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Wilde’s Prophesy in Salomé

After I finished reading Salomé, I wondered why we read it at this point in the semester. While we are focusing on Wilde’s plays right now, on first glance, it is very different from An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. For one, it is very light on the aphorisms, which I appreciated. More seriously though, the play explores the consequences of desire and the question of why there is evil in a world where there is a God. There are threads of Catholicism in many of Wilde’s works, but thus far, we have mainly seen Wilde using the more aesthetic elements of the religion and the ideas of mystery and predestination. In Salomé, Wilde’s characters discuss profound questions in theology. The instance that struck me the most was when the Jewish characters discuss who has seen God. A Third Jew says, “God is at no time hidden. He showeth Himself at all times and in everything. God is in what is evil, even as He is in what is good” (594). The other characters disagree with this, especially regarding God’s role in what is evil. In Wilde’s poems, An Ideal Husband, and even his “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,” he deconstructs moral binaries, describing wickedness as “a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others” (1244). However, in Salomé, Wilde calls attention to the wickedness of his characters and their evil deeds.

            A case can be made for a queer reading of Salomé, especially building off our discussions in class this past week. We talked about the psychological and emotional consequences of constantly being told your desires and identity are immoral or “grossly indecent.” In Wilde’s case this is his relationships with men, specifically Bosie. However, Salomé and Herod experience this too. They are constantly told by Herodias and The Voice of Jokanaan that terrible things will happen to them, specifically that God will smite them, but they cannot stop themselves. This reminded me of how Wilde could not stop living his double life, even as he faced public scrutiny and was treated terribly by Bosie. We discussed in class how Wilde essentially prophesied his own death and destruction in his works, and this play is a prime example of that. The saddest part of reading Salomé from this perspective is that there is no resolution for Wilde. Parts of Wilde are in both Herod and Salomé, and as a result, Wilde accepts his own suffering and recognizes that much of it is self-inflicted.  

            In addition to the allusions to Wilde’s repressed homosexual desires in the dialogue of the play itself, the play was translated from French to English by Bosie. I am interested as to what other people make of this. Is the play addressing Bosie? Along these lines, this play is symbolic of how Wilde and Bosie’s secret lives and time abroad is mediated by Bosie to an English audience. Is it possible that Bosie’s translation changes the tone of Wilde’s original writing?

Reading Into Identity

After our class conversation on Wednesday, I do think I look at The Importance of Being Earnest a little differently. Not that my earlier readings of the play, as a critique of Victorian society and a commentary on Englishness, have any less valence, but that there is an expanded sense of what the play speaks to, sitting more directly within the full nexus of Wilde’s identities. My first instinct, when reading Wilde, isn’t to focus on the queer aspects of his narratives, favoring instead his aestheticism and the Irish/English aspects of his works. But Colm Tobin’s piece helped me to see, even more, how each of those aspects of Wilde inform each other as a part of his whole person — particularly in The Importance of Being Earnest. The hidden identities that both men take on, the secret lives they lead, become particularly poignant in light of Wilde’s struggles with his identity and the way he shrugged them on and off — adding that tinge of darkness amongst the humor and social jibes.  As Tobin aptly puts: “The problem about all of Wilde’s work, but his plays especially, is that they are forced to compete with the drama of his own last years” (Tobin, 71). The heightened, though comic, drama of mistaken identity and misreading in the play then becomes a way of reading Wilde as well, for good or ill, and the play’s final lesson about the certain inevitableness of being earnest, suggests the then inevitable outcome of Wilde’s life, that there is an inescapable truth of self that comes to the fore no matter what you do, or perhaps despite it.   

Tobin sums Wilde up well at the close of his piece: “The personal became political because an Irishman in London pushed his luck. He remains a vivid presence in the world one hundred years after his death. He played out the role of the tragic queer. He was witty, the greatest talker of his generation, skilled in the art-of the one-liner, the quick aside. But he was also untrustworthy and he was doomed” (Tobin, 84). Such a long string of adages seem necessary to fully encompass the life and tragedy of such a dynamic figure and there is no better space to locate that attempt than in Wilde’s work itself, throwing away all pretense that the art doesn’t reflect the artist.  (When I initially wrote this last line, I wrote Wilde’s work himself, as opposed to itself… a mistake, but a rather apt one for showing how easy it is to conflate the art and the artist — in a large sense, Wilde today is in fact his work.)

