Oscar Wilde The two great turning points of my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and society sent me to prison.” – De Profundis In his magnum opus, De Profundis Oscar Wilde states “The final mystery is oneself” (Wilde 934), opening an entrance into the psyche one of the most brilliant writers to date. Wilde produced a prolific catalog of works: Poems, plays, stories and essays. He is characteristically known for his wit and humorous observations of late Victorian society, as presented in his plays A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere’s Fan and his last and best known, The Importance of Being Earnest. However, it is in Wilde’s darkest works that one finds his true genius. Wilde dove into the mysteries of religion, humanity, love trying to strip away the mask Victorian society used to keep from revealing itself. Wilde “held a torch which could illuminate the vague face of beauty for many who were half witted or short sighted” (Ellis 191). He went forth bravely and unashamed believing in his principals. He shunned the judgements and advice of others (though not always wisely) to create his art and to live his life with the belief that “nature follows art” (Holland 12). Drawing inspiration from the Romantics and Greek philosophers, Wilde became a writer and thinker ahead of his time. Victorian society wasn’t ready for a man who was willing to “put all [his] genius into [his] life” (Wilde 29). The same society that enjoyed and appreciated the literary offerings could not appreciate the man who created them. Wilde would soon discover “…society itself often creates what it ultimately crucifies” (Ellis 192). On the 25th of May, 1895 Oscar Wilde was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to two years hard labor, which included shredding “oakum till one’s finger-tips grew dull with pain” (Wilde
915). Originally sent to Wandsworth, the largest prison in the UK and still in operation, he was later moved to Reading Goal in Berkshire where over a three month period in 1897, Wilde wrote, outside of his comedies, one of his most well-known pieces, De Profundis, followed by The Ballad of Reading Gaol written after his release. De Profundis Latin for “from the depths” was Wilde’s epistle to the man who ultimately put him in prison. Lord Alfred Douglas, or “Boise” was Wilde’s longtime lover. Douglas, the son of a man with draconian personality, the Marquess of Queensbury, encouraged Wilde to sue his much hated father for libel after Queensbury left a card at Wilde’s Albemarle Club with the words “For Oscar Wilde, posing sodimite [sic]” (Frankel 16). Warned by his friends not to provoke Queensbury, Wilde, blinded by his love for Douglas and the misjudgment of his adversary, went forward with the suit. The self-proclaimed “lord of language” would soon find himself dethroned. In the opening of De Profundis, Wilde encourages Douglas to “...read the letter over and over again till it kills your vanity...until each word makes the delicate flesh burn or bleed” and reproaches him for having “..no motives in life. You had appetites merely” (Wilde 873). Yet it was Wilde himself who not only encouraged Douglas’s appetites, he also gave into them. Douglas was a drug Wilde could not quit and like all narcotics its negative affects took their toll on Wilde as well as his art. Oscar accepted culpability permitting Boise to “…sap his strength of character” and allowing Douglas to become a habit. Wilde would later quote Walter Pater’s “Failure is to form habits” and discover “(the) wonderful, terrible truth hidden” in the meaning (Wilde 879). Wilde’s writing became secondary to his passion as Douglas, like a spoilt child, required constant attention which drew Wilde away from his work. Douglas proved
“intellectually degrading” (Wilde874) to Wilde’s creativity and it wasn’t until Boise took a holiday outside of England that Oscar was finally able to put his “torn and raveled imagination… back into (his) own hands” (Wilde 875). Regaining control of his creative capabilities would last only until Douglas returned. Wilde’s inability to “…never (write) one single line” (Wilde 874) when Boise was around, which was constantly, led to his social and economic downfall. In 1914 over a decade after Wilde’s death, Douglas, now married, decided to write a few lines of his own. His biography, Oscar Wilde and Myself, was, according to Wilde’s grandson, “full of inaccuracies, untruths and attempts at self-justification, even going to the extent of denying that (Douglas) knew Wilde was homosexual until the trials…” (Holland 8). Wilde’s incarceration was brutal and perhaps even more morally decaying than Boise’s ill treatment of him. Wilde discerned “(s)uffering is one long moment” and after hearing of the death of his mother, Wilde’s mental state started to deteriorate and he began a campaign of selfdegradation. Wilde condemned himself for the shame he brought on the name his parents had “…made noble and honored” and faulted himself for giving it “…to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly” (Wilde 905). In addition he was stripped of any parental rights and banned from his children, Cyril and Vyvyan. To Oscar it was “a source of infinite distress, of infinite pain, of grief without end or limit” (Wilde 911). Having lost his family, friends and self-respect, Oscar took possession of the one thing left to him, his writing. As Wilde sought salvation he reasoned that in morality “there is nothing wrong with what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.” (Wilde 915).
