Summary
"The Happy Prince"
The statue of the Happy Prince stands tall above the city on a column, and everyone admires him. Some wish they were as happy, some wish their children were as well-behaved.
One day a Swallow flies over the city. His friends had gone on to Egypt, but he stayed behind because he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had seen her slender waist and flew down and she bowed to him. The other swallows thought it absurd because she had no money and no relations, and soon the Swallow tired of her. He saw that she had no conversation and was a coquette, always flirting with the wind. He asked her to go away with him and she said no, so he decided it was time to go on to Egypt.
On his flight out, he stops to rest near the statue. He is pleased at first with his golden bedroom, but feels a drop of rain. He looks up, annoyed, and realizes the statue is crying. The Swallow asks the Prince what is wrong, and the boy answers that when he was alive in the palace of Sans-Souci he was never sorrowful and life was lovely. When he died, they set him up here and now he can see all the ugliness and misery of the city, and his leaden heart weeps. He continues, explaining that in the distance is a poor house and he can see a thin and worn seamstress working on embroidering a gown for the Queen’s maids-of-honor. Her son is ill and dying.
The Happy Prince asks the Swallow to bring the woman the ruby from his sword-hilt. The Swallow does not want to do this and says he must go to Egypt, but the Prince begs him. The Swallow comments that he does not like little boys, but he finally agrees.
The Swallow flies over the city with the ruby. He passes one of the girls sighing over how lazy the seamstresses are. Passing the Ghetto, he sees the bargaining Jews. He alights at the poor house and drops the ruby down for the woman. He fans the boy’s head with his wings.
When he returns, he is surprised at how warm he feels and the Prince tells him it is because he did a good thing. The next morning, he bathes in the river and a Professor of Ornithology wonders at a swallow being there in winter.
The Swallow plans to return to Egypt but likes the attention from the city sparrows. The Prince, though, asks him to stay one more night. He is loath to do so, but the Prince tells him of a young man working on a play for the Director of the Theater who is too cold and hungry to finish. He asks the Swallow to take one of his sapphire eyes. The Swallow weeps at the thought of this but agrees.
At the student’s garret the Swallow drops the stone down, and the student is revived. Once back with the statue, the Swallow says he must return to Egypt where the sun is warm and the other birds are building nests in the Temple. He promises to never forget the Prince and says he will bring jewels back.
The Happy Prince replies that there is a little match-girl below who dropped her matches and will be beaten by her father if she returns home without money. The Swallow is reluctant, but the Prince convinces him to pluck out the remaining sapphire and give it to the girl.
After doing this, the Swallow decides he will stay with the Happy Prince forever. He tells him stories of the Nile and the Sphinx and the Moon and priests and snakes. The Prince sighs that the suffering of people is the greatest mystery of all. He asks the Swallow to fly over the city and report back what he sees.
The Swallow agrees, and returns with stories of rich people and beggars, starving children and freezing orphans. The Prince asks him to strip the gold leaf from his sides and give it to the poor. As he grows duller, the children’s faces revive.
Snow and frost arrive. The Swallow is colder and colder but will not leave the Prince. One day he tells him he is going to die and asks to kiss his hand. The Happy Prince insists he kiss his lips since he is in love with him. The Swallow kisses him, and dies. The statue emits a crack as if a leaden heart had been sundered in two.
The next day the Mayor walks by with the Town Councilors and rues the fact that the stature is so shoddy now and that there is a dead bird at its feet. The statue is torn down and melted, and the men argue amongst themselves who should be a statue now.
One of the foundry workmen sees the heart and tosses it on the dust-heap with the dead Swallow.
God asks his Angel to bring him the two most precious things in the city, so the Angel swoops down and takes the heart and bird back to God. God says he chose well, and now the little bird will sing forever in Paradise and the Happy Prince will live in the city of gold and praise God.
“The Selfish Giant”
On their way home from school, the children used to love to play in the Giant’s garden. It is truly lovely, with peach trees and blossoms and sweetly-singing birds. One day when the Giant returns from visiting his friend the ogre for seven years, he angrily orders the children out of the garden.
The Giant builds a tall wall around the garden and puts up a sign saying trespassers will be prosecuted. He is very selfish, and the children are very sad and wish they could return.
Spring comes, but in the garden of the Selfish Garden it is still winter. The birds do not sing and the trees do not flower; only Snow and Frost are happy. The North Wind and Hail join them.
The Giant looks out and wonders why it is still winter. Spring and Summer and Autumn do not come either, and he is distressed.
One day he hears the sound of a linnet singing and since it had been so long, he finds it the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. Hail stops, the North Wind departs, and a lovely scent comes through the window.