What Makes a Tragedy?

While reading Salomé, I found myself coming back to the same question: what makes a tragedy? In my edition of Oscar Wilde’s complete works, the play is introduced with the following information: “A Tragedy in one Act. Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas” (583). The fact that it is called a tragedy put preconceived notions in my head about what the play would be like, which I didn’t fully notice until finishing the play, when I found myself unsatisfied with the ending. That dissatisfaction did not come from the quality of the play itself, but from my ideas about what tragedy should be.

We are aware of comments people make frequently about tragedy and comedy and the way in which they are connected. “Comedy is tragedy plus time” or “A tragedy ends in death, a comedy ends in marriage” are two common ways of saying that tragedy and comedy lie on a razor’s edge and the difference between the two is in how they make us feel. For example, over spring break, I saw comedian Mike Birbiglia perform his new show, “The Old Man and the Pool.” The show is stand-up comedy, but it is also a story about fearing death and the belief that we only have one chance on this planet so we need to learn how to use it for others. In a different context, the show would have been tragic and almost uncomfortable as the audience was forced to consider their own mortality, but because of the framing of the show as comedy, we laughed throughout, even in serious moments.

That experience offers an insight into how closely comedy and tragedy exist, which is important to remember when dealing with anything that is meant to be a pure comedy or is meant to be a pure tragedy. When I read that Salomé is a tragedy, I expected there to be death in the play, but part of me also expected to grow a deep connection to the characters, which I did not. Because the play is so short, I felt a bit of whiplash when reading. The Young Syrian kills himself only seven pages into the play, and it comes with almost no warning. This death startled me more than it made me feel anything for the characters, which then clouded my reading of the rest of the play. After the Young Syrian dies, he is not seriously considered by the other characters, whose focus is entirely on Jokanaan. It seemed as if the Young Syrian was meant to be forgotten as a kind of nameless victim of Salomé’s desire for Jokanaan, but, because his death was so sudden, I couldn’t let it go.

Salomé is undoubtedly a tragedy from a technical standpoint. Death is a driving factor in the plot, and the play ends with one of the most brutal deaths of all. However, I did not feel a real emotional attachment to any of the characters involved which made it hard for me to care about the death beyond a basic human level. That made me think about what the purpose of tragedy is. Is it meant to make us feel deeply, or do something else? After comparing Salomé to other tragedies I’ve read, I came to the conclusion that tragedies are meant to reveal something dark in ourselves. We connect to the tragedy and we care about the tragic hero because they seem like someone we know or someone we could be and we see the way in which they can avoid their fate. For example, Hamlet is a particularly interesting tragic hero because he seems so thoughtful and reasonable in his fears about killing Claudius until the end of the play, when he seems to have actually gone slightly mad. We understand every action that Hamlet does, in part because he tells us what he wants and why he is scared. The audience walks away from the play moved and even disturbed because we understand Hamlet on a basic level, and it is worrying to understand a person who leaves so much destruction in his wake. Hamlet is a tragedy because of the brutality involved, and it is a successful tragedy because it makes us look at ourselves and question whether we are capable of such brutality.

In that sense, I think that Salomé is a successful tragedy, even though I did not connect with any of the characters. The play seems to advocate for tolerance towards other people’s wishes. Salomé is insistent that Jokanaan must die, which leads to her own death, and Herod is tricked into promising that Jokanaan will die because he refuses not to get what he wants. The death in the play comes from characters refusing to bend their will, which can be a lesson for audiences. Stubbornness is very common among people, and this play shows the extreme version of such obstinance. Herodias repeatedly tells Salomé not to make a deal with Herod, yet she does anyway, which leads to her own downfall. The warning is the reminder to the audience that the play does not have to end the way it does: if only Salomé backed down, she and Jokanaan would both be alive. That is an important reminder for the audience to get, which makes the tragedy feel rooted in reality even though there are moments that feel over the top.

Salome and the Sonnet

While reading Salomé, I noticed several themes and techniques that led me to believe that Wilde may have drawn inspiration from the Victorian love sonnet tradition, which I studied in a different class. However, if Wilde borrowed from the sonnet tradition, he also subverted it.