Wilde was a thinker ahead of his time. He was stuck in “an age which takes its religion as a liqueur, its love as an episode, and beauty as a lust of the eye…” (Ellis 192), Wilde became a scapegoat for society. He realized “the laws under which (he) was convicted (were) wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which (he) suffered a wrong and unjust system.” He also knew he could not turn to religion as he saw “faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch and look at. My Gods dwell in the temples made with hands…if I have not got it (faith) already, it will never come to me” (Wilde 915). What Wilde did have faith in was his writing. He knew if he “could produce one more beautiful work of art (he would) be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer” (Wilde 917). It was suggested by those close to him to try to forget who he was, but Wilde “found it ruinous advice. It is only by realizing what I am that I have found comfort of any kind” (Wilde 918). His art is where Oscar found his truth. Written after his release, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, became one of Wilde’s most famous poems. Dedicated to Charles Thomas Wooldrige an inmate, convicted and executed for the murder of his wife, The Ballad of Reading Gaol was Oscar’s protest about the inhumane treatment of prisoners as well as some of his most heartfelt writing. Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!
This may be one of the most powerful stanza’s written by Wilde or his contemporaries. This is Wilde not only condemning late Victorian society, but himself as well. There is no doubt the “coward” is Douglas and the “kiss” a representation of Judas’s betrayal of Christ, whom Wilde wrote philosophically about in De Profundis. The idea of each man killing what he loves is representational not only to the society that put Oscar in Reading, but to the killing of the artist. Perhaps Wilde saw the end of the Victorian empire and the changes that were destine with the start of the new century. Wilde feared freedom of artistic expression was in danger. One could not express his true self without the threat of punishment or becoming a social pariah. Wilde contemplated not only the effects of cruel imprisonment on himself but on his fellow inmates as he saw the slow moral deterioration caused by incarceration. Any humanity that remained had been rotted away by the harsh treatments. It was only “The vilest deeds like poison weeds,/(that) Bloom well in prison air” (Wilde 857) leaving any kind of hope or rehabilitation out of the question. Wilde states “It is only what is good in Man/That wastes and withers there:/ (Wilde 858). Wilde’s sympathy for the condemned man and his fellow inmates was part of his “suffering moment.” Wilde died in Paris, three years after his release. Exiled like Byron before him by the very country that had once worshipped him. Three days before his death, Wilde said “Some said my life was a lie but I always knew it to be the truth; for like the truth it was rarely pure and never simple” (Holland 3). There is no doubt that Wilde suffered for his art. Oscar considered himself “a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age…I felt it myself and made others feel it… whatever I touched I made beautiful” (Wilde 912). Wilde decided to take his prison experience
and make it a part of himself, “to accept it without complaint, fear or reluctance (Wilde 916). He was determined to hold onto his art, it was the only thing that was keeping him sane. De Profundis was more than just a letter to Douglas; it was a plea from Wilde who asks us to look for our own faults before judging, “…incomplete, imperfect, as I am, yet from me you may still have much to gain…perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow, and its beauty” (Wilde 957). Wilde urges us to not fear artistic expression “Whatever you have to say for yourself, say it without fear. Don’t write what you don’t mean” Wilde (956). Mostly Oscar asks us to remember “to Humility there is nothing that is impossible and to Love all things are easy” (Wilde 956).
Works Cited Ellis, Havelock. "A Note on Oscar Wilde." The Lotus Magazine 9.4 (1918): 191-94. Print. Raby, Peter. The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.
Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Stories, Plays, Poems & Essays. London: William Collins Sons &, 1989. Print. Wilde, Oscar, and John Calvin Batchelor. Oscar Wilde's Guide to Modern Living. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Print. Wilde, Oscar, and Nicholas Frankel. The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2011. Print.
Works Referenced Graham, Elyse. "Wilde's "De Profundis"" Wilde's "De Profundis" 19 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/graham2.html>. Rumens, Carol. "Poem of the Week: The Ballad of Reading Gaol." The Guardian 3 Mar. 2009. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/mar/23/oscar-wilde-ballad-readinggaol-poem>.