But following Wilde's break with his expensive, tempestuous and untalented young lover (Bosie's translation from the French of Wilde's Salome was so poor that it had to be rewritten by the embarrassed author), it was Constance who succumbed to Lord Alfred's pleas. By the summer of 1892, Bosie Douglas had usurped Constance's place. Oscar, while addressing his wife as "the great lamp" of a cathedral shrine, made ominous reference – in that same moving dedication of his second collection of children's stories – to "individual side chapels" dedicated to "other saints". Constance, immersed in spiritualism (she did herself no favours in that murky world by reporting to Oscar on the secret rituals involved in joining the ludicrous Order of the Golden Dawn), was often absent from home. Spoilt, selfish and vastly in love with what he believed was his own genius, Bosie (the name derived from Lady Queensberry's pet-name of "Boysie" for her third son) entered the Wildes' life in 1891. No boat was rocked.Ĭonstance's own restlessness and wish for independence contributed to the making of the disaster named Alfred Douglas. Oscar dropped hints to various young men that his sexual preferences had changed Constance, with seeming innocence, welcomed them all as family friends. The situation was not uncommon in the "greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery" world inhabited by the Wildes. Robbie, a loyal friend to both throughout the rest of their lives, became Oscar's lover. At about this time, with their sexual connection on the wane after the difficult birth of their second son, Vyvyan, the Wildes welcomed young Robbie Ross into their home. Harsh new rulings on homosexuality were introduced to England in 1885. Among Moyle's discoveries is a slight variant, in Constance's hand, of her husband's tale, " The Selfish Giant": evidently, the Wildes' collaboration was close. Devoted parents, the Wildes began publishing stories for children at around the same time. Oscar supported Constance's enthusiasm for women's rights, for "rational" dress, and for a literary career of her own. Oscar shared his wife's decorative tastes: their creation at 16 Tite Street of a modishly sparse "House Beautiful" was a work of joint endeavour. On one level, Franny Moyle shows Wilde as a fond husband, Whistler's bourgeois malgré lui. A proud new father, he couldn't stop urging male friends to get married. "I feel incomplete without you," Oscar told her shortly after their marriage. Her love for her brilliant husband ("As long as I live you shall be my lover," she wrote in answer to his proposal in 1883) was fully returned. In 1888, Constance Lloyd had known Oscar Wilde for nine years she had been married to him for four. Yeats's observation was both shrewd and misleading. Visiting the Wildes' smart Chelsea home on Christmas day, 1888 (the year before these photographs were taken), WB Yeats noted a life of perfect harmony that suggested, nevertheless, "some deliberate artistic composition". Oscar, sporting a new short haircut and sober buttoned-up jacket, looks gravely at the camera. Pretty, large-eyed Constance, dressed in the soft aesthetic style she helped to make fashionable, is embraced by the older of the couple's two small sons. During a time in which established aesthetic and moral conventions were aplenty, Oscar Wilde challenged the concept of acceptance and carved a place for himself among literary and LGBTQ history.The jacket of this entrancing biography conflates two photographs to present one perfect whole: the ideal husband and his perfect family. In a celebration of love, his homeland of Ireland became the first nation in the world to legalize gay marriage by popular vote, a tribute to Wilde's progressive life and ideas. Wilde's legacy lives on through the inexorable virtue of his talent and philosophy. Sentenced for two years, his only crime was a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, wrongfully deemed a gross indecency by the law of the time. Tragically, Wilde's success was unable to spare him from persecution for his sexuality. This was likewise seen in his one and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890. Considered one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, Wilde often incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty within his works. He established himself within fashionable and intellectual circles, winning rank throughout the London scene through his biting wit, flamboyant style, and conversational talent. Born to Anglo-Irish intellectuals, Wilde soon proved himself to be firebrand of contemporary dialogue within the Victorian era, blurring the line between the socially acceptable and the love that dare not speak its name.
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