WILDE’S UTOPIA
Socio-Political Criticism in the Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde
Masterscriptie Engelse Taal en Cultuur, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Shirley Steinvoort, s1613677
Supervisor: Dr. A.L. Gilroy Date: 22 April 2011
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 2
Chapter 1: Origins and Evolution of the Literary Fairy Tale 9
Chapter 2: The Happy Prince and Other Tales 15
Chapter 3: House of Pomegranates 30
Conclusion 47
Bibliography 50
INTRODUCTION
To many people, Oscar Wilde is best known for his wit and humor and as the author of popular satirical plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest and the successful novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is a man who turned his life into a work of art, who is
remembered not only for his literary achievements but also for his flamboyant personality, his homosexuality, and the trials and imprisonment that brought about the end of his life. During the relatively short period in which Wilde produced what is often referred to as his ‘greatest work’, he also wrote and published two collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). Compared to the rest of his corpus, Wilde’s fairy tales are among the least discussed works. Jarlath Killeen, author of The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, points out that “[a]lthough the tales … have received some important critical attention they remain marginal in Wilde Studies, simply because most critics are unsure what to make of them” (1). Wilde is generally known as a subversive author, a critic of Victorian values, and his fairy tales appear, at first glance, conservative. This poses a problem for critics of Wilde because they are unsure how the fairy tales relate to the rest of his work. The tales are often left out in discussions of Wilde’s critical canon, much like De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. These two works, which were written towards the end of Wilde’s life, also present a challenge for critics because they show a significant shift in Wilde’s aesthetic ideas. According to Killeen the problems critics experience with the tales are partly caused by a failure to recognize the restrictions of the genre (Killeen 2). Fairy tales can appeal to both children and adults on different levels and call for a specific interpretive approach.
Wilde’s choice to write in this genre raises questions about his anticipated audience and his intentions; this has been an issue ever since the tales were first published.
Contemporary critics wondered whether the tales were suitable for children, because a lot of them show Wilde’s characteristically elaborate and decadent style. More than a few sentences are dedicated to lists of expensive objects and furniture, which led at least one reviewer to remark that parts of the tales read like “an extract from a catalogue at Christie’s” (qtd in Heath, par. 1). Alexander Galt Ross remarked in the Saturday Review, that the audience of The Happy Prince “will assuredly not be composed of children” because “no child will sympathize at all with Mr. Wilde’s Happy Prince” (qtd in Beckson 61). A House of
Pomegranates received similar critiques: “Is A House of Pomegranates intended for a child’s book? We confess that we do not exactly know” (qtd in Beckson 113). Other reviews did recognize the appeal the tales would have for children, but Oscar Wilde himself did not simplify the matter. He stated, in a letter to W.E. Gladstone, that the collection of fairy tales “is really meant for children” (Wilde Life in Letters 108), but later wrote that the tales were “not for children, but for childlike people from eighteen to eighty,” and in defense of his second volume of fairy tales he remarked that he “had about as much intention of pleasing the British child as [he] had of pleasing the British public” (qtd in Beissel Heath, par. 1).
This is an endless debate, but it is safe to say that the stories were at least partially intended for a young audience. They were definitely read by children and adults alike, and a number of them remain very popular today. They have been translated into Dutch, French, Spanish, and many other languages. In the years following their publication some of the tales were adapted in the form of ballets and opera, and more recently they have served as the source and inspiration for music and animated films. One episode of the American television show Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child featured “The Happy Prince”, set in modern day New York and starring Cyndi Lauper as the pigeon who helps the poor. The tales are also available today in a special edition, selected and presented by British author and
Renaissance man Stephen Fry, who is a great fan of Wilde and wants to show a modern audience that the stories are still relevant today.
The fairy tale as a subject of scholarly interest has been examined from numerous perspectives. Part of this research has focused on the folkloric origins of the genre and the way in which oral and literary tales have influenced each other. Vladimir Propp is known for his structuralist approach; looking for uniformity in the genre, he analyzed the basic
components of a tale and concluded that many, if not all fairy tales, share a similar structure. Very popular so far has been the historical approach. The idea that fairy tales reflect the social and historical conditions and values of their time is one of the basic assumptions of the
authority on the genre, Jack Zipes. Combining a historical approach with Marxism, Zipes has argued that fairy tales were, at some point, appropriated by the bourgeoisie and reshaped to reinforce their ideology. Zipes has been writing and publishing about fairy tales his whole adult life, and quite recently introduced an interesting new approach to the fairy tale genre. In his book Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre he writes:
[I]t is not sufficient now to argue as I have done in the past that the classical tales have been consciously and subconsciously reproduced largely in print by a cultural industry that favors patriarchal and reactionary notions of gender, ethnicity, behavior, and social class. There are other important elements or ingredients in the tales themselves as well as external factors that need more attention. (Stick 2)
To analyze these “other important elements” Zipes employs a theory of memetics. This theory has biological origins and maintains that humans store cultural information in their memory in the form of memes. A meme is basically a unit of cultural ideas or practices that can be
transmitted from one person to another, for example through writing. The notion of a meme is not new – British scientist Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, illustrates the idea of a meme with the following example: “[i]f a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If
the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain” (qtd in Zipes Stick 4). Memes, according to Dawkins, function much like living structures; they have the capacity to be imitated and to replicate themselves. They also evolve, and “the dynamics will depend on the environment” (Zipes Stick 5). Zipes is the first to apply this theory to the fairy tale genre. He recognized that it concerns a popular and “catchy theory” that is not yet supported by “conclusive scientific evidence”, but nonetheless he considers the biological analogy very useful to discuss a literary genre. “A meme must be made relevant to stick,” he writes, “and as a fairy tale it has been made relevant in an evolutionary process” (Stick 7).
It does indeed make sense to consider the genre from this perspective; as Matthew Grenby points out, “what is most striking about the eighteenth and nineteenth century fairy tale is the proficiency with which it was able to adapt itself to the changes demanded by the consumers of children’s literature” (“Tame Fairies” 3). Also, this theory would, to a certain extent, explain why it is that modern fairy tales sometimes fail to work. Over the years there have been many attempts to reinvent the genre, to shed the traditional conventions and create new fairy tales. While some of these have been a great success, others, for some reason, have failed to stick. Zipes offers an explanation for this; memes are passed on over the generations, so people have a certain idea of what a fairy tale should be like. If a tale is too different it will not conform to the fairy tale meme in their minds, and thus, while it can still impress as an exceptional tale, it will be rejected as a fairy tale. Applied to the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde, this can explain both their success and why they are so different from Wilde’s other work.