First, I noticed the theme of the beloved as “looked upon,” which is very characteristic of the love sonnet tradition. Usually, a male lover looks upon an unaware female beloved. Both Salomé and Jokanaan function in the role of the beloved. Salomé is looked at by others constantly from the very beginning of the play. “The Young Syrian” cannot help himself from staring. Later, Herod is scolded by his wife for the same excessive staring. In dancing, Salomé puts herself explicitly on display, stressing her role as looked upon. Jokanaan is also looked upon by Salomé, who observes his preaching from afar before approaching him. Wilde subverts this trope by putting men and women in the role of both the lover and beloved. Furthermore, the beloved is aware that they are looked upon. Salomé even uses this knowledge to her advantage. Finally, Wilde subverts this trope by warning about the danger of looking at the beloved.

Another common theme in love sonnets is for the beloved to be pure, good, and leading the lover to the divine. This is also a component in Salomé. Salomé is continuously described as extremely pale, suggesting purity. Meanwhile, Jokanaan is described to be “as chaste as the moon is.” Furthermore, his role as a prophet suggests his connection to the divine. Wilde subverts this trope by undermining Salomé’s innocent exterior with her desire for revenge. She dances on the blood, allowing the whiteness of her feet to touch a staining substance.

In looking at their beloved, the lovers use blazons to describe what they see, which is also common in the love sonnet tradition. Salomé’s lovers speak of her “little white hands like fluttering doves” and “feet like little white flowers.” Meanwhile, Salomé looks upon Jokanaan and notes eyes “like black holes burned by torches in a Tyrian tapestry” a body “like the lilies of a field that the mower hath never moved” or “like a plastered wall where vipers have crawled,” hair “like clusters of grapes” or “like a crown of thorns” and a mouth “like a pomegranate cut with a knife of ivory.” Though blazons are usually amorous, Salomé’s blazon becomes hateful as Jokanaan rejects her over and over. Wilde subverts this literary device by changing its connotation.

Finally, I saw a theme of power-play which struck me as very Petrarchan. Often in love sonnets, the beloved holds power over their lover, who is helpless to resist them yet cannot access them. The tension between lover and beloved is evident in Salomé as Salomé refuses to dance, agonizing Herod, Jokanaan refuses the kiss, agonizing Salomé, and Salomé seeks revenge against both Herod and Jokanaan. Wilde subverts this trope by making the beloved both aware of their power and having Salomé use it for her own means. Wilde gives the beloved much more agency than the typical sonnet. 

Overall, I could see a link between Wilde and love sonnets, though Wilde puts his spin on convention. Salomé especially reminded me of Christina Rossetti’s sonnet series Monna Innominata. These sonnets also reverse gender roles and give the beloved more agency while working within the tradition.

Ideal?

In class on Wednesday we talked about “The Ideal Husband” looking at all the different characters in the play and how they try to fit into the ideal of their roles. I want to focus this blog specifically on the women and how they interact with this idea of the “ideal”. Professor Kinyon mentioned how we constantly chase after this perception, but in the end, it does not really exist because humanity  exists as imperfect beings. The futile chase towards the ideal only leads to deception and self hiding. Wilde himself is a great example of concealing crucial aspects of the self to present as something ideal worth emulating. Some of his most defining character traits were hidden away to appeal to the general society. In the same way, I believe Wilde portrays the characters in his play very similarly to reveal this aspect of not only himself, but society as a whole. This obsession with presenting as perfection is nothing but a farce when you get a glimpse behind the scenes. 

Lady Chiltern is an example of someone so lost in the facade that she’s lost herself and her priorities. She epitomizes the vain woman in an unconventional manner being characterized as a very pious woman, but I think because she is presented to be this holier-than-thou figure we can glimpse into the self-obsession necessary to create such an ideal. She tricked herself into believing that her whole life was perfectly good where not even her husband could have a skeleton hiding in the closet. By thinking this way, Lady Chiltern is indirectly revealing to the audience her vanity in the midst of her supposed pure goodness. This contrasts the general perception of the vain woman, who is cast out by society for being too obsessed with herself which is what we connected the homosexual to since there must be an element of self love to pursue romantic relations with the same gender. 

I believe Wilde created Lady Chiltern to highlight to the audience that the upper class is guilty of the same self-love that those of lower status are ostracized for. Since she does not express her self-love in the way we normally expect someone to, like how Lord Goring acts, it is easy to miss Lady Chiltern’s narcissism which we discussed in class. Wilde can wield her character as a double edged sword to criticize the wealthy for their hypocrisy, while simultaneously highlighting the idea of hiding in plain sight. The author himself eventually had his mask cracked and endured imprisonment for his own imperfections, but Bosie, who was a member of this upper class, never suffered the same rejection because of his status. As was mentioned in class, these decadents have so much money with nothing to do that they can afford to pursue this “ideal” facade with no repercussions to be had. 

