The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

  12   Wilde’s little swallow is an “Orientalist” who constructs a fantastic, highly selective vision of the near East as exotic “Other” for consumption by a Western audience. As Edward Said writes, “Orientalist discourse—by which I mean simply the vocabulary employed whenever the Orient is spoken or written about—is a set of representative figures or tropes. These figures are to the actual Orient … as stylized costumes are to characters in a play.… We do not need to look for correspondence between the language used to depict the Orient and Orient itself, not so much because the language is inaccurate, but because it is not even trying to be accurate. What it is trying to do … is … characterize the Orient as alien … for Europe, and only for Europe” (Orientalism [1988; New York: Vintage Books, 1979], 71–72). In the urgency with which he insists on the suffering of men and women in his own city, the Happy Prince challenges the Swallow’s Orientalist fantasy, calling attention to its false escapism.

  13   Wilde here implies that dispensing charity in the form of money or “gold” is no solution to the systematic problems deriving from economic inequality. For his comment that “it is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property,” see p. 110 n.22 above. In “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” Wilde makes explicit the implied protest at charity’s uselessness and sentimentality that courses through “The Happy Prince”: “The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence,” and those who set themselves to remedy the evils they see “do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”

  14   Although the Swallow’s devotion is based on fellow feeling, there are erotic and suicidal elements to it as well, as the narrator’s earlier comment that he loved the Prince “too well” makes clear. Compare the Swallow’s kiss with that ending Wilde’s 1887 poem “Un Amant de Nos Jours” (later titled “The New Remorse” and republished in the undergraduate magazine The Spirit Lamp by its editor, Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas):

  .… Who is this

  Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?

  It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss

  The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,

  And I shall weep and worship, as before.

  15   “In the summer the swallows all fly away to warmer lands, but if one of them should be delayed, it is so overcome with cold that it falls quite lifeless to the ground” (Andersen, “Thumbelina,” in Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales, tr. L. W. Kingsland [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961], 50). The death of Wilde’s swallow from cold, however, is a reversal of “Thumbelina,” in which the swallow appears dead only to recover and eventually fly “far away, over the mountains to the warm countries where the sun shines so much fairer.”

  16   Compare with The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

  And every human heart that breaks, …

  Is as that broken box that gave

  Its treasure to the Lord,

  And filled the unclean leper’s house

  With the scent of costliest nard.

  Ah! happy they whose hearts can break

  And peace of pardon win!

  How else may man make straight his plan

  And cleanse his soul from Sin?

  How else but through a broken heart

  May Lord Christ enter in?

  17   Along with the Mathematical Master and the Professor of Ornithology, the Art Professor is one of three academic figures in “The Happy Prince” who are presented for our contempt. He espouses an impoverished version of William Morris’s call, in Hopes and Fears for Art (1882) and elsewhere, for an integration of the beautiful and useful arts. The Art Professor’s indifference to suffering and restricted, unsentimental understanding of beauty and utility are all the more ironic given that Wilde later came to hold—contra Morris—that beauty and utility are entirely separate: “All art is quite useless” and “we can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it” (preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891]).

  18   Children might well feel that the Prince and the Swallow have received their proper reward in heaven, but Wilde expects adult readers to reach a different, more troubling, conclusion. The brevity and arbitrariness of the story’s Christian ending stand in sharp contrast to the satire, grim realism, and distrust of sentimentality that have dominated the story till now. As Perry Nodelman writes, “Wilde often seems to be teasingly insistent on undermining the apparent moral thrust of his stories, to suggest that only fools could believe that goodness is rewarded.… The heavenly conclusions of stories like “The Happy Prince” are undermined by the wry and possibly mocking tone with which Wilde describes the events that precede them” (“The Young Know Everything: Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales as Children’s Literature,” in Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood, ed. Joseph Bristow [Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017], 189–190). Given the love between the Prince and the Swallow, as well as the Prince’s distrust of gold’s false allure (“the living always think that gold can make them happy” p. 123 above), we are left wondering, how happy will the Prince be in God’s “city of gold” if the Swallow remains confined to the “garden” of paradise?

  THE SELFISH GIANT*

  ·   ·   ·   EVERY AFTERNOON, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden.

  It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. “How happy we are here!” they cried to each other.

  One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden.

  “What are you doing there?” he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.

  “My own garden is my own garden,” said the Giant, “any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.”1 So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.

  TRESPASSERS

  WILL BE

  PROSECUTED

  He was a very selfish Giant.

  The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside. “How happy we were there,” they said to each other.

  Walter Crane, illustration to “The Selfish Giant,” from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (London: David Nutt, 1888).

  Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. “Spring has forgotten this garden,” they cried, “so we will live here all the year round.” The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came.
He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and blew the chimney-pots down. “This is a delightful spot,” he said, “we must ask the Hail on a visit.” So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice.

  “I cannot understand why the Spring is so late in coming,” said the Selfish Giant, as he sat at the window and looked out at his cold white garden, “I hope there will be a change in the weather.”

  But the Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant’s garden she gave none. “He is too selfish,” she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.

  One morning the Giant was lying awake in bed when he heard some lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought it must be the King’s musicians passing by. It was really only a little linnet singing outside his window, but it was so long since he had heard a bird sing in his garden that it seemed to him to be the most beautiful music in the world. Then the Hail stopped dancing over his head, and the North Wind ceased roaring, and a delicious perfume came to him through the open casement. “I believe the Spring has come at last,” said the Giant; and he jumped out of bed and looked out.