It is important to note, however, that while fairy tales can be subject to certain restrictions in style and content, it is a mistake to assume that they are necessarily conservative and didactic. Killeen points out that this is part of the reason critics ignore Wilde’s tales; it is hard to argue for Wilde as a social subversive when you start off with the assumption that fairy tales are “theoretically conformist work” (1). In the first half of the
nineteenth century, fairy tales were indeed predominantly imbued with moral and religious values. “British writers of moral tales apparently understood the powerful effect the fairy tale on the minds and imaginations of the young and sought to employ the conventions of the fairy tales to teach moral lessons,” Anita Moss writes (15). However, Oscar Wilde’s stories
definitely do not fit this mold. As Zipes writes, Wilde uses his tales “a radical mirror to reflect what was wrong with the general discourse on manners, mores, and norms in society” (Zipes Subversion 99). Wilde’s fairy tales deal with race, class, and gender, but also with art and the role of the artist in Victorian times, often with a rather uncharacteristic subtlety. An 1888 review of The Happy Prince in the Athenaeum remarks that “[t]here is a piquant touch of contemporary satire which differentiates Mr. Wilde from the teller of pure fairy tales; but it is so delicately introduced that the illusion is not destroyed and a child would delight in the tales without being worried or troubled by their application” (qtd in Beckson, 60).
Some of the stories might appear subdued compared to Wilde’s normally outspoken and flamboyant writing style, but it is important to consider that he is working within a specific genre. While he adheres to a certain extent to the style this genre calls for, he also uses it to play with the expectations of the reader. “The Remarkable Rocket,” which appears in the first volume, is clearly a satire, in which Wilde fully employs his comic style and wit in criticizing Victorian society. However, it is more subtle, and therefore perhaps even more admirable, when he achieves this in the more ‘classical’ tales that draw inspiration from Anderson and the Grimms while at the same time rearranging their structure, exposing not only what, according to Wilde, is wrong with society but also how the genre has been used to promote the ideas that, instead of challenging and changing the status quo, only maintain the current situation. One example of this is “The Star-Child”, which ends with its protagonists on the throne, ruling his kingdom peacefully. However, as soon as he dies – which is quite soon indeed, because “so great has been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing” on his
way towards becoming king that he did not last for more than three years – he was succeeded by a monarch who “ruled evilly” (Wilde, Stories for all Ages, 142). The Star-Child’s rule might have been good, but because the basic structure of society is not altered – the monarchy is maintained – the effects do not last. Poured into the form of a Romantic fairy tale, the subversive content of Wilde’s tales may, at times, be difficult to discern. In order to uncover it, it is useful to look at some of Wilde’s other work.
Around the same time he produced his fairy tales, Wilde wrote an essay entitled “The Soul of Man under Socialism”. In this essay Wilde expresses his Socialist ideology and speaks out against capitalism, hypocrisy and authority. He makes an interesting case against what he sees as the misplaced altruism of the English. He compares the situation to a slave owner who is nice to his slaves; it does not solve the injustice but it maintains the system. This is how, according to Wilde, the English treated the poor working classes; by performing acts of altruism they could clear their conscience while the actual problem remained unsolved. He also criticizes the obsession with material possession and challenges the concept of
authority. The socialism Wilde envisions is free of all authority, both that of the government and that of the church, but above all the authority of the public: the Prince has tyranny over people’s bodies. The pope over the soul. The public over both (“Soul of Man” 415). Wilde promotes socialism not only because he sees it as the solution to social injustice, he also thinks the absence of authority will leave people free to develop themselves as individuals. This Individualism will be most important for the artist, who should not have to heed public opinion; artists should not have to let the public dictate what is art and what is beautiful. Those critics that are unsure what to make of Wilde’s fairy tales will probably have no trouble categorizing this essay; it fits the image of Wilde perfectly both in style and content. Yet almost every issue that is so explicitly discussed in “Soul of Man” is also present in his collection of fairy tales. Most of the stories in the first volume feature characters who are
victims of the status quo, while many in the second volume revolt against their situation. Together, The Happy Prince and House of Pomegranates act out the ideas and ideals from “Soul of Man,” demonstrating and also problematizing their applicability in contemporary society. The essay is a very useful tool for interpreting the fairy tales and helps to uncover the socio-political content that lies hidden behind the classic fairy tale structure. In the following chapters I will explore the history of the literary fairy tale and the tales themselves, grouped according to subject matter, in relation to Wilde’s essay “Soul of Man”. One chapter is dedicated to each collection and short summaries are provided for those unfamiliar with the tales.
CHAPTER 1
Origins and Evolution of the Literary Fairy Tale
Fairy tales as we know them today have their origins in folklore. Jack Zipes states in his elaborate study of the origins of the genre that the tales emerged from the olden day myths that served as “supernatural explanations for present day realities” (Fairy Tale as Myth 4). These myths, known by adults and children alike, were repeated over the generations in many different forms, both oral and literary. The oral folk tales had an important function within a community. Most of them emphasized communal harmony; they brought members of a group or tribe closer together and “provide[d] them with a sense of mission” (Zipes Myth 10). These tales reflected the beliefs and behaviors of a particular group, and as these beliefs and
behaviors changed, so did the tales. According to Zipes “it is impossible to grasp the history of the fairy tale ... without taking into consideration the manner in which the tales have been revised and duplicated” (Myth 10).
The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century had serious ramifications for the oral folk tales. There was a shift from oral to written form, and this changed the way in which the tales were distributed. While literacy had increased with the invention of the
printing press, it was still very much an ability belonging to the elite. Oral folk tales had been available to all, but the literary variants that emerged were available only to those with the money to buy the expensive books and the ability to read them. “No matter where the literary tale took root and established itself,” Zipes writes, “it was written in a standard ‘high’
language that the folk could not read, and it was written as a form of entertainment and education for members of the ruling classes” (Myth 13). The folktale genre was now split up into new genres. The oral folktale became typical entertainment for the lower classes, while what would ultimately become the literary fairy tale emerged as a genre belonging to the
upper classes. Of course, print culture also did much to preserve the tales and it made them available to a larger audience; this should not be underestimated. However, with part of the folktale genre appropriated by a specific social class, the shape and content of the tales would eventually change to reflect that class’s ideology and to reinforce their mores and values.
The newly emerging genre of the literary fairy tale was met with a lot of criticism in Britain. From the very beginning, there was a certain distrust of the form. Anita Moss points out that “Chaucer’s Wife of Bath complains that the clerics have chased the fairies out of Britain” (15), and indeed Christian clerics were skeptical about the tales, which they saw as a manifestation of pagan memory in Britain. This attitude prevailed during the Middle Ages, and later, during the Enlightenment there was also a tendency to get rid of the “ancient” myths that, according to some, “enfeebled [the mind]” so that a rational world of “equality and liberty” could be created (Zipes Myth 4). In spite of this, the fairy tale genre became more and more established. Old myths might have disappeared; this can happen when stories lose their relevance and become too anachronistic. However, as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer point out in Dialect of Enlightenment, new myths were created in their place. These new myths were “based on the conviction that our own civilized reason had the true power to improve the living and working conditions of all human beings,” but it was in fact the rising bourgeoisie that “spoke out in the name of all human beings while really speaking in its own interest” (Zipes Myth 4). According to Zipes, this is evident not only in the new myths of that period but also in fairy tales.
