WILDE' TIMES: A MARXIST READING OF OSCAR WILDE'S "THE HAPPY PRINCE

Abstract

The aim of this article is to display the socially conscious stance of Oscar Wilde in the capitalist Victorian society with a deeper vision of it in his children’s stories, especially “The Happy Prince”. It is an indisputable fact that Wilde has always been associated with the aesthetic movement of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, which supported the irresponsibility of the artist towards the reader or audience and defiance of moral obligations. However, Wilde’s major fairy tales seem to be contradicting with this claim with their deep moral code and veiled criticism of the present situation of the society. Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” tells, on the surface level, the romantic story of a golden statue of a prince and a little swallow in their struggle for helping the poor and the suppressed in their city. On a deeper level, the story takes a much more critical vision and functions as a Marxist criticism of the capitalist western ideologies. In this respect, the famous irresponsible aesthete of his time may be regarded as an employer of Marxist thinking with a moral purpose.