The Selfish Giant looks outside and sees that the children had crept back in, and with them the trees blossomed, the birds sang, and the flowers laughed in the grass. However, in one corner it is still winter and a little boy is standing and crying as he tries to get into the tree’s branches.
The Giant’s heart melts and he realizes why Spring had never came. He goes outside and plans to knock down the wall and let the garden be for the children forever. When the children see him, though, they run away in fright. Only the little boy who is crying does not see him. The Giant gently lifts him into the tree. The other children see that the Giant is kind and return.
At the end of the day, the Giant asks the children where their companion is, and they reply that they had never seen him before and do not know where he lives.
Every day the children come and play, but the little boy does not return. The Giant longs to see him again but years pass and he grows old. One morning, he looks out into the wintry garden and sees the tree in the corner full of lovely white blossoms and silvery fruit. The little boy stands beneath it.
The Giant runs out joyously, but when he sees two prints of nails on the child’s hand he becomes upset. The boy replies that they are the wounds of love. The Giant is awed and asks who he is. The boy smiles that the Giant let him play in his garden, and now the Giant will come to his garden of Paradise.
When the other children arrive later that day, they see the Giant lying dead under the trees, covered with white blossoms.
“The Devoted Friend”
One morning, the old Water-Rat sticks his head out of his hole and sees the Duck talking to the ducklings about standing on their heads in the water. The Water-rat is disdainful of the children and says friendship is more important than love or family.
A Linnet hears this and asks the Water-Rat what his idea of a devoted friend is. The Water-rat replies that a devoted friend is devoted to him. The Linnet asks what he’d do in return and the Water-rat scoffs that he does not understand the question.
The Linnet decides to tell him a story that is applicable to him—the story of the Devoted Friend.
There was once a man named Hans who lived alone in a tiny cottage and loved working in his beautiful garden. He had many friends, but his most devoted friend was Hugh the Miller. The Miller often used to pick flowers from over the wall and say real friends ought to have everything in common. Some people thought it was odd that the Miller never gave anything to Hans in return, especially as he was so rich, but Hans was not troubled at all.
That winter, Hans suffers from cold and hunger, and is also quite lonely because the Miller never comes to see him. The Miller tells his wife that people like to be left alone when they are in trouble, and he will visit Hans in the spring. The Wife compliments her husband on his thoughtfulness, but their son wonders if they should not invite Hans up and share their food with him. The Miller cries out that his son is silly and obviously not learning anything at school. Hans cannot come here, for what if he gets envious when he sees what they have? Or asks to have flour on credit? The Miller concludes that it is easier to do things than talk, and talking is the finer thing. The son is ashamed and cries.
Once winter is over the Miller goes down to Hans. He asks how Hans is and Hans says it was a hard winter but he is happy that his flowers are doing well now. He planned to take them to the market and sell them to buy back his wheelbarrow. Because the winter was so hard, he’d had to sell his coat buttons, silver chain, pipe, and wheelbarrow.
The Miller tells Hans he would give him his old wheelbarrow, which isn’t in very good shape, because he is a generous man and has his own new wheelbarrow. Hans is delighted, and says he can repair it now and has a plank of wood. The Miller exclaims that he needs a plank of wood and it is what Hans could give him for the wheelbarrow.
Hans happily agrees and procures the wood. The Miller tells Hans he would be happy to have flowers in return. Hans is sad because he needs to take them to market, but the Miller says true friendship requires selflessness. Hans agrees with alacrity.
The next day the Miller comes by and asks Hans if he wouldn’t mind taking a sack of flour to the market. Hans replies that he was busy, but when the Miller chides him that it is not good to refuse a man who was selflessly giving him a wheelbarrow, Hans jumps up. It was a long hard day, but Hans is simply glad the Miller is his friend.
The next day the Miller comes by and sees Hans sleeping after his long day prior. He calls him lazy and idle, and remarks that a true friend would say the unpleasant things. Hans apologizes. The Miller then asks him to come mend the barn roof. Hans wanted to work in his garden but agrees nonetheless.
Hans works all day. The Miller speaks of how one day Hans will understand true friendship.
The next day, the Miller asks Hans to drive sheep to the mountains. Hans never gets to work in his garden because the Miller always has errands for him. One night, the Miller comes to him and says his son fell off a ladder and someone needs to go out into the dark and bitter night to get the Doctor. Hans is pleased to be asked, and asks for the Miller’s lantern. The Miller says he can not spare his new one, and Hans agrees to go without.
Hans ventures into the dreadful storm and gets the Doctor. The Doctor sets out but poor Hans becomes lost in the dark. He wanders into the moor and drowns.