The development of the fairy tale genre in Britain has been influenced to a great extent by the evolution of the genre in Italy and France. Sixteenth-century Italian writer Giovanni Francesco Straparola published his first collection of fairy tales in the 1550s. His collection contains the first written versions of many fairy tales, for example “Puss in Boots”, and Zipes refers to him as the progenitor of the literary fairy tale in Europe (Swann Jones 38; Zipes
Tradition 841). His tales inspired French writer Charles Perrault. Perrault, born in Paris in 1628, was a member of a wealthy bourgeois family, and he popularized the fairy tale in the upper classes of society. His collection of fairy tales, published in 1697 and known in English as The Tales of Mother Goose, combined myth and details from everyday life. His
contemporary Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy also had an important role; in 1697 she published a collection of fairy tales called Contes de Fées (Stories of Fairies), originating the term we still use for the genre today. Together with others, these writers took the fairy tale and
“transformed it into a literary tale that addressed the concerns, tastes, and functions of court society” (Zipes Myth 11). Both Perrault and d’Aulnoy’s works were translated into English, boosting the status of the literary fairy tale as a form of entertainment for the upper classes. In spite of this, the genre was still met with skepticism. This had much to do with class
prejudice; Matthew Grenby points out that “from the eighteenth century to the present there has clearly been a strong sense among readers, writers and publishers [...] that fairy tales somehow represent a ‘national’, or to use a more expressive, if more loaded, term, ‘völkisch’ culture” (“Introduction” 23). The French court tradition and the German literary
künstmarchen instituted the fairy tale in upper-class society, and they were more easily accepted by the middle class in Britain because of this (Moss 16).
Centuries ago, when children were generally regarded as small adults, there was no literature created especially for children. Sure enough, there were educational books and religious works that were used to instruct children, but every entertaining book, from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Reformation, was written with an adult
audience in mind. Fourteenth-century children would read Chaucer for entertainment just like their parents. The same is true for fairy tales; they were initially written and published for adults and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that European countries started publishing tales especially for children. One of the reasons Zipes gives for this is that fairy
tales were often very symbolical; they “could be read on so many different levels that they were considered to be somewhat dangerous: social behavior could not be totally dictated, prescribed, and controlled through the fairy tale, and there were subversive features in language and theme” (Myth 14). Also, fairy tales contained many elements that were
considered inappropriate for children. In one of the earlier versions of Grimm’s Rapunzel, for example, she was placed in the tower because the Prince had impregnated her. Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes and heels in an attempt to fit their feet into the glass slipper. Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty (1679) was not just kissed by a prince while she was asleep, but raped, and she bore him two children before waking up. With this in mind, it is perhaps not very surprising that a lot of the fairy tales were reworked and sanitized for children. As Zipes points out, the most successful writers of the time were those who “exercised self-censorship and restraint in conceiving and writing down tales for children” (Myth 15).
Criticism of the genre remained though; Moss states that “fairy tales encountered radical opponents and ardent defenders throughout nineteenth-century Britain” (15). This was partly because of the gruesome elements that fairy tales sometimes contained, but there were other reasons. Puritans considered fairy tales a form of witchcraft and writers such as
Trimmer and Sherwood, whom Moss calls “defenders of upper middle-class values,” wrote against the genre (15). Sarah Trimmer was a noted critic of children’s literature and publisher of the Guardian of Education (1802-1806). She considered the fairy tale as anti-Christian and condemned the genre by association. Nicholas Tucker points out that fairy tales sometimes appeared in cheap chapbooks next to titles like How to Restore a lost Maidenhead, or solder a Crackt one, and that in Trimmer’s view “the vendors of chapbooks [...] did not belong to the middle-class world of the respectable bookshop stocked by safe products from educational or religious publishers” (107). However, while some saw the genre as corruptive, other writers
saw the benefits: “even as early as the 1830s and 1840s, British writers of moral tales apparently understood the powerful effect of the fairy tale on the minds and imaginations of the young and sought to employ the conventions of fairy tales to teach moral lessons” (Moss 15). Writers such as Mark Lemon and Christina Rossetti wrote tales in this didactic fashion (Moss 15).
The evolution of the fairy tale in Britain was furthered by the German and
Scandinavian fairy tale traditions. The German Johann Musäus began a collection of literary or art fairy tales, Künstmarchen, at the end of the eighteenth century (Moss 16). Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm completed a collection of Kinder und Hausmärchen (1812) in an attempt to preserve German folklore. Hans Christian Andersen published his first collection of fairy tales in 1835. These writers were generally conservative “with regard to gender, religion, and social class” (Zipes Stick xii). According to Matthew Grenby this new wave of fairy tales “suited a new romantic sensibility”, which is why they became so popular in Britain (“Tame Fairies” 2). Zipes asserts that these tales, cleansed of unsuitable material, encouraged the bourgeoisie’s “changing attitude toward the fairy tale [...] during the course of the 1820s and 1830s,” and Moss states that “[t]he tradition of German Romantic künstmarchen is perhaps the most important one in influencing what was to become the major tradition of fantasy in nineteenth-century Britain” (qtd in Grenby “Tame Fairies” 1; Moss 17). George MacDonald read the German tales and combined their style with “French, Scandinavian, and Celtic traditions” (Moss 17). The Romantic fairy tale that emerged was very popular and inspired many other fairy tale writers, including, of course, Oscar Wilde, who had experienced the trend to collect and write down folktales firsthand. Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde, was not only a very prominent eye and ear surgeon, antiquarian, and amateur archeologist; he was also “one of the country’s first folklorists,” writing down stories told to him by the Irish peasants
he treated as a doctor and occasionally even “accepting a story as payment for his services” (Wright 18).
The Victorian writers that followed in the footsteps of ‘classic’ fairy tale authors such as Andersen and the Grimms often subscribed to the same conventional and conservative ideology. Zipes summarizes some of the crucial functions of the literary fairy tale by the end of the nineteenth century: together with its encouragement of “notions of rags to riches” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” the tales “introduced notions of elitism and separatism through a select canon of tales geared to children who knew how to read,” and “although the plots varied and the themes and characters were altered, the classical fairy tale for children and adults reinforced the patriarchal symbolical order based on rigid notions of sexuality and gender” (Myth 74). Wilde, of course, breaks away from this. As will become clear in the next chapters, he draws on these classical tales and uses some of their elements and motifs in his own tales, but he uses them in such a way that the reader is brought to question them.
