Dark Avunculate: Shame, Animality, and Queer Development in Oscar Wilde’s “The Star-Child”

Abstract

Critics dealing with Oscar collection of fairy tales, A House of Pomegranates, have tended to focus on how and why a single fairy tale might simultaneously appeal to adults and to children (Marsh 73). In order to emphasize the different impact of the stories, Michelle Ruggaber points out that the title of the collection itself harbors sin- ister allusions, as it refers to the ancient myth of Proserpine, in which pomegranates are explicitly connected with the underworld (143). In The Star-Child, the fourth and final story, a pomegranate tree indeed marks the entrance to the wicked Magician's underground dungeon (Wilde 280), which becomes the scene of shame and torment. In contrast to Proserpine, who must spend at least part of every year in Pluto's company, the Star-Child eventually is able to leave the dank, dark confines of his prison by performing a number of good deeds, which allow him to redeem himself and escape his ugly fate at the hands of his tormentor. However, this respite is only temporary; even though he manages to ascend to his rightful place in life, his trials and tribulations have been so taxing that he dies after the space of three years (284). This article will outline the inequalities of the relationship between the Star-Child and his temporary master, known only as the Magician, in order to argue that fairy tale should be read as the formalization of a queer interval that traumatizes the Victorian norm of maturation. This is not to suggest that Wilde's Victorian readers (would) seem to have found (any)thing untoward about the fairy tales (Duffy 328); nothing, at least, that hinted at the homoromantic dimensions which