The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve been an Oscar Wilde fan for years – since middle school, actually – and have read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” several times, and “The Importance of Being Ernest” so many times I practically have it memorized. I do so love Algernon and Cecily. They’re fabulous. But this collection of little stories is so unlike Wilde’s other works that I wouldn’t have believed he wrote this if his name hadn’t been displayed so prominently on the cover.
Image via Wikipedia
The stories are written in an almost liturgical style, like they’re old stories left out of the Bible. They’re beautiful, they’re dry, they’re preachy, they’re overly emotionally charged. They’re about charity and compassion and love and selflessness, and they’re just so heavy-handed about it. Plus, it’s weird to see Wilde write so grandly of such things when he spent all of “Dorian Gray” and “Ernest” making fun of everything.
“The Happy Prince” is actually quite beautiful, and reads to me like something out of Arabian Nights. I was surprised by the tone and content, because it’s so starkly fixed on compassion and charity, morals and values I don’t normally associate with Wilde, and the end is dramatic and Biblical, but not so much as to make me roll my eyes. It was acceptable.
“The Nightingale and the Rose” was terrible. And far too realistic. And also justified all the side-eyes I’ve always given to the idea of love.
“The Selfish Giant” just plain made me angry. These children are trespassing on the Giant’s land. He was absolutely right to put up the NO TRESPASSING sign and threaten legal action. It is HIS garden. He can do whatever he wants with it, even let it just sit there. Those little bastard children would have stayed off his land if they had any manners. GET OFF HIS LAWN YOU LITTLE TROLLS. I have to wonder, though, if my feelings here are strongly influenced by the fact that I am an American. Our legal system allows for adverse possession, where if you don’t use your land and someone else comes onto it and puts it to better use, the land is his or hers after a given number of years of uninterrupted, open, notorious, and hostile possession (there are more factors, but I wont’ worry about that until I’m doing my Bar prep course). In America, we have always prized putting land to use.
In England, historically, there was no such thing as adverse possession: even if land sat unoccupied and untended to for decades, that was just fine, because the owner had a right to do what he wanted with it, even if didn’t want to do anything with it. So I was thinking halfway through the story that maybe Wilde was criticizing that policy and advocating a more American treatment of land use.
But then it turned out to be a story about Christ, SO THAT SHUT ME UP.
“The Devoted Friend” just made me angry. It’s basically why I don’t associate with people. People are jackwagons. And I’ve seen the scenario in the story play out far too many times in my life (not involving me) to be anything but jaded about it.
“The Remarkable Rocket” was amazing. I hated the rocket so much, but this story is full of great little turns of phrase that are so typical of the Wilde I always thought I knew. It was a satisfying read if you are given to notions about karma and comeuppance, as I often am. Not always, but often enough.
Overall, I’d recommend this book if you’re interested in seeing a new side of Wilde that’s a bit removed from the perverse and dejected brilliance of “Dorian Gray” and not so sly and sprightly as “Ernest.”