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HAPTER2
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
The first collection of Wilde’s fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, was originally published in 1888. While the collection has received relatively little attention from critics compared to Wilde’s other work, it was a huge success with the general public and it still is today. It is perhaps the first product of what is now known as Wilde’s ‘greatest work’, which includes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his satirical plays (e.g. The Importance of Being Ernest) and his critical essays (e.g. “The Critic as Artist,” “The Decay of Lying”). It preceded, by a couple of years, the publication of Wilde’s major political work “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” which was published in 1891. Many of this essay’s major points are in fact already present in the fairy tales.
One thing Wilde promotes in “Soul of Man” is the abolition of private property and an equal redistribution of wealth: “converting private property into public wealth and substituting co-operation for competition ... will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the material well-being of each member of the community” (“Soul of Man” 390). Three of this collection’s five stories explore this topic, and each of them shows a different aspect of the problem. The protagonist of “The Happy Prince” tries to mend the poverty in his former kingdom, but his charity only reaches so far. Little Hans, in “The Devoted Friend,” is the one at the other end of social stratum but his naive acceptance of the situation stands in the way of a better life. The characters in “The Selfish Giant” are the only ones who have found a balance. The Giant undergoes a personal transformation because his authority is challenged by the children and their actions result in a permanent change.
The two other stories, “The Nightingale and the Rose” and “The Remarkable Rocket” deal with another major concern of Wilde’s: the place of the artist in society. The first story
features an unappreciated artist; she creates a beautiful thing but her environment completely disregards it. The latter is about a failed artist, who with his egotism has deprived himself of an audience. The socialism Wilde would later preach in “Soul of Man” was important to him not just because it would alleviate the suffering of the poor, but even more so because it would lead to Individualism and artistic freedom. According to Wilde, an artist should be free to create whatever he wants, without interference of the government and, most of all, without interference of the public. Public opinion, Wilde would claim in “Soul of Man,” tries to control both thought and art, and “[t]hey are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing” (403). The characters in both these tales are victims of this situation.
Overall, The Happy Prince shows its characters struggling to develop themselves, to effect change and to make an impact in a world that is not very responsive to their efforts.
Poverty and Property
The first of Wilde’s fairy tales, “The Happy Prince” tells the tale of a beautiful and admired statue of a prince. In life, this prince had everything he wanted while he lived in the golden palace of Sans-Souci (French for carefree). After his death, however, when he is a statue high up on his pedestal, he can see the misery and poverty in his city. He is visited by a swallow who helps him help the poor by giving away everything that makes him beautiful on the outside; the ruby that decorates his sword, the sapphires that are his eyes, and finally the gold leaf that covers his body. Ultimately, the Happy Prince is left looking “little better than a beggar,” in the words of the town councilors (Stories 22). The swallow, who stayed at his side
during winter, dies, the Prince’s leaden heart cracks, and both end up on a dust-heap. They are both invited to heaven by God, but at the same time the councilors quarrel over whose statue gets to replace the Prince’s.
The tale has been interpreted in many ways, with some scholars focusing on the relationship between the Prince and the swallow as representative of Wilde’s homosexuality; Richard Ellmann, Wilde’s most prominent biographer, remarks that the relationship between the swallow and the Happy Prince mirrored Wilde’s relationship with Robert Ross in its “contrast ... of an older, taller lover with a younger, smaller beloved” (qtd in Killeen 21). Killeen, on the other hand, connects the story with “the dynamics of Irish immigrant life” in London (21). Most relevant for this paper is the way in which the tale reflects class
inequalities and distribution of wealth in Victorian England. Jack Zipes notes that “Wilde is able to stress the great disparities in English society by ironically making the dead prince’s pedestal so high that he can realize how miserable the common people are and how
responsible he is for their misery, that is, as a major representative of the ruling class” (Zipes Subversion 117).
Unfortunately, there is only so much the Happy Prince can do; he has limited wealth to give, and is not even able to give it himself. While the Happy Prince definitely saves some lives, he is remedying the results of a problem rather than the problem itself. In “Soul of Man” Wilde would write that people like the Happy Prince “try to solve to problem of poverty ... by keeping the poor alive” (389). This is not to say that they should be left to starve, but merely to stress that this is not where the solution lies. “The proper aim,” according to Wilde, is not to accept the existence of poverty and deal with the problems it causes. Rather, it is to “try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible (390). The Happy Prince was, of course, part of this unjust system before he became a statue. He lived in a golden palace all his life, oblivious to the outside world. His
remedy to poverty is wealth, and Wilde would later write that “it is immoral to use private property to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property” (“Soul of Man” 390). One might consider the Prince to be flawed because he works within the system instead of challenging or changing it – a slave owner who is nice to his slaves. But for the Prince, the chance to make a real, lasting, impact was wasted during his life spent in isolation and wealth. His status as an immobile statue underlines this fact. He does sacrifice everything that is left to him, and while he grows less beautiful on the outside he becomes more beautiful on the inside. When, at the end of the story, God tells his one of his Angels to “[b]ring [him] the two most precious things in the city”, the Angel returns with the leaden heart of the Happy Prince and the dead Swallow (Stories 92). Wilde’s target in this story is not the Prince – he is not the one who stands in the way of a happy ending to the story.
The story does not have a happy ending because, in the end, the fabric of society is not changed. The authority figures in the city are still greedy and obsessed with material things. They pull down the bare statue of the Prince and fight about who gets to replace him; they are just going to put up another extremely costly statue and completely ignore the real problems of their city. Wilde himself wrote that “the story is an attempt to treat a tragic modern problem in a form that aims at delicacy and imaginative treatment” (Holland 110) and based on this statement Killeen asserts that “although the story is indeed tackling real social problems, the problems of unemployment, poverty, exploitation, unjust social structures ... Wilde believes that a different form – and perhaps a different solution – is necessary to
properly tackle these issues,” and thinks Wilde chose the fairy tale because of its reputation as escapist (22). However, fairy tales were – and are – about more than avoiding reality. As noted earlier, from the moment they were appropriated by the middle classes they became about asserting middle-class values and beliefs. With this fairy tale’s unhappy ending Wilde demonstrates the flaws in these beliefs. He denies the readers the happy ending they expect.
He also questions the role of the individual in this; the acts of the Happy Prince seem futile, and some critics see in this story a pessimistic attitude towards social change. Heath thinks this story demonstrates that the change Wilde wanted to see “cannot be achieved by individual acts of charity and self-sacrifice, or even by individuals alone” and must be achieved by other means (Beissel Heath par. 10). Zipes, on the other hand, has included his discussion of Wilde’s tales in a chapter that is optimistically entitled “Inverting and
Subverting the World with Hope,” and while he acknowledges the fact that many of the tales “deny a happy end because property relations and social character are not altered” he
interprets the individual transformations of, for example, the Happy Prince, as highly significant rather than futile (Subversion 118). Although Wilde constantly reminds his audience that the actions of his protagonist do not change the world around them for long, he did believe in individualism and saw it as a crucial ingredient for change on a larger scale.
