T.S. Eliot in his
‘Tradition and Individual Talent’, remarks, “Criticism is as inevitable as
breathing”. No sooner does a man experiences a thought than he realizes the
contradictory to be true. One finds somewhat same tendency in the Victorian
Era, which is loaded with enormous creative activity. The age was primarily
dominated by the three faculties of History, Philosophy, and Science (Reason).
The growing tendency of development in the field of
Science, the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species shook the faith
of the people in Religion as these developments suggested the ‘existentialist’
attitude which was being adopted by these men of ‘Reason’. The establishment of
Science as a curriculum forced the writers to identify themselves with one of
these faculties. There were poets like Browning who not only hopefully awaited a
better future but were also deeply affirmative of these scientific
developments. Poets like Arnold, on the other extreme, became pessimistic as
they could not even dream of a life which was devoid of their God; to them
science was replacing man’s faith in God and they foresaw something hazardous
as men was trying to peep into the most intricate aspect of God which he
himself just have hidden. However, there
was a third kind also; poets like Tennyson, one of the most representative
poets, accepted science and religion after coupling them together. Besides this
broad division, there were still left certain writers for whom the choice was
very difficult. Standing at the crossroads, they were unable to decide which
way to go and kept looking for a mid-way solution throughout their lives.
Oscar Wilde belongs
to that group of writers who were unsure of what they themselves felt. This was
one reason why Wilde’s works have been so underrated as well as over-praised.
In his Introduction to Oscar Wilde’s Plays, Writings, and Poems, Hesketh
Pearson remarks : “In his own life reveals that Wilde was betraying himself as
he himself said, “. . . get as much pleasure out of life as possible, most
important thing is to enjoy yourself.” It will certainly not be wrong to suggest
that Wilde projected himself into his characters. The dilemma in Dorian Gray,
his narcissism, his hedonistic belief that one should aim at complete
consummation and it was for this this reason that He had gifted man with such
fine senses as it was the only way to salvation: God himself wanted man to
indulge in ultimate consummation as it was for this reason that He has gifted
man with such fine senses, are nothing else but a deep echo of Wilde’s own
feelings, perceptions, and personality. Wilde betrayed himself by identifying
with ‘Judas’ as well as with ‘Christ’, Judas betrayed Christ after kissing him.
For this reason he quite often uses the words ‘kiss’ and ‘kill’ synonymously,
He knew that his consummation in life would kill ‘the things he loves’. (It was
reported by Wilde’s friends that he had constructed syphilis from a female
prostitute at the age of twenty.) Yet not being able to refrain himself from consummation
which was the first and foremost thing God wanted out of men, he went on
killing all he loved and he hid himself under hedonism. He was a Christ inside
as he was sacrificing all that he loved but his hedonistic attitude was ‘Judas’
which betrayed his inner Christ by indulging in sensual pleasures. In fact, it
seems that History, Philosophy, and reason of the victorian age were
represented himself. He killed the man within himself by elevating himself to
the level of a ‘martyr’ and a ‘Christ’and by sacrificing all that he loved.
It should, however,
be pointed out that such a complex nature which Oscar Wilde acquired was not
only the product of the social and intellectual of the age in which he
lived but also a precipitate of his own
personal life right from the time he was a child. Born on October 16, 1854, at
twenty one, westland Row, Dublin, he was the second son in the Wilde’s family.
