"The Sphinx Without a Secret" and Other Stories Literary Elements

Short stories, allegory

‘The Happy Prince’ is set in a small town of impoverished people, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is set in a young student’s garden, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H. is set in Erskine and Graham’s respective houses, ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ is set in the King’s garden, ‘The Fisherman and his Soul’ is set at the seaside, ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’ is set in the royal garden, ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ is set in Victorian high-society England, ‘The Model Millionaire’ is mainly set in Alan Trevor’s art studio, ‘The Canterville Ghost’ is set in an ancestral home in England, and ‘The Sphinx Without a Secret’ is set in Victorian Paris.

The stories are told in third-person omniscient narration, with the exception of ‘The Sphinx Without a Secret’, which is told in first person.

The stories have a mainly wistful mood, due to their often unresolved or bittersweet endings, with a satirical undertone.

There aren’t clear protagonists and antagonists in the stories, but rather, most of the ‘bad’ characters are simply very precocious and entitled, such as the Infanta in ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’, the town Councillors in ‘The Happy Prince, and the Rocket in ‘The Remarkable Rocket’.

The major conflict in these stories usually arises from a conflict of values within the characters. For example, in ‘The Happy Prince’, the swallow wants to go to Egypt with the rest of his flock, but also wants to continue helping people in the town. In ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, the young student wants a rose to woo his crush, but when she shuns him, he retreats back into studying instead of love. Lastly, in ‘The Sphinx Without a Secret’, Lady Alroy wants to have an aura of secrecy, without actually committing any acts that she would need to hide.

The climax of each story normally comes at the end, when the entire point of the piece is illuminated due to one occurrence or phrase. In stories such as ‘The Happy Prince’, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, and ‘The Canterville Ghost’, this climax creates an ultimately bittersweet ending; the swallow dies at the Prince’s feet, the nightingale’s efforts to create a rose are wasted when the student’s lover shuns him, and the Canterville ghost finally dies. However, in lighter stories such as ‘The Model Millionaire’ and ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, this style of climax is used comedically; the ‘beggar’ who Hughie Erskine gave money to turns out to be a millionaire, and Lord Arthur Savile ends up killing the man who predicted that he would murder someone, in a comedic fashion.

Due to the repetitive, fable-like nature of many of the stories, foreshadowing is used often to hint at the final climax of the story. For example, in ‘The Happy Prince’, the swallow repeatedly says that he ‘must go to Egypt’, but the Prince keeps begging him to continue helping the people of the city, which foreshadows his eventual death due to the cold climate. In ‘The Fisherman and his Soul’, the Priest’s warnings to the fisherman about cutting off his soul foreshadows the bad deeds the boy’s soul does once cut from him. The palm-reader predicting that Lord Arthur Savile would murder someone foreshadows his eventuhttps://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition/exam/past-exam-questions?course=ap-english-literature-and-compositional murdering of the palm-reader himself.

Lord Arthur Savile says that he ‘owes all the happiness of his life’ to cheiromancy, which is an understatement due to the fact that he owes said happiness to that fact that he killed a cheiromancer.

Wilde uses these short stories often to satirize certain aspects of Victorian England, and thus alludes to certain aspects that he is critiquing. For example, the snooty, pretentious town councillors may allude to the state of leaders and politicians in Victorian England, who Wilde evidently disagreed with, thus portraying them negatively. In ‘The Canterville Ghost’, he draws heavily on Gothic literature such as ‘Wuthering Heights’ in order to create the titular ghost’s mannerisms, thus creating a comedic parody. With his ‘high society’ characters such as Lady Windermere and Lord Arthur Savile, he is perhaps alluding to certain other nobility members, such as Lord Alfred Douglas, who he knew well. Lastly, he alludes to his own work often, using character names such as ‘Lady Windermere’, which was then used in his play ‘Lady Windermere’s fan’, as well as phrases such as ‘women are sphinxes without secrets’, which was said by Lord Henry Wotton in his novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.

Wilde often uses simple yet iconographic imagery to create easily recognizable characters in stories. For example, in ‘The Happy Prince’, the image of the gleaming statue and the little swallow living in it is very easily recognizable from the tale, and creates a memorable basis for the story. In some stories, it is used to create a response in the audience; like the undeniably melancholy image of a nightingale having stabbed itself in order to create a red rose in ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’. In equal balance, he uses imagery for a comedic effect, such as the Canterville Ghost being offered oil for its chains by the house’s unfazed residents, instead of them being terrified. Overall, his imagery is used mainly for emotional effect, and he crafts characters and scenes that are easily visualized by the reader.

A paradox is at the basis of ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’; the cheiromancer tells him that he is going to murder someone, and due to Lord Arthur Savile knowing this, he ultimately murders the cheiromancer. If he hadn’t been told this, then he wouldn’t have murdered him, thus creating a paradox.

Wilde draws parallels between the natural world and ours to create a simplified yet recognisable view of Victorian society. For example, in 'The Happy Prince', the swallow falls in love with a reed, but due to constantly being moving he decides he can't be with her, and additionally, she is 'always flirting with the wind'. Thus, parallels are drawn between the Victorian image of a coquettish woman and the reed. He also uses these parallels in stories such as 'The Remarkable Rocket' and 'The Nightingale and the Rose', where each object or plant is parallel to a certain class of society, such as the aristocracy and working class.

In 'The Happy Prince' the town councillors are almost synonymous with each other, and are not used as individual characters, but rather, as a collective representation of societal leaders, which allows Wilde to satirize them further. Characters such as the flowers in the garden in 'The Nightingale and the Rose' or pieces of equipment in 'The Remarkable Rocket' also act as a collective force instead of individual units, which means that the reader gets a clearer picture of what they collectively think of the events in the story.

Most of Wilde's fables in the collection feature some sort of personification. 'The Happy Prince' features personification of the Prince's statue, the swallow, and the reed at the beginning. 'The Remarkable Rocket' features personification of various types of rockets and fireworks. 'The Nightingale and the Rose' features personification of the garden plants, as well as the nightingale, and 'The Fisherman and his Soul' features personification of the fisherman's soul. This personification, particularly of objects and creatures in nature, contributes to the whimsical, fable-like tone of the stories, and also allows for allegory; the different objects could be said to represent different people or social classes of the time.