Oscar Wilde Ends Stint in Jail
Original cover page for Lippincott's Monthly containing Dorian Grey
On this date in 1897, Oscar Wilde, famed Irish author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and numerous other works, was released from prison after 2 years of hard labor. Wilde was charged and sentenced for homosexuality, considered a crime in Victorian England. Because of his treatment in England for his sexual preference, Wilde fled to Paris, where he died three years later of meningitis.
Most readers are probably familiar with Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The premise of this work surrounds the characters of Dorian Gray, the artist Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton. Hallward is commissioned to paint a portrait of Gray. Through his contact with Gray, Hallward becomes infatuated with Gray’s character and striking good looks. After meeting Lord Henry, Gray embarks into a new world of hedonism, leading to Gray selling his soul to the Devil to ensure that the portrait of himself aged but his physical body did not, ensuring his immortality. The portrait stands as a reminder to Gray of his sins of debauchery and hedonism, a picture of his tortured soul for all eternity.
Wilde’s novel stands as a fantastic example of a Gothic horror story, encapsulating the fear of death and aging, intense narcissism, the deadly nature of obsession and a strong Faustian element. This work stands as Wilde’s only published novel, appearing in the June 20, 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Wilde would later amend his most famous work and publish it with the Ward, Lock and Company Publishing House in 1891.
Oscar Wilde
Dorian Gray has been adapted numerous times for the cinema, including 1945s cut starring George Sanders and Angela Lansbury. The latest edition appeared in 2009, directed by Oliver Parker and starring Ben Barnes (of Chronicles of Narnia fame), Fiona Shaw and Ben Chaplin. Dorian Gray also appears as a character in 2003′s film adaptation of Allan Moore and Kevin Oneill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, played by actor Stuart Townsend.
Wilde’s imprisonment stands as an early example of the unfair and illogical manner in which homosexuality was treated in the Western world for the next century. Homosexuality was considered by many Western powers to be a genetic mutation, a disease that made those who practiced it inherently degenerate. Dictators like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin included members of the homosexual community in their massive purges to cleanse society, epitomized through the Holocaust and the eugenics movement. To this day, many countries, including the United States, ban gay marriage based on many factors, both religious and secular in reasoning.
Stuart Townsend as Grey in 2003s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Regardless of his supposed “crime”, Wilde stands as one of the most remembered and loved author produced during the Victorian period in England.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”–from Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