A story that considers the problem of poverty from quite a different perspective, “The Devoted Friend” opens with the scene of an old water-rat, a duck, and a green linnet in a pond. They strike up a conversation about what it means to be a devoted friend. The linnet tells them a story about little Hans and his friend Hugh the Miller. Hans lives a simple life in a small cottage, and produces flowers and fruit during the summer. While Hans is loyal and kind, Hugh takes advantage of their friendship by taking a lot from Hans but never giving anything back. His sentiment is clearly demonstrated when, during a cold harsh winter, his son suggests they help Hans and Hugh cries: “Why if little Hans came up here, and saw our warm fire, and our good supper, and our great cask of red wine, he might get envious, and envy is a most terrible thing, and would spoil anybody’s nature” (Stories 50-51). Hugh, being the great friend that he is, will certainly not let that happen, and continues to exploit little Hans throughout the story.
The story appears, at first, a typical fairy tale with a villain and a hero. Hugh the Miller certainly fits the description of villain as given by Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folk Tale: the typical villain “attempts to deceive his victim in order to take possession of him or of his belongings” (qtd in Marsh 74). According to Sarah Marsh “the classical fairy tale is set in motion when the hero experiences a lack of something, normally at the hands of the villain” (74), casting little Hans as the prospective hero of the story. The idea of the story as a classical fairy tale is further stressed by the resemblance of some of its elements to two other classical stories. Marsh points out that both the Grimms’ story “Hans in Luck” and
Andersen’s “Little Claus and Big Claus” share elements with Wilde’s story, making “The Devoted Friend” a kind of restructured retelling of these tales. “Little Claus and Big Claus” is about two friends, one of whom is rich while the other is poor. Rich Claus exploits poor Claus, but the latter uses his wit to trick rich Claus, who ends up at the bottom of a river. While this unequal friendship is definitely mirrored in “The Devoted Friend,” little Hans has much more in common with the protagonist of “Hans in Luck”. This particular Hans wants to return home to his mother after seven years of hard work. Along the way, he keeps
exchanging his possessions for items of lesser value, until he is left with nothing. Hans goes from riches to rags, but the ending is, as the title suggests, optimistic. Hans is happy to be freed of all material possessions, and counts himself lucky. Like the Grimms’ Hans, little Hans in “The Devoted Friend” loses a lot of his possessions. The biggest similarity lies in the way they deal with this. Maria Tatar writes that “the eponymous protagonist of “Hans in Luck” might, in fact, well be called an anti-hero. In the course of his travels, he outwits no one” (100). The same can be said of little Hans, who quite willingly hands over his
possessions to Hugh, never questioning his motives or realizing he is being used.
With this classical fairy tale setup in mind, the audience would expect that good eventually triumphs over evil, and that the exploiters will be punished. It is therefore quite a surprise
when the reader learns that in Wilde’s story “poor little Hans was drowned” while running through the forest in a storm on an errand for Hugh (Stories 114). Hugh the Miller is clearly the evil, exploitive, force in this story. Little Hans is a victim, but he contributes to his own downfall by simply giving Hugh everything he asks for. Little Hans is an inherently good person, but he does not think for himself. He takes to heart the miller’s beautiful words about friendship and sharing – words constructed, obviously, to get the miller what he wants. Wilde would later write: “[d]on’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things ... Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you” (“Soul of Man” 397). But little Hans’s willingness to part with his most basic
possessions should not be seen as a virtue, because Wilde also recognized that it was silly to expect this of people living in rags, people who already have a bare minimum: “[t]here is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor” (“Soul of Man” 397).
Little Hans’s acceptance of his situation is, at times, frustrating. He bases his choices on an idea of friendship that is false and abusive, and this is not entirely his fault. Sarah Marsh writes that “Wilde implies that the upper classes victimize the poor not only by withholding material wealth, but also by withholding knowledge” (83). This is indeed displayed when one considers statements of Hugh such as “there is no work so delightful as the work one does for others” to which little Hans responds: “[i]t is certainly a great privilege to hear you talk” and “I am afraid I shall never have such beautiful ideas as you have” (Stories 110). All the ideas little Hans has come from the one who exploits him. In “Soul of Man” Wilde argues for the abolition of private property not only because it will end poverty, but also because taking materialism out of the equation will leave people free to focus on developing themselves. He recognizes that the institution of private property is advantageous for those who have plenty
of it, but that those without wealth are “compelled to do the work of beasts of burden” and never get a chance to move beyond this.
Thus, little Hans is a victim of the status quo; he fails because he lives in a world full of people like Hugh the Miller. The fact that he takes Hugh the Miller’s ‘beautiful’ words about friendship seriously makes him gullible and naive, but little Hans’s failure to realize that his situation is rapidly deteriorating, and the fact that he takes no action whatsoever to change this, makes him, in Wilde’s book, “extraordinarily stupid” because it is to him unbelievable “how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by [private property] laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance”(“Soul of Man” 392).In order to change the system, one has to challenge it, and little Hans fails to do so. Interestingly, the only one with the right ideas in this story appears to be the miller’s son, a child, who wants to share his possessions with little Hans – share, not give them all away. The miller’s son, not yet spoiled by his parents’ morals, is the only one who sees that taking everything is wrong, but that giving everything away is nearly just as bad. Hugh the Miller just laughs at his son’s suggestion: in this story that is not how things work.
“The Selfish Giant” is the only story in The Happy Prince that has a thoroughly happy resolution. Again concerned with private property, it is the story of a giant who returns to his castle, after seven years of absence, to find his garden full of playing children. The Giant, who is, as one might expect, a rather selfish giant, banishes the children instantly, exclaiming “[m]y own garden is my own garden [...] any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself” (Stories 33). Without the children there, however, spring forgets the garden and it falls into eternal winter. Only when the children sneak back into the garden through a hole in the wall does the winter end; they are all over the Giant’s garden, sitting in his now blossoming peach trees. The sight of this melts the Giant’s heart, but he notices one tree is still covered in frost. Next to this tree he finds a little boy who is too tiny to
climb up into the tree. The Giant helps him, making also this last tree shed the frost. While the other children keep returning to the garden to play, the Giant never sees the little boy again. When he reaches the end of his life, however, the boy reappears and reveals himself as the Christ-child, showing the stigmata that he calls “the wounds of love”, and takes the Giant with him to his own garden, Paradise.
This story, though it obviously has a wider scope, has been read many times as a self-portrait. Apparently, Wilde himself loved it best of all his stories, and he often read it to his children (Killeen 61). Many have noticed the parallels between the Giant and Wilde, who did not only display ‘gigantism’ in his artistic imagination and outward behavior, but who was also a large man physically. It has been claimed that the story is about the guilt Wilde felt towards his own children, often having abandoned their family home in pursuit of some lover (Killeen 61). The Christian aspect of this story, the Giant’s salvation, is very prominent. In an elaborately described scene the Giant shows his love for the child and the child kisses him in the end, symbolizing his salvation. This scene has been interpreted as Wilde justifying his homosexuality by depicting “the love for the boy as a form of liberation” (Zipes Subversion 120) but it is more likely, in the context of the story, that the Giant is liberated because he has developed himself and turned into a good person.