With the conclusion of this play we see how Lady Chiltern is never outed nor faced with confronting her shortcomings in the same way Robert is. Her facade, which she has all the time in the world to perfect, stays intact to preserve her image of the ideal. This play represents a victory for the vain woman who can hide in plain sight. She has always known the luxury of money, and with that power comes the ability to act as you please with little to no repercussions.

Marriage and Romance

A common thread in Wilde’s work, especially his plays, is a distaste for marriage. Wilde’s “clever” characters often criticize the triviality or unhappiness of marriage while praising the art of romance. These characters describe marriage as the end of emotional attachment and the beginning of a tedious and constricting relationship. 

For example, when Jack tells Algernon of his plans to marry Gwendolen, Algernon laments that this will ruin the romance between them, saying “there is nothing romantic in proposing” and characterizing marriage as “business.” He champions the uncertainty of romance as its chief appeal and notes that marriage destroys uncertainty. In An Ideal Husband, marriage is talked about as something that can succeed or fail in being fashionable. Married minor characters complain about the dullness of their spouses and comment on the optics of other marriages, while unmarried couples are praised for their artistic romance. Even in Dorian Gray, marriage is depicted as a social expectation rather than an emotional commitment. Harry and his wife divorce after years of happily ignoring one another. Marriage creates a false exterior of emotional commitment that poorly hides the detached relationship between spouses.

Given Wilde’s mocking depictions of marriage, I wonder what Wilde truly thought of marriage as an institution, and if that view was influenced by his attraction to men. Though married himself, Wilde’s work may suggest that he saw marriage as a failed institution. This is not to say that his own marriage was unhappy; rather, he found the rules of marriage tedious and suffocating. Considering his extramarital affairs, he may have seen marriage as failing to encompass all passions and romances and purposefully removed passion from marriage in his work. The most passionate relationships that Wilde writes about seem to be outside of marriage (for example, Basil’s commitment to Dorian or Tommy’s repeated proposals to Mabel). Wilde’s attitude towards marriage could be frustration with society’s rigid social structures that made no room for same-sex passions or even heterosexual extramarital affairs.

The Four-Acts of “The Importance of Being Earnest”

While reading “The Importance of Being Earnest,” I watched a play version of the text to follow along on YouTube. It is performed by Bethany Lutheran College (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWPftxsBPz0&t=4593s). It was only halfway through the play in Act II that I saw the divergence between both versions, which made me turn back to the introduction written by Vyvyan Holland. In the introduction, he writes, “Wilde originally wrote the play in four acts, as he had written his other three major plays. He submitted this form to George Alexander, who, with the object of making room for a ‘curtain raiser,’ as was usual in those days, asked Wilde to cut it to three acts… As Mr. Phillip Drake, who is responsible for this edition of Wilde’s works, remarked, it seems a pity that George Alexander should have a permanent influence on the play” (13). Vyvyan also notes how the three-act version is typically reprinted, published, and referred to. I became curious about the differences between both versions of the plays and their comparison.

            In the four-act version of the play, Gribsby, a solicitor with many quips and amusing lines, issues a writ to Mr. Earnest Worthing, who is Algernon but actually Jack, for racking up an extravagant bill while dining. He would be incarcerated for twenty days if he could not pay his bill. Jack claims he has “never saw such reckless extravagance in all my life,” ironic precisely because he is the cause of the extravagance and the bill when under his persona of Earnest (350). He ends up paying the bill when Algernon refuses to do so, praised for his “generosity [which is] quite foolish,” according to Miss Prism (352). As many have been saying in their blog posts, Wilde satirizes the aristocracy, but in the same subtle way as he did in “An Ideal Husband.” Since this was the original play and Wilde intended for his audience of English high society members to experience this scene, it is a bold move because it shows how excess extravagance has legal implications, like being incarcerated. Although Jack can pay off the bill (a critique of aristocracy and how they can use money to get out of such situations), he was still under the threat of incarceration. I wonder what others think about this scene and how Wilde himself would view people reprinting the three-act-version, with the four acts primarily forgotten. It is also interesting considering this scene in the context of Wilde being incarcerated for gross indecency quickly after “The Importance of Being Earnest” opened. How do incarceration and class status interact in this English society?

