer of his class is his preference for fantasy over realism; for a narrative line that operates on several levels and is itself suspended and complicated by aseries of digressions; for a fracture between plot and discourse, in whichaction is suspended indefinitely for a kind of logorrhea, to the extent that the only interest of the tale is an engagement of language with itself as akind of pure verbal decoration.
Such disengagement of language from 'reality' or plot is in fact thesubject of 'The Remarkable Rocket'. The Rocket is remarkable literally because of his remarks on himself: his declaration of success in spite of theevident fact of spluttering failure. The Rocket thus represents an extreme case of counterspeak, in which speech itself is granted the power to counter, if not transform, reality. In itself, Wilde's tale might have been written as an exemplar of what Matthew Arnold called the Celtic revoltagainst 'the despotism of fact'.[18]
Elsewhere, speech literally enjoins an alternate reality. In 'Lord ArthurSavile's Crime', the dire prediction of the chiromantist, Mr Podgers,prescribes the plot: Lord Arthur Savile only seeks to fulfil his fate as if itwere a duty (and, in so doing, satirises the whole notion of moral choice).Other tales abide by the logic of folklore, demonstrating the power of thespoken wish. Thus, the swallow responds to the pleas of the Happy Prince,even unto death. The devoted friend interprets his exploitation within the terms of his exploiter's self-justifying logic. The spontaneous outburst ofDorian Gray seals his fate long before he comes upon the 'fatal book'. Ineach tale, the spoken is primary; it dictates what is to be inscribed as plot.
'The Fisherman and his Soul' best exemplifies the terrible power of words. There, the wish of the fisherman that his soul be exiled so that hemay love his merman-wife, is countered by the words of the soul, who seeks to win back the fisherman - to his mortal destruction. The style by which the soul seduces the fisherman may be only described as Asiatic: jewelled, ornamented, heavily allusive to the exotic allure of the East. By itsmeans, Wilde defines the 'other' of the fairy in a mode which might becalled Celtic orientalism. As England lies to the east of Ireland, and is to theIrish the symbol of corruption (commonly referred to as 'Babylon'), so theoriental defines for Wilde the life of luxury, the life of the senses, indulgedby the spoils of Empire, exemplified by those esoteric collections consolidated in his century by the Kensington (later Victoria and Albert) and British Museums.19 Yeats employed the same metaphor when he commented to the young Wilde fresh from Dublin, the English aristocracy'were the nobles of Baghdad'.[20]
In other stories, the depredations of Empire, the stark contrast between obscene luxury and appalling poverty, the hidden subtext of two Wilde's strongest tales, 'The Happy Prince' and 'The Young King'. Happy Prince' is a statue of lead covered with gold leaf: an apt representation of the gildeddross of Empire. Appalled by the poverty about him, the Prince insists that a sparrow carry his jewelled embellishments - the last of which are his eyes- to the poor to alleviate their suffering. In the end, stripped of his superficial glary, the statue of the Prince, now declared ugly, is torn down by the Town Councillors.
The Young King, disowned by his father, had been brought up inprovinces by a poor goatherd. Dying, his father sends for him andreinstates him to his rightful place, the palace, a place rich with the spoils ofEmpire, an inventory of which (as one early critic commented) 'reads for allthe world like an extract from a catalogue at Christie's.[21] There the Kingi ndulges his love of beauty, ordering for his coronation a robe of goldtissue, a ruby-studded crown and a sceptre with rings of pearls. That night,three dreams come to him, each a harrowing tableau of the 'slaves' whosicken and die to weave the robe, mine the rubies, dive for the pearls. Awaking, the Young King refuses to invest himself: 'For on the sorrow, andby the white hands of Pain, has this my robe been woven. There is Blood inthe heart of the ruby, and Death in the heart of the pearl‟ (CW 219). Thus speaking, he dresses himself in his leathern tunic and rough sheepskincoat and, taking his rude shepherd's staff, walks to the Cathedral. Mocked by his people, rebuked by the Bishop, the Young King prays and, praying,is transformed into an image of a transfigured Christ.
Too often this tale, which has the predictability of its well-worn plot, is passed over as an anodyne Sunday-school fantasy. What modern readersmiss is the 'bitter satire' identified by a friend of Wilde's, one who appearedto read the story from Wilde's own perspective as an Irishman.[22] Coming from the modest wealth of Dublin, London's obscene luxury, itsconspicuous waste, could only provide a corrosive contrast to the extremeWilde had seen in post-Famine Ireland, particularly on his visits as a childto the West. His parents, having lived through the famine, were critical ofan imperial regime which had, through commercial greed and politicalindifference, allowed large numbers of people of its nearest colony tostarve, while food was openly exported abroad. 'In peace', his people tellthe Young King, 'the rich make slaves of the poor.'
