A giant of Victorian literature with an avant-garde sensibility, Oscar Wilde is generally known for works that blend wit, whimsy, and piercing moral insight. However, two of his lesser-known works, The Complete Fairy Tales (1888–1892) and De Profundis (1897), move through beauty into darkness—and ultimately touch on the transcendental in their own ways.
The Complete Fairy Tales presents the reader with nine uniquely enchanting tales, each with a moral lesson delivered not pedantically but through a gut-punch of emotional highs and lows. Beauty is a transformative force in its own right, but it is also part of a moral imperative. For instance, in “The Happy Prince,” the prince is willing to give up the jeweled parts of himself to serve others—and yet the real “beauty” being celebrated is the idea that the good deeds we do ultimately come back to us. This is also echoed in “The Selfish Giant,” whose title character learns, quite literally, the chilling effect that unkindness has on one’s own soul. Fairy tales by their nature tend to show us duality and that cause and effect cut both ways; no one gets out of this life unscathed.
This is where we can draw a subtle parallel to De Profundis. In 1895, Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” (i.e., homosexual behavior) and sentenced to two years of hard labor, most of which he served at Reading Gaol. Those two years took a massive toll on both his mental and physical health. He died three years after his release, having spent that time in exile in France. Written at Reading Gaol between January and March 1897, De Profundis is actually a 50,000-word letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Given the epistolary nature of the text, biographical details mingle with the very real torment and existential despair that Wilde experienced during his incarceration. However, as De Profundis reveals, Wilde was determined not just to survive, but to find deeper meaning in his suffering.
De Profundis has none of the fantastical luminosity and folklore of the Fairy Tales. In its descriptions of stark and dismal surroundings, suffering is no “fable” but an endless, day-to-day reminder of betrayal, heartbreak, and monotonous labor designed to strip a person of their humanity and will to live. And yet we can draw some parallels between the two texts. First, they both show the intertwining of beauty and suffering—a “liminal junction” where one is about to meet or become the other. Second, both invite us to consider how beauty and suffering are, in their own ways, conduits to a deeper spirituality. Though his flamboyance is frequently emphasized, Wilde was a man who believed in redemption through humility and self-sacrifice.
Wilde took the “profound darkness” of his incarceration and reframed his time in prison as a crucible for divine insight. The text describes how he drew on Christ’s Passion to see his suffering as redemptive—and as a purging of his “hedonism.” (With modern Western sensibilities in mind, this is especially heartbreaking to read, since parts of the world still persecute or kill people for homosexuality today.)
All told, these two very different works meet at an interesting junction that suggests a shared theology of beauty and redemption through suffering. And from there, the real fruit of the spirit lies in transmuting agony into art—whether you are the deformed dwarf of “The Birthday of the Infanta” or a man awakening to the superficiality and cruelty of both society and the man he once loved.
See Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales and De Profundis on Libro.fm (2 free audiobooks and support bookstores) or Amazon/Audible.
We hope you enjoyed learning more about books by Oscar Wilde. You might also enjoy Best Essays and Nonfiction by Great Writers.
You might also enjoy this wonderful piece Why we need fairytales: Jeanette Winterson on Oscar Wilde on The Guardian.
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