Lying for Fun :)

While reading The Importance of Being Earnest, I noticed a lot of connections between this work and “The Decay of Lying.” At the beginning of Act 1, Algernon says, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!” (362). This reminded me a lot of how in “The Decay of Lying,” Vivian states that modern literature is worse off because people don’t make up entertaining lies anymore and that they were too adherent to realism. Throughout Wilde’s works, an ongoing theme is that it’s a good thing to lie as long as it’s entertaining. 

In the first half of this play, Algernon and Jack lie constantly for their own personal gain and amusement. They both made up people in order to go into the country or into town, and even when Jack decides to stop using Earnest as an excuse to go into the city, he decides the best way to get rid of Earnest is to kill him off instead of going clean. Both characters adhere to Wilde’s philosophy about lying. 

However, Wilde seems to contradict his philosophy about lying by introducing consequences to Jack’s actions. When Jack’s lie is found out by Algernon, Algernon goes out into the country pretending to be Earnest, which complicates the situation. Although I haven’t finished the play yet, I predict that Algernon’s and Jack’s lies will implode, they’ll get in trouble for what they’ve done, and they’ll learn “the importance of being earnest,” as the title suggests. Perhaps the reason why Wilde seems to be contradicting himself by introducing consequences is because Algernon and Jack lied for their own personal gain and not just to be entertaining. (Although their lies are very entertaining for us as readers.) Or maybe it’s simply Wilde contradicting his own ideas because he always contradicts himself. But just like telling the truth, consistency is boring, and it’s better to be inconsistent and entertaining than boring.

The Importance of Being Earnest: Aristocracy

With The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde presents a satirical commentary on the arrogance and privilege of the aristocrats. He utilizes several characters throughout the play to portray this arrogance and snobbish entitlement including Jack and Lady Bracknell. Throughout the play, there is a clear sense of pretentiousness amongst the upper class; these characters hold the thought that they are deserving of their current status and the higher position they sit on. The lower class on the other hand, are characterized, much like Hallward of The Picture of Dorian Gray, as humble and honest. In a way, the entire plot that is centered around Jack’s ambitions to marry into the upper class, demonstrates a hypocrisy that shuns and berates the upper class. With the character of Lady Bracknell, Wilde portrays the harsh reality of an immovable class system and mocks the higher class and its arrogance. Bracknell states, “The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.” Such seems to reflect Wilde’s own commentary on social class and education; the harsh truth is that education, or any real doings in daily life do not affect social class. Bracknell was born into her higher class and Wilde highlights the injustice behind such entry into her social station along with the impossibility of moving towards the higher classes. Gwendolen and Cecily are also subject to such mockery on Wilde’s part, as he repeatedly paints them as superficial and ignorant. He ridicules the upper class by exaggerating their obsession with superficialities such as style or food. Their obsession with such demonstrates the shallowness of the upper class quite clearly on Wilde’s part.

The Importance of Being a Parent

One of the most quotable lines from “The Importance of Being Earnest” is spoken by Lady Bracknell: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune… to lose both seems like carelessness” (369). While this line is mostly known for being fun and ridiculous, I would argue that the play is discussing parenthood or guardianship and its role in society. The main way this comes into play, of course, is the parent’s role of giving consent for their child to enter into an engagement. We see this when Lady Bracknell refuses to give her consent for Gwendolyn to marry Jack and when Jack refuses to give his consent for Cecily to marry Algernon. This lack of consent is one of the main conflicts in the play but is also mocked by Algernon’s several attempts to revoke his consent for Jack and Gwendolyn’s marriage. Algernon is Gwendolyn’s cousin but isn’t a guardian figure in her life. His remarks then come off as very reactionary, an attempt to leverage what he wants from the situation. In this situation, Wilde makes a mockery of these traditional familial engagement practices, and to some extent, parent-child relations in general.

This is seen all over the play, from Lady Bracknell’s stand-offish relationship with the other characters to Jack’s remark that “Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap’s bills and don’t bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills. I don’t know a single chap at the club who speaks to his father.” (371). I find this theme in the play extremely interesting, especially considering Wilde’s relationship with his own parents compared to other Victorians. I know we have only briefly discussed this in class, but it sounds as if Wilde was much closer to his mother than his father, and I am interested in how these relationships might have shaped Wilde’s own views on parenthood.