At the beginning of the story, the Giant is unwilling to share his garden. This connects with what Wilde would later write in “Soul of Man” about private property: “[i]t has made gain, not growth, its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing was to be” (394). The Giant experiences this; upon banning the children and claiming the garden for himself, the garden is cast in eternal winter – nothing grows, the trees remain bare, and the Giant can no longer experience happiness. The Giant only breaks free from his isolation when the children return to his garden. They are
instrumental in his liberation, but essentially they are disobedient. In “Soul of Man” Wilde
later writes that “[d]isobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue” (392). The essay condemns poverty, but Wilde stresses that the “virtuous poor”, those who accept poverty as their fate and are thankful for charity, can be pitied but never admired. “Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board” (392). Disobedience, according to Wilde, is necessary for progress: “a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real
personality, and has much in him” (393). The children in this story are the example; they do not accept their fate and break through the walls. The Giant is changed for the better because of this, because of his realization that it is so much better to share. He is a changed person at the end of the story, but this would not have happened if the children had been virtuous and obedient.
This is a story that calls for change in the rich as well as in the poor. The Giant, representing the wealthy, must realize that he can only be completely happy, only fully develop himself and find salvation, when he abandons his solitary claim on the property. At the same time the children, representing the oppressed, need to stop accepting the ‘rules’ and break through the system, and the story has them do this literally, by blowing a hole through the Giant’s wall. The Giant has achieved something the Happy Prince never did; during his life he underwent a transformation and stopped being oppressive. The Happy Prince never experienced anything like this in life – the walls of his golden palace hid the poverty and misery from view. The Prince is to be praised for the charity he practices when he finally does face reality, but by then it is too late to make a real change. The children in “The Selfish Giant” represent the other side of the story, and they succeed where little Hans failed. This story represents the ideal situation that, according to Wilde, would arise when, under socialism, private property is abolished.
The Artist and the Public
In “The Nightingale and the Rose”, a nightingale comes to the aid of a love-struck student who is looking for a red rose to give to the girl he loves, in order to get her to dance with him at the ball. The student is desperate, for there is no red rose anywhere in his garden. The Nightingale, struck by his declarations of love and his outcries of misery, sacrifices herself to create a red rose for the student. She dies in the act, her heart’s blood coloring the rose red. The student takes the rose to the girl, who rejects it because it does not match her dress and because it is not as expensive as jewels. The student throws it in the gutter and returns to his books.
This story deals not so much with issues of wealth, poverty, and material possession, but with something less material but equally, if not more important to Wilde. It can be read as an allegory of artistic creation and the place of the artist in society. Central to artistic creation in this tale is the idea of selfless sacrifice. Like the Happy Prince, the Nightingale sacrifices herself, in this case for love instead of for the poor. She creates a beautiful thing in the process, but it goes unnoticed – it is in fact thrown into the gutter – by those around her. Like the Happy Prince, she sacrifices herself for others, but her environment does not recognize it. As Ellen Tremper points out, the Nightingale is even regarded as selfish by those around her (45). The student exclaims that “[s]he would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music and everybody knows that the arts are selfish” (Stories 70). The Nightingale ends up dead, her red rose in the gutter; her act might thus appear futile (Tremper describes her as “a Christ who dies not for our sins, but for our whims” (45)).
The Nightingale represents an artist who sacrificed herself for her work. Her
environment demonstrates what Wilde considered the Victorian attitude towards art. Wilde attributes to public opinion a tyrannizing quality, claiming a few years later in his essay “The
Soul of Man” that “[i]n England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public takes no interest” (404). The rose that the Nightingale creates is true art, because it comes from her own strong belief in love. Wilde wrote about her: “The nightingale is the true lover, if there is one. She, at least, is Romance, and the Student and the girl are, like most of us, unworthy of Romance” (qtd in Murray 11). Wilde maintained that “[a]rt should never try to be popular” and that “the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist” (“Soul of Man” 403). Instead of dictating what art should be, the public should be receptive; it “should try to make itself artistic” (“Soul of Man” 404). It is significant that the student loses interest in the rose when it is no longer useful to him. He cared for it only because he thought it would help him win over the girl. Wilde was famous for his belief in ‘Art for Art’s sake’ and demonstrates in this story his frustration with a society that must turn art into something useful.
“The Remarkable Rocket” presents the audience with a different type of artist. It tells the story of a rather pompous firework. In an unnamed country, a prince and princess are getting married and part of the festivities is a great display of fireworks. The Rocket, who is under the impression that the royal pair is being married in his honor, converses with the other fireworks, all of whom he considers unimportant. The Rocket keeps bursting out in wise aphorisms like “the only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated” (Stories 49). He also prides himself on his imagination: “I never think of things as they really are; I always think of them as being quite different” (Stories 49). His great imagination moves him to tears when he imagines the prince and princess’s future son drowning in a river.
Because he cries over this imagined and highly unlikely event, he wets his gunpowder and is unable to go off when the show starts. He is thrown into a ditch where he talks to several animals, none of whom pay much attention to him because he is not very useful, and is
eventually found by two boys, who throw him into the air, where he lights up and goes out without anyone noticing.
A commentary on egotism, a transparent attack on the narcissistic imagination, a self-parody; this is how many have described “The Remarkable Rocket” (Shillinglaw 222; Killeen 97). Of all the stories in “The Happy Prince,” this one is probably the least like a fairy tale. Sure enough, it is about fireworks that talk and there are princes and princesses, but when the Rocket takes the floor and enters into elaborate debate with the other fireworks, it becomes clear that this story is going to be quite different from the others.
The Rocket displays many of the qualities that define an egotist; the talks only of himself and considers himself most important. He brags about his parentage and thinks the prince and princess are being married in his honor, rather than the other way around. Of course, Wilde himself was accused of being an egotist, and many parodies made him the center of their mockery. This is one reason why this story is probably more than a
“transparent” parody. As Ann Shillinglaw points out, the Rocket is not simply an egotist; the story “represents Wilde’s own parody of the aesthete in society” (222). Shillinglaw
characterizes the Rocket as such based on textual evidence. First of all the Rocket calls himself sensitive, and “sensitivity to sensation, color, and art is precisely what an aesthete cultivates in himself,” writes Shillinglaw. Furthermore, the Rocket comes from artistic stock; his mother was a Catherine wheel famous for her dancing and his father a rocket whose artistic performance was reviewed in the press.