His father was a famous oculist, father of modern Otology, a scientist of high
reputation, but his love affairs eventually bought him into the law court, from
where he emerged with a somewhat tarnished reputation. Wilde’s mother, a big
woman, a writer who wrote under a pseudonym Speranza, who in her time tried to
persuade her countrymen to storm Dublin Castle, got into matrimonial alliance
only as a temporary break from her busy, and seditions political life. By the
time she brought forth her sons, William and Oscar, she became a weak in strength
but firm in determination kind of a woman. She projected her image onto her
sons and had a firm belief that they would fulfill her unaccomplished. Oscar,
who was the quicker of the two brothers as regards their intelligence,
understanding, reason and logic was a favourite of his mother. This, however,
was a drawback as his mother not only encouraged him for doing things her way
but also projected an image of grown-up ‘Wilde’ which was perfect; a task at
which Wilde failed but convinced himself of his success by elevating him to the
role of Christ. Isola, Wilde’s youngest sister and the family’s sunshine was the
only source of inspiration in whom Wilde found some form of relief from the bad
reputation his father had earned for the family and his mother’s dominating
role.But as his life for Wilde would have had it, Isola leaft for heavenly
abode at the time when she was nine and Wilde was only twelve. Isola had been a much longed-for girl child
after two sons, and, therefore, she was literally worshipped by the family.
Many Critics have attributed Wilde’s poems like Requiescat, Harlot’s House,
etc, to have been composed in the memory of Isola
Melissa Knox in her
book “Oscar Wilde – A Long and Loving Suicide,” remarks, “Though a number of
erotically charged poems concerning young girls and, often, their deaths, such
as ‘Charmides’, ‘Madonna-Mia’, ‘The Burden of Itys’and ‘The Dole of the King’s
Daughter’, Wilde expresses obsessive erotic fantasies about his sister. He reveals not just that he had incestuous
desires but he that he found her behaviour seductive,”
As has already been
discussed, Wilde’s parents were so preoccupied with other things that they
hardly had enough time to look after their children. To add to the misery of
the house, Mary Travers, a dismissed
lover of Dr. Wilde also started harassing the family. To check her from
troubling the family, Wilde’s mother ‘Speranza’ wrote a letter to Mary’s father
which the latter stole form her father’s drawer and sued a libel against
Speranza.
Although Mary won the
case, the Wilde’s had to meet the high costs of the court as a result of which
the family condition further deteriorated and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Melissa Knox further
remarks, “In a home dominated by such parents the increasingly tender and
fateful attachment between Oscar and Isola blossomed. When he died, a curiously
decorated envelope containing a lock of her hair was found in his possession. On
it is written ‘She is not dead but sleepeth’ The drawing on the envelope, on which
he inscribed ‘My Isola’s hair’, seems to indicate a fantasy of being united in
the grave with her. Above the inscription are two wreaths linked by a garland.
One wreath surrounds an initial ‘O’ for Oscar the other ‘I’ for Isola. On
either side of the inscription are identical graves, each bearing a cross with
letters I and O written on either side, in mirror image of the other. The final
lines of 'Requiescat’:
All
my life’s buried here,
Heap
earth on it.
sum up the meaning of
the artwork on the envelope.
Wilde’s innumerable affairs
with young men like Robert Ross, Alfred Douglas (Bosie). And others
earned him the reputation of a homosexual male. Alfred Douglas himself was a
shamelessly promiscuous homosexual. In particular Wilde’s relationship with
Alfred Duoglas was a source of great inspiration as he himself mentioned in one
of his letters to him–
“As for you , you have
given me the beauty of life in the past, and in the future if there is any
future. That is why I shall be eternally grateful to you for having always
inspired me with adoration and love. Those days of pleasure were our dawn. Now,
in anguish and pain, in grief and humiliation, I feel that my love for you,
your love for me, are the two signs of my life, the divine sentiments which
made all bitterness bearable. Never has anyone in my life been dearer than you,
never has any love been greater, more sacred, more beautiful.”
‘The two signs of
Oscar’s life have been none other than those inscribed on the envelope
containing Isola’s lock of hair. It is evident from his letter that he assigned
a similar place to Bosie as he did to Isola. He was trying to bring Isola back
to life in the form of Bosie as he himself says in The Picture of
Dorian Gray: “Romance lives by repition. . . Each time that one loves
is the only time he has ever loved . . . . We can have in life but onegreat
experience as often as possible.”
