An Elusive Utopia: Conflicting Christian and Socialist Themes in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales Anonymous College

Not many Literary Figures have retained notoriety quite as splendidly as Oscar Wilde has. His illustrious body of work continues to be heavily debated to this day. Although renown for his plays and sole novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote an influential collection of Fairy Tales he deemed suitable for “childlike people aged eighteen to eighty”. This disclaimer was likely made to avoid being accused of indecorous themes for children’s literature. Scholars have long concentrated on the homosexual allusions found in these tales which has repeatedly eclipsed their shrewd social commentary. The Happy Prince and Other Tales is a collection of short stories published in 1888. The Christian influences suggest he was partially inspired by Hans Christian Andersen. Unlike Andersen’s penchant for the transcendent powers of suffering, the end of Wilde’s tales often ring hollow. The Selfish Giant dies, the Happy Prince has idly given everything he has, and the Nightingale sacrifices her life in vain. There is no “Happy Ever After”. While it may seem peculiar that he would write such weighted pieces when he was a ardent believer in “art for the sake of art”, Wilde has never been an embodiment of consistency. He went as far as...