  What did he see?

  He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children’s heads. The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing. It was a lovely scene, only in one corner it was still winter. It was the farthest corner of the garden, and in it was standing a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly. The poor tree was still quite covered with frost and snow, and the North Wind was blowing and roaring above it. “Climb up! little boy,” said the Tree, and it bent its branches down as low as it could; but the boy was too tiny.2

  And the Giant’s heart melted as he looked out.3 “How selfish I have been!” he said, “now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will put that poor little boy on the top of the tree, and then I will knock down the wall, and my garden shall be the children’s playground for ever and ever.” He was really very sorry for what he had done.

  So he crept downstairs and opened the front door quite softly, and went out into the garden. But when the children saw him they were so frightened that they all ran away, and the garden became winter again. Only the little boy did not run, for his eyes were so full of tears that he did not see the Giant coming. And the Giant stole up behind him and took him gently in his hand, and put him up into the tree.4

  And the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out his two arms and flung them round the Giant’s neck, and kissed him. And the other children, when they saw that the Giant was not wicked any longer, came running back, and with them came the Spring. “It is your garden now, little children,” said the Giant, and he took a great axe and knocked down the wall. And when the people were going to market at twelve o’clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.5

  All day long they played, and in the evening they came to the Giant to bid him good-bye.

  “But where is your little companion?” he said: “the boy I put into the tree.” The Giant loved him the best because he had kissed him.

  “We don’t know,” answered the children, “he has gone away.”

  “You must tell him to be sure and come here tomorrow,” said the Giant. But the children said that they did not know where he lived, and had never seen him before; and the Giant felt very sad.

  Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and played with the Giant. But the little boy whom the Giant loved was never seen again. The Giant was very kind to all the children, yet he longed for his first little friend, and often spoke of him. “How I would like to see him!” he used to say.

  Years went over, and the Giant grew very old and feeble. He could not play about any more, so he sat in a huge armchair, and watched the children at their games, and admired his garden. “I have many beautiful flowers,” he said, “but the children are the most beautiful flowers of all.”

  Heinrich Vogeler, illustration to “Der Eigensüchtige Riese” (“The Selfish Giant”), from Die Erzählungen und Märchen, von Oscar Wilde (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1912).

  One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.

  Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

  Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, “Who hath dared to wound thee?” For on the palms of the child’s hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.6

  “Who hath dared to wound thee?” cried the Giant, “tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.”

  “Nay!” answered the child, “but these are the wounds of Love.”

  “Who art thou?” said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

  And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, “You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”7

  And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.

  *   First published in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (London: David Nutt, 1888). According to Anne Markey, the story is indebted to the Irish religious folktale “The Greater Sinner,” which was itself inspired by Christ’s injunction “joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:7). At the same time, it dramatizes Christ’s aphorism that “the kingdom of God belongs to the child” (Luke 18:16, Mark 10:14). As Markey notes, a number of biblical echoes and allusions to saints’ lives imbue the story with rich Christian symbolism, while the existence of an undated manuscript version written in the hand of Wilde’s wife—possibly a gift for the Wildes’ children—suggests “that [the story] originated within the author’s own domestic situation” (Anne Markey, Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales: Origins and Contexts [Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011], 111). Ian Small conjectures that Wilde’s wife, Constance, who was herself the author of two collections of children’s stories, may have collaborated informally with Wilde on the composition of “The Selfish Giant.” See Ian Small, introduction to The Short Fiction, vol. 8 of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xxii–xxv.

  1   “The Selfish Giant” prefigures the critique of private property that Wilde elaborated in “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (1891), where he writes: “The true perfection of man lies, not in what a man has, but in what a man is.… So completely has man’s personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences against his person.” The themes of greed and selfishness recur in other stories in The Happy Prince, notably “The Devoted Friend” and “The Remarkable Rocket.”

  2   The Irish oral tradition contains songs and stori
es that tell of a legendary tree that bent its branches in response to a request from the infant Jesus. According to Anne Markey, Wilde drew upon a version of this legend that was popular in Connacht, in Western Ireland, where he spent time as a boy and a young man.

  3   “Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.… In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you” (“The Soul of Man under Socialism”).

  4   The Giant who lifts the child into a tree recalls St. Christopher, as described in Jacobus de Voragine’s thirteenth-century work The Golden Legend: “According to the tradition promulgated by de Voragine, … a repentant Christian of giant stature carried a child across a river. The child, who was Christ, baptized his benefactor with the name Christopher, Greek for Christ-carrier” (Markey, Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales: Origins and Contexts, 114).

  5   In the importance attached to a paradisiac garden, “The Selfish Giant” recalls the story of mankind’s original fall into sin only to rewrite it. As Markey explains, “Man, as represented by the children, remains innocent although banished from the garden. The Giant can initially be seen as the retributive God of the Old Testament who refuses to let man back into paradise. The New Testament ethic of love triumphs over the Old Testament … as the Giant, now a representative sinner, welcomes the children back and even helps one … into the Tree of Knowledge” (Markey, 112).

  6   Wilde’s introduction of explicitly Christian elements is underscored here by his sudden embrace of antiquated English modeled on the King James Version. The nail marks on the boy’s hands and feet are stigmata, recalling the wounds inflicted on Christ during the Crucifixion, which according to Catholic tradition appear miraculously on the limbs of exceptionally holy individuals.