It was Wilde’s
intimacy with Bosie that led the latter’s father, Marquess of Queensberry
accuse Wilde of posing as a sodomite. In the year 1895, Wilde sued him for his
libel but lost the case after two trials. On being found guilty of ‘indecent
acts’, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labour and was imprisoned in
Pentonville, later transferred to Wandsworth and Reading prisons. After his
release from Reading Gaol on May 09, 1897 he went to Berneval and started writing The
Ballad of Reading Gaol (published 1898). Wilde owes much to Coleridge’s
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”as far as the form of the ballad and its
depiction of the supernatural are concerned.
Wilde
found a life in each of his affairs and consequently he had to die each time
the affair broke. He himself acknowledges the fact that:
For
he who lives more lives than one
More
deaths than one must die.
Rewording the Shakespearean philosophy
(Julius Caesar. II. ii. 32-33)
Cowards
die many before their death:
The
valiant never taste of death but once.
Moreover, though Wilde believed that ‘Each man kills the things
he loves’, he added that their ways may differ. The’coward does it with a kiss,
The brave with a sword.’ Wilde accepts that he was a coward as he himself had
been killing ‘the things he loved’ by kissing them and the perpetual fear of
being damned for the act haunted him throughout his life. However, he kept on
consoling himself by reminding himself that he was not ‘Judas’ but ‘Christ’ as
he was not killing all he loved but was sacrificing all that he loved. It was
his incestuous desire for Isola which he felt because the causeof the latter’s
death, and each time he tried to live this feelings with others, he killed her
for another time:
“For
he who sins a second time
Wakes
a dead soul to pain.”
His
guilt and escape from it in the role of a ‘martyr’or a ‘Christ’ are the two
things that become predominanteven in this poem. The ballad may be suitably
divided into two parts– in the first part Wilde expresses the fear
of the impending doom that he or his fellow-prisoners experinced;in
the second part he discards his fear convincing him that man’s grim justice
goes its way slaying the weak as well as the strong but Christ forever acts as
Savior.
The
hard labour to which Wilde was subjected does not seem to have changed his
belief; on the contrary it only strengthened his hedonism. Wilde must have
recieved confirmation for the twin role which he had adopted.Being Judas in the
eyes of the people, he had to become one with the other ‘souls in pain’ and
like Christ he also suffer and be humiliated at the hands of the ignorant. It
appears that Wilde was not content in confining himself the task of a narrator,
he steps further and instead of presenting himself merely as a spectator or a
fellow prisoner, he identifies himself completely with the suffering of ‘That
fellow’ who’s ‘got to swing’. In fact Wilde had given release to his own pent
up emotions and feelings by giving life to a character who could show his sufferings
on Wilde’s behalf, Wilde is not only the narrator but also the narrated.
The
Wildean dilemma can be noticed as expressed in these lines:
For
none can tell to what red Hell
His
sightless soul may stray.
For
we did not need, in the holy night,
But
in the shameful day
The
world had thrust us from its heart,
And
God from out his care.
Through
the prisoner walked with ‘a step light and gay’, being sure of his innocence;
yet there is a feeling of uncertainty whether he would prove innocent in the
eyes of God. Wilde, similarly. Could argue that he has been right and innocent
throughout his life somewhere inside he was perpetually troubled:
And
wondered if each one of us
Would
end the self-same way/
The
lack of feeling in man to experience the sufferings of others is beautifully
portrayed in these lines:
The
Goverrnor was strong upon
The
Regulations Act
The
Doctor said that Death was but
A
scientific fact:
And
twice a day the Chaplain called,
And
left a little tract.
Though
Wilde and his fellow prisoners were put to hard labour,
We
sewed the sacks, we broke the stone,
‘We
turned the dusty drill:
We
banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And
sweated on the mill
They
could not, even for a moment forget the impending doom:
But
in the heart of every man
Terror
was lying still.