We tread out the grapes, and another drinks the wine. We sow the corn,and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholdsthem; and we arc slaves, though men call us free. (CW 216)
The first critics of 'The Young King' identified it as 'Socialist' [23] and indeed the kernel of Wilde's essay is here, in the image of Christ asrevolutionary, an adversary of personal property and prophet of personalfreedom. Masked as a child's story, 'The Young King' did not cause theoffence of 'The Soul of Man under Socialism' (published earlier in the sameyear). In the opinion of one of Wilde's earliest biographers, that essay'aroused the secret enmity of the rich and powerful classes' and, in the end,did Wilde 'a greater disservice with the governing classes than anythingelse he could have said or done and at a time when they might have lenthim a helping hand they turned a cold shoulder'.[24]
Reviewing Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories for the paper,
United Ireland , Yeats was more specific. A part of the Nemesis which hasfallen on Wilde's (English) readers, Yeats comments, 'is a complete inabilityto understand anything he says. We [the Irish] should not find him sounintelligible - for much about him is Irish of the Irish. I see in his life andworks an extravagant Celtic crusade against Anglo-Saxon stupidity.'[25]
The stupefied reading of Wilde's tales would also relegate them to
nursery literature. “'It is the duty of every father to write fairy tales for hischildren" Wilde declared, and many of these tales, composed after the birthof his two boys, were recited to them - as Vyvyan recalls - in one form oranother.[26]
What one fails to take into account is that the stories were not so muchcomposed for children - as for Wilde himself. No one (to my knowledge)has considered what it meant for Wilde to become a father. I believe what itmeant for Wilde is inscribed in 'The Selfish Giant'. A kind of giant himself,Wilde might be taken as recording his initial response to the arrival of his first son, Cyril, as one of rejection: '''My own garden is my own garden,"said the Giant; "anyone can understand that, and I will allow nobody to playin it but myself." So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. He was a very selfishGiant' [283].
By the time Cyril was born, the house on Tite Street which Wilde sharedwith Constance had been redecorated by Edward Godwin. With the principal rooms painted in white, Wilde's 'house beautiful' was hardly suitedto young children. Now Wilde had to share that space, as well as hisprivacy and, perhaps more shocking, the body - as well as the love - of hiswife, with successive intruders. Reviewing a handbook of marriage shortlyafter Cyril was horn, Wilde remarked ruefully that 'men must give up thetyranny in married life which was once so dear to them, and which, we areafraid, lingers still, here and there'.[27]
Closing off his own space to the child,the Giant doomed the garden to winter; relenting, he brought spring. ForWilde, fatherhood was also to bring emotional rebirth and a flowering of hisgenius; in the following years, he was to produce his best work.
Vyvyan recalls that when Wilde recited the story of 'The Selfish Giant';his father had tears in his eyes. When asked why, Wilde replied that reallybeautiful things always made him cry.[28] At the heart of such beauty there ispain: the death of the Giant's old selfish ego; his own death; and the imageof the wounded child, at once the Giant's saviour - and his sacrifice.
In that image Wilde embodied his final discovery of himself: not asIrishman, not as father, but as a lover of other men. In 1886, just before thebirth of his second son, Vyvyan, Wilde had been seduced by Robbie Ross,himself only a boyish sixteen. In loving Ross, Wilde discovered an illicitworld, an exotic world, a world of fantasy which, in popular slang, hadalready become identified with that of the fairies, those preternatural folkcolonised by Christianity and driven underground, to live a degraded andtaboo life denied official recognition.[29]
In that image Wilde embodied his final discovery of himself: not as Irishman, not as father, but as a lover of other men. In 1886, just before thebirth of his second son, Vyvyan, Wilde had been seduced by Robbie Ross,himself only a boyish sixteen. In loving Ross, Wilde discovered an illicit world, an exotic world, a world of fantasy which, in popular slang, had already become identified with that of the fairies, those preter natural folk colonised by Christianity and driven underground, to live a degraded and taboo life denied official recognition.[29] It is appropriate that Wilde should employ the 'fairy tale' to explore the conflicts of such a seduction.
The Giant gives up his garden, only to find the child he most loves is wounded with the wounds of Christ: ultimately, Wilde's homosexuality meant the sacrifice of his children. After he went to prison he never saw them again, although, as he wrote, he loved them to idolatry. But that sacrifice began long before, in the divided loyalties of father and lover.
Wilde was no longer husband. The love of women, as the fairy talesexplicitly show, is shallow and cruel. The Infanta only tolerates the Dwarf because he amuses her; when the Dwarf, seeing himself for the first time ina mirror, sees how ugly he is and, with that revelation, the impossibility ofthe Infanta's love, he kills himself. (Could the ugliness here be a reflectionof Wilde's own confrontation with himself in the mirror of homosexual love?) The seduction of the Fisherman by his Soul ends in the suicide of his wife,a death in which her husband chooses to join her. As poignantly, the loveof the Swallow for the Happy Prince means his own death, in doing thebidding of his friend. If, as one critic argues, 'The Happy Prince' announcesthe beauty and value of homosexual - in contrast to heterosexual - love,then it also discloses its price, in suffering and sacrifice.[30]
Nothing is as poignant to Wilde as the death of a young boy. This imagelies at the heart of his fairy stories: in the radiant child of 'The Selfish Giant',the Young King miraculously transfigured, the glittering statue of the Happy Prince. These figures are incandescent because they focus the light of different sources: of the young Apollo, transmuted into the Christ-child and refracted through the Romantic tradition of the 'marvelous boy' - Keats,Chatterton, Mr W. H., Dorian Gray. To love simultaneously Robbie Rossand his own two boys, Wilde must have extended the boundaries of love itself to embrace not only the Greek ideal of paideia - which depends on thelove of an older for a younger man, a spiritual as well as an erotic love - but also the Judea-Christian ideal of the loving father, willing to sacrifice hisown son for the love of his sinning people. In the end, it is the endorsement of sacrifice by which Wilde resolves his two loves of comfort and despair: asacrifice which inscribes these loves as central and sacred.
