LGBT Profiles: Oscar Wilde
I didn’t really know much about Oscar Wilde, being a gay man I knew that he was someone of importance for my sexuality but I didn’t really know how. With the new film The Happy Prince, starring Rupert Everett, I decided now was a good time to look into Oscar Wilde’s life, what happened to him and his eventual downfall.
He was born on 16th October in Dublin the son of William Wilde, an acclaimed doctor, and Jane Francesca Elgee a poet. Wilde exceeded at school gaining a Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. Upon his graduation he received another scholarship to attend Magdalen College in Oxford. After graduating Oxford he moved to London where he published his first book, Poems, in 1881.
The book gave him a chance to lecture in America for nine months and then on his return he went on the lecture circuit in England and Ireland till 1884. It was in 1884 that he also married Constance Lloyd, they went on to have two children Cyril in 1885 and then Vyvyan in 1886. After being editor of Lady’s World for two years he entered entered a period of creativity. This started with a collection of children’s stories called The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888. He then went on to write the book The Picture of Dorian Grey in 1891. Wilde then began writing plays including the most famous play The Importance of being Earnest in 1895.
So what went wrong? He was well known, his plays were selling well, he was married, with two children, most men would be happy and settled with this. Oscar Wilde though was gay, his homosexuality was an open secret which it had to be because homosexuality was illegal. Wilde had an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, his father the Marquis of Queensbury found out about this affair. Obviously not happy about the affair he left a calling card to Wilde’s home which read Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite (misspelling of Sodomite). Wilde sued the Marquis of Queensbury for libel and took him to court. A libel case quickly turned into a case against Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality. Queensbury used love letters to his son and homoerotic passages in Wilde’s work to prove his guilt.
In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labour for gross indecency. The Happy Prince is based on the period following his prison sentence. He emerged from prison tired and broke and his last few years were spent travelling around Europe sleeping in cheap hotels and friends apartments. He died in Paris on the 30th June 1990 of meningitis, he was only 46.
After researching Oscar Wilde I have discovered why he is important to LGBT history. He was a well known, talented person, sent to prison, just for being gay. Yes he was married with children but he had to be in this period. You wonder what else he might have accomplished if he hadn’t gone ahead with the libel case against the Marquis of Queensbury. You could also wonder what he could have accomplished if he was allowed to be himself and allowed to be gay.
Wilde received a posthumous pardon for his conviction of gross indecency under the Turing Law in 2017. Rupert Everett who plays Oscar Wilde in The Happy Prince believes that his pardon does not go far enough and I agree with him. There should be nothing to pardon and instead there should be an apology, to him and to everyone convicted just for being gay. What Oscar Wilde represents is how far the LGBT community has come, even though there is still a way to go. I am lucky enough to live in a country where I can live openly as a gay man but there are other countries where being gay is still illegal, there are other countries where someone as clever and creative as Wilde are being held back because of their sexuality.
I will finish this piece with some of my favourite and somewhat poignant Oscar Wilde quotes
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go”
“I can resist everything except temptation”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all”
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