‘Aesthete’ is a label that Wilde himself wore with pride, and the Rocket displays some opinions that Wilde would also hold. When he ends up in the ditch, for example, he is
confronted with the utilitarian attitude of the duck, who doesn’t think much of his ability to “fly up in the sky, and come down in a shower of golden rain” because “[she] cannot see what use that is to anyone” (Stories 56). For the Rocket, this categorizes the duck as a philistine,
and he angrily responds that “a person of [his] position is never useful” (Stories 56).
Utilitarianism, in relation to art, was one of the main targets of nineteenth-century aesthetes. The dominant Victorian idea of art and beauty was that these aspects were closely connected with usefulness. Art and literature should be at the service of morality. Wilde was vehemently opposed to this, as he later makes clear in his essay “Decay of Lying” when his character Vivian asserts that “[a]s long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, […] or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art” (“Decay” 79). Yet the Rocket is clearly not to be taken too seriously.
The Rocket is not a hero, no one takes him seriously and when he does deliver his great show there is no one around to see him. This is a warning, perhaps, to the aesthete who risks being seen as an egotist and thus alienating his audience (Shillinglaw 224). One can also question the reaction of the audience, who throw the Rocket out because he does not perform at their will. This can be taken as another reference to an audience that rejects art when it does not conform to their wishes. However, one can question whether the Rocket really is a work of art. He certainly thinks so himself, but as mentioned before it is difficult to take him seriously the way he is portrayed. He is in fact somewhat of a hypocrite; he insists that he is important on his own, but derives his importance completely from what others think of him. He imagines that, if anything were to happen to him, “The Prince and Princess would never be happy again” and “as for the King, I know he would not get over it” (Stories 49). All he talks about is how important he is to them. He tries to elevate himself, but of course his sole purpose as a firework is to put on a show for the entertainment of others, to “please their want of taste” (“Soul of Man” 403) – a purpose that, according to Wilde, instantly removes him from the sphere of true art.
Both the Rocket and the Nightingale find their art rejected by society. The
Nightingale’s rose ends up in the gutter, while the Rocket ends up in a ditch. Both stories
criticize the audience for equating art with utility; when the rose and the Rocket no longer have any purpose, they are discarded. The two stories also make clear what a true artist is according to Wilde. The sad and solemn act of the Nightingale stands in stark contrast with the rather obnoxious self-importance of the Rocket. The Rocket tries to elevate himself to the level of art but fails; his self-importance is misplaced because it ultimately derives from his audience. Of the two, the Nightingale embodies the true artist, who creates from the heart, but whose act remains unappreciated.
CHAPTER
3
A House of Pomegranates
Wilde’s second volume of fairy tales, A House of Pomegranates, was first published in 1891, three years after The Happy Prince and other Tales. There are several differences between these tales and those in Happy Prince. For one, while these stories were still a work-in-progress, Wilde had become more involved in the Aesthetic movement. His open association with a movement that was, and is, considered as very critical of Victorian mores and values did not make his second volume of fairy tales more popular. The stories in this volume are indeed more decorative, and this focus on aestheticism extends to the subject matter of the tales as well. While social inequality remains a major concern, in two of the four tales beauty plays a central role. Furthermore, the characters in this volume are different from those in Happy Prince in the way they react to their environment. The Young King, the Fisherman, and the Star-Child all reject the conventions society dictates and choose their own path, while the characters in “The Birthday of the Infanta” demonstrate how authority can stand in the way of this individual choice. When one takes into account the argument of Wilde’s “Soul of Man” essay, it becomes clear that most of these characters are one step closer to the ideal world that Wilde envisioned.
Subverting the System
The characters in Happy Prince tried, and often failed, to function in an unfair world. Yet with the exception of the Selfish Giant, they are unable to change the world around them; they are victims of their surroundings and try to mend the results of a broken system rather than the
system itself. Already in the first story of Pomegranates, it becomes clear that the characters in this volume are different: they do not readily accept the status quo and try to break through the conventions that their society dictates. “The Young King” challenges the unfair social system that allows poverty and exploitation to flourish and defies the authorities that keep this system in place. The Fisherman in “The Fisherman and his Soul” acts in a similar manner when he follows his unconventional love for the mermaid. A solution is not always found, but the characters are validated in their choice to reject the current system.
In “The Young King,” the main character is plagued by three dreams the night before his coronation. The Young King is an admirer of beauty, even though he grew up with a goatherd in the forest. When he is brought to the palace because he is the only heir to the throne, he marvels at all the beautiful things he finds there. In his dreams, however, he sees the hardships people went through to create the robe, scepter and crown for his coronation. When he wakes up, he refuses to wear these artifacts to his coronation, choosing instead to wear his goatherd attire and fashioning a crown out of a spray of wild briar. He is frowned on by both his courtiers and his subjects when he goes to the church dressed like this and an angry mob gathers outside the church. Even the Bishop tells him to ignore his disturbing dreams and go back to the palace to put on his robe and seize his scepter and crown. However, when the Young King kneels and prays he is suddenly altered: through the windows the sunlight touches the Young King and creates a beautiful robe around him. His simple wooden staff and the thorns around his head burst into blossom. Everyone kneels down in awe and the Bishop exclaims: “A greater than I hath crowned thee” (Wilde Stories 25).
“The Young King,” as Isobel Murray writes in her introduction to Wilde’s Complete Short Fiction, functions as a bridge story between the two volumes of fairy tales (13). The story has much in common with “The Happy Prince” of the first volume. Both stories are
about a monarch who witnesses the suffering of his people. While the Happy Prince has visions of the poor in his kingdom, the Young King experiences the hardships of those who create precious artifacts for him through a series of dreams. Both undergo a change because of their visions and discover that sacrificing their material beauty brings them salvation. “The Young King,” however, is much more complex, both in its structure and the way it deals with these themes. The Happy Prince gives away his wealth to the poor, who happily accept. Of course, the bigger problem, the source of the poverty, is not solved. Also, the Happy Prince only undergoes this transformation after having lived a carefree life in his palace. “The Young King” continues where “The Happy Prince” left off and asks the questions that are not dealt with in “The Happy Prince”.
The Happy Prince was confronted with the results of an unfair social system, but the Young King is brought to ponder the alternatives before he rejects the system. In his first dream, for example, he visits a weaver who complains about the inequality between himself and his master. The Young King, who at this point does not yet question the social system of his kingdom, tells him that surely he is “no man’s slave” because they live in a free country. This illusion is shattered, however, when the weaver reminds him that “[i]n war ... the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die” (Wilde Stories 11). The weaver obviously wants his situation to change, but he also says “we must work to live”. The wealthy are the only ones that profit from the hard work of the poor, but without work the poor are doomed also. The Young King has no solution to this problem, but he does not want to be part of the exploitation and refuses to wear the artifacts that are created under these unfair circumstances.