At the funeral, the Miller is the chief mourner and walks at the head of the procession. He complains to the others that he had given Hans his wheelbarrow and now has no idea what to do with it. He sighs that one suffers for being generous.
The Linnet concludes his story and the Water-rat asks what happened to the Miller. He is annoyed when the Linnet says his listener clearly did not see the moral of the story. The Water-rat claims he never would have listened if he knew there was a moral, and rushes back to his hole.
Analysis
Wilde’s fairy tales have a great deal in common with each other in terms of themes, motifs, and underlying concerns, so we will look at them both individually and in terms of their similarities.
“The Happy Prince” is the first fairy tale in the collection and perhaps the best known. It sets the tone for the rest of them in that it is beautiful, depressing, and devoid of some of the hallmarks of the classic fairy tale—the happy ending, a heterosexual love story, etc. This fairy tale, and most of Wilde’s, as scholar Robert K. Martin writes, “express some of his deepest concerns and… record his own growing commitments, including one to homosexual love, in a way which would have been impossible without the protection offered by the conventions of fantasy.”
The Happy Prince is not altogether happy, of course, being ensconced in his statue and gazing daily on the sufferings of his people. The Swallow does not initially have the same compassion, and his Egypt is one of decadence, sleep, death, and forgetfulness. However, as he gets to know and love the Prince, he achieves spiritual regeneration. The virtues of self-sacrifice, charity, and sympathy are paramount in the Prince’s giving up of his glorious gems and gold to take care of the citizens. Unfortunately, as many of Wilde’s tales will reveal, this sacrifice is often unheeded by the rest of the world. There is no glory for the Prince or the Swallow; the officials simply see a dead bird and an ugly statue. The only reward is, then, in Heaven.
As the Swallow begins to transform, he also falls in love with the Happy Prince. The fact that there is a bird and a statue of a boy rather than human males means that the homosexual themes are rather sublimated (the kiss on the lips between the protagonists would be inconceivable if it was not done in this fashion); additionally, Wilde makes a comment on the superficiality and lovelessness of heterosexual love by depicting the vain, empty-headed Reed. The love between the Swallow and the Prince is spiritually pure, and they are rewarded for it by living eternally in Heaven with God.
“The Selfish Giant” has many traditional aspects of the fairy tale: the innocent and sweet children contrasted with the Giant, the villain; animism, or the personification of objects in nature; a special place, here a garden; a happy ending for the children. Interestingly, though, Wilde turns his villain into a hero and shifts the focus of the story from the children to the Giant himself. The Giant, as Michael C. Kotzin writes, becomes a melancholy figure and the story has an aspect of “pathetic sentimentality.” Long years pass and the Giant cannot help but think of the mysterious young boy whom he helped.
This boy is, of course, Christ, which is clear in the marks of stigmata. Thus the traditional fairy tale of the children and the Giant and the garden “is also a Christian parable about the salvation of the giant, salvation which he gains by loving Christ.” Fairy tales and Christian parables had the same function—to be didactic, to preach, to be moralistic.
Critic Hope Howell Hodgkins also reads “The Selfish Giant” as indicative of Victorian concerns with aestheticism. The tale “focuses on the Giant, his limitations, and his moral growth.” The garden is the Garden of Eden and the Giant is a clumsy, stern God. When the children return and the Giant puts to little boy in the tree, it is as a crucifixion and a redemption. The Giant is both the “prohibitive deity and the guilty adult who can never return to childhood.” He desires to “break out of an egotistical enclosure, and to recover the beautiful innocence of childhood… [which is] a Romantic and Victorian dream.” At the end of the tale the Giant “finally acquires high, idealized language and a decorative place in the garden, but at the price of death.” Wilde moves from the cares and fears of children to those of adults, who fear aging, ugliness, and death. Only beauty, art, and artifice can mitigate those terrors.
The final tale is “The Devoted Friend,” a typical, moralizing fairy tale but also one infused with irony, devoid of a happy ending, and permeated by themes such as the supremacy of male friendships to heterosexual love (critic John-Charles Duffy writes, “The Water-rat clearly echoes proponents of male love in his conviction that a devoted friendship surpasses a heterosexual relationship as the noblest in the world”) and tensions between social classes. Hugh exploits Hans and deprives him of his material possessions (as well as his life). Perhaps a typical fairy tale would have Hans find a way to give Hugh his comeuppance, or even to recognize what is happening to himself, but this never occurs. Hans is dead, and, as Sara Marsh writes, “this moral shrewdly describes the plight of the Victorian poor.” Wilde was deeply concerned about this situation, writing about it elsewhere, and in this seemingly simple tale “implies that the upper classes victimize not only by withholding material wealth but also by withholding knowledge.”
