The Happy Prince and Other Tales Essay Questions

Which traditional aspects of the fairy tale does Wilde retain, and which does he eschew?

Wilde retains the essentially didactic structure of the fairy tale in that his stories are intended to, at least on the surface, present a moral. Certain behaviors and traits are decried, while others are promoted. There are villains and heroes, children and giants and princes. There is reward and punishment, sentimentality, nostalgia, decadence, and beauty. Wilde's characters, as Michael Kotzin writes, participate in typical narrative patterns and "move in a characteristic unreal world, defined by the presence of a special kind of magic." However, there are not always happy endings. Some characters behave deplorably and go unpunished, while others sacrifice themselves or demonstrate compassion and virtue but end up dying. Homosexual themes undergird many of the stories, as do strangely decadent, pagan messages alongside those of Christian ones.

What are the homosexual undercurrents in "The Happy Prince"?

First, there is the fact that the Prince is eternally young and handsome. Second, he, as Naomi Wood writes, "tutots the Swallow in what it means to love." He shows the Swallow the suffering in his city and helps him understand that helping these people is crucial to being a good Christian and to feeling fulfilled. He is a "beautiful Socrates" in a tale that upsets "conventional expectations about the relationship between tutor and student." Then there is the kiss between the two, a rare "male-male kiss in children's literature." Though both characters die, they are reunited in heaven and can spend eternity in their love in the presence of God.

Which characters repent and are redeemed, and which do not?

Whereas most fairy tales end with the villain punished and the hero rewarded, Wilde has no interest in such cliche endings. Rather, he shows that sometimes the most beautifully self-sacrificing acts do not result in recognition or reward. The Nightingale dies without true love ever being realized by the Student and his beloved; Hans dies after helping his "devoted friend" and never seeing that he was being taken advantage of; the Prince and Swallow's efforts go unrecognized by the leaders of the kingdom. Then there is the opposite reality, in which cruel and/or obnoxious, self-centered characters continue to prosper and go unpunished. The Infanta continues to live in her gilded palace, unaware of the suffering of others; the Rocket thinks he was a glorious show; the Miller maintains that he is a devoted friend.

How can we see Wilde himself in "The Happy Prince"?

First, there is the aspect of homosexual love that is central to the text. Second, there is the promotion of aestheticism, but not in the way that many would think Wilde cared for. In the figure of the Art Professor in the tale, Wilde condemns the view that if there is no beauty, there is usefulness. Wilde had come to a point in his life and literary career where he was moving beyond pure "art for art's sake" and was able to see beauty in things that were not traditionally considered to possess it. Critic Robert Martin believes "Wilde dramatizes himself as the Happy Prince, a man who renounces the Palace of Sans-Souci, who gives up his worldly wealth in order to share his goods with the poor and to share his happiness with his beloved Swallow."

How does the concept of the sentimental manifest itself in "The Selfish Giant?"

This tale is much more complex than it may seem. It is part a traditional fairy tale, part a Christian morality tale. It is also imbued with sentimentality in that it conjures up loss, change, and longing. The Giant is the older figure in the tale who, even though he lets life and youth back into his garden, realizes that time is passing for him and what he most wanted—the young boy—is no longer possible. Wilde sets up a binary between children and adult, youth and old age, beauty and ugliness in order to pervade the tale with pathos. As Hope Howell Hodgkins writes, "the longing to break out of an egotistical enclosure, and to recover the beautiful innocence of childhood, is a Romantic and Victorian dream certainly not limited to Wilde. But his fairy tale spells out most clearly the efforts to use a child as means to that beautiful state—and the outcome of such an attempt." The Giant can only get to the state he desires by death.