This decision is challenged by rich and poor alike when he proceeds to the church dressed in his simple goatherd attire. Someone in the crowd tells him that “to toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still” (Wilde Stories 21). The
King has no answer to this argument – an argument that Peter Raby describes as one “that had been well-rehearsed in Victorian industrialized society (61) – although he is saddened by the dilemma. And most shocking is perhaps the reaction of the Bishop, who urges the Young King to forget his dreams and tells him that “many evil things are done in the wide world” and that “[t]he burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow to heavy for one heart to suffer” (Wilde Stories 22). Ellen Tremper suggests that Wilde agreed with the Bishop, that his fairy tales make it clear that he “has lost his faith in the moral order of ... Victorian society” and that he thinks “that it is best to avert our gaze from the inevitable pain-giving world” (46). However, the Young King is shocked at the Bishop’s suggestion to ignore the problems in the world. His reaction makes it clear that this is not the response to poverty and inequality that Wilde envisioned.
The Young King’s decision not to use his coronation items might seem strange to some. Michelle Ruggaber, for example, points out that instead of giving the treasures back to their makers, or selling them and giving the money to the poor, the Young King wants the artifacts to be hidden from him. He wants nothing to do with exploitation, but he does not offer a direct solution either (Ruggaber 150). This might indeed not seem like a very practical scheme, for it does not directly help anyone. However, it can be questioned whether a
practical scheme is the best way to solve the problems in this inequitable society: “For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish” (Wilde “Soul of Man” 416). The Young King might reject the artifacts, but he knows that just giving them back is not a solution. Yes, it would improve the lives of a few people, but in a way it is using the product of an unfair system to mend the problems that this system causes. The coronation objects symbolize oppression, and the Young King, by rejecting them,
refuses any solution that accepts the existing conditions. He might not have a direct solution to the problem, but he breaks through a vicious cycle of exploitation. As Stephen Fry points out in his introduction to the tale, “should we accept terrible injustice, inequality and poverty simply because the world is so complex that only the most radical change could eliminate them?” (4). This is a question that we can still ask today. The Young King, by refusing to accept the status quo, clears the way for a third option that does not involve exploiting the poor or taking away their livelihood: creating a system that is fairer.
“The Fisherman and his Soul” is another story in which the main character goes against the status quo. In this tale, a simple fisherman falls in love with a mermaid he catches in his net. In order to join her in her underwater kingdom, he has to get rid of his human soul. The Fisherman goes to a priest but he refuses to help because the soul is invaluable and the Sea-folk are cursed. The Fisherman then turns to a witch, who promises to help him in exchange for a dance. The Fisherman accepts, dances with the witch at a satanic ritual, and obtains from the witch a small knife with which he is to cut away his shadow – the body of the soul. The Fisherman follows her instructions and tells his Soul to leave him. The Soul begs for the Fisherman’s heart to take with him, but the Fisherman refuses, saying he needs it in order to love the mermaid. The Soul leaves but promises to return in a year and the Fisherman descends into the sea. After one year the Soul returns and tempts the Fisherman, recounting his journey to the East where he found the Mirror of Wisdom, which gives infinite wisdom to the owner. The Fisherman chooses love over wisdom and does not give in. After another year, the Soul returns and tries to tempt the Fisherman with riches. Again, the Fisherman refuses his offer and returns to his mermaid.
The year after that, however, the Soul returns with a story of a dancing woman with naked feet. The Fisherman is curious this time and follows his Soul in order to see this woman. They travel together and the Soul orders the Fisherman to do bad things – he steals, hits a child, and
murders a kind stranger. The Fisherman wants to return home but when he gets there, his mermaid is gone. When she washes upon shore, dead, the Fisherman goes to join her. When he dies with her his heart breaks and the Soul is finally able to enter his body again. The priest finds the bodies and buries them in a forgotten corner somewhere, refusing to bless the sea and the creatures in it. The resolution of the story comes when the same priest returns to the chapel, planning to speak of the “wrath of God”. When he sees beautiful flowers decorating the altar he changes his mind and speaks of love. When he asks, he finds out that the flowers came from the unmarked graves of the Fisherman and the mermaid, and he blesses the sea and everything in it.
“The Fisherman and his Soul” is quite similar to “The Young King” in that it features a character who refuses to accept the rules of the existing social system. It also criticizes the church for maintaining the situation. In this case, however, the main character revolts against preconceived notions of love and sin rather than poverty. The Fisherman is forced to separate his body and soul to be with his love. As a result, his soul is sent into the world without a heart. The fact that this scares the Soul is an omen of what is to come: “give me thy heart, for the world is very cruel, and I am afraid” (Wilde Stories 161). He doesn’t get the heart – the Fisherman needs it to love the mermaid – and goes into the world without one. On his way he encounters many evil people and many sins, but because he cannot experience love he is unable to judge what he sees correctly. As a result, he steals, murders, and sins along with those he meets. The absence of a heart corrupts the Soul. The question is, to what extent is the Fisherman to blame for this? To answer this we must consider his motivations. Compare them, for example, with those of the main character in Andersen’s “The Shadow”. In this story a learned man sends his shadow away from him to investigate a dancing woman in the apartment across the road. The shadow does not return – it finds out everything there is to know about the world and becomes very wealthy by blackmailing the people whose secrets he
discovered. The shadow returns to the learned man one day, wanting to subjugate him and turn him into his own shadow. In the end, the shadow manages to convince a princess that the learned man is his shadow that has gone mad and claims it is a person. The learned man is put to death and his shadow marries the princess.
The parallels between the two stories are obvious, especially when it comes to the corruption of the soul. Christopher Nassaar, however, who was one of the first critics to connect the two stories, lists several examples of how Wilde has reworked the Andersen tale. One thing he points out is that the learned man in “The Shadow” sends his shadow on a simple mission, a “light-hearted trip”. The act of the Fisherman however, his cutting away his own soul, has much more gravity; the Fisherman even goes through a Satanic ritual in order to achieve it (Nassaar “Shadow” 220). But while the learned man’s action is motivated by a whim, the sight of a pretty woman, the Fisherman has much the much stronger motive of his love for the mermaid. Andersen’s learned man thinks himself quite wise – his job is to write about “the true and the good and the beautiful” (qtd in Nassaar “Shadow” 218) – but he is actually quite inexperienced. He loses his job because the world does not care for the topics he writes about, and he really did not expect his shadow to become corrupted, suggesting that his world view is rather naive. The Fisherman on the other hand, might seem young and common, without an education and without having seen much of the world, but he does know the value of love and this makes him wiser than the learned man (Nassaar “Shadow” 222).
The Fisherman’s love is true, and it is in fact the church that forces him to choose between his soul and his love. The Priest tells the Fisherman that choosing the mermaid would lead to a cursed life: “as for the Sea-folk, they are lost, and they who traffic with them are lost also. They are as the beasts of the field that know not good from evil, and for them the Lord has not died” (Wilde Stories 152). As Kirkpatrick points out, “the clergy represents judgment and religious persecution” in this story (par. 9). There is nothing in the story that
