Oscar Wilde is no Queer Martyr

By Will Symons

In the gallery of Queer icons, few remain more celebrated than Oscar Wilde. Renowned for his literary genius, the outlandish Irishman enjoys a warm reputation, in both the queer community and popular culture alike. 

After successive scholarships to Trinity College Dublin and Magdalene College Oxford, Wilde shot to prominence in the late 1800s, with a long line of literary classics. Initially penning plays, his masterful wordplay and complete command of structure made the young wordsmith something of an aesthetic darling in Edwardian England; a reputation more than matched by his flamboyant manner and outlandish sense of style. Questioned upon his arrival in the United States in 1882, Wilde, smothered in a prim velvet jacket, knee breeches and black silk stockings answered that he had “nothing to declare, except my genius”. 

Approaching the new century, Wilde could boast a lengthy docket of much-loved plays, poems, and novels, some renowned to this day. ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ remains well stocked in any self-respecting book shop whilst ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ has inspired two cinematic adaptations. Ironically, both works, which won him heavy praise upon publication, serve as something of a metaphor for Wilde’s incoming downfall. Alongside his poetic nouse and self-proclaimed genius, he’s often remembered for altogether different reasons - his sexuality, and imprisonment. 

In April of 1985, an uncharacteristically quiet Wilde sat quivering in the Old Bailey, ‘sickened with horror’ as his crimes were recounted. Not three weeks after his initial attempt to clear his name, the epicentre of London’s culture was sentenced for two years of hard labour, on 25 counts of ‘Gross Indecency’. 

Some five years later, Wilde died, bitter and penniless in a run-down Paris apartment; his life wrecked for the sole reason of sexuality. 

Hence his Martyrdom. In the 1960s and 70s, the Irishman was something of a figurehead in the Queer liberation movement, a victim of oppression, silenced and snuffed out before his time. His reputation remains much the same today; his genius celebrated; his fate cursed. Celebrities even flock to ‘The Oscar Wilde Awards’, marking Ireland’s artistic talent in the name of their fallen son. 

Yet, the past is never simple. Like many of histories ‘great men’, the real Oscar Wilde differed rather a lot from the man often hailed as a saint one hundred years later.

First, Wilde was not a ‘gay man’. Homosexuality as we know it; sole, natural attraction to someone of the same sex, had not yet been developed as a concept, and wouldn't enter the public consciousness until the early 20th century. 

Furthermore, Oscar’s own descriptions of sexuality are rather more consistent with Roman ideals of dominance than our modern notions of sexuality. Questioned in court, Wilde described the ‘love that dare not speak its name’.

“Such a great affection of an elder for a younger man”, he explained. “Such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy…It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him”. 

Whilst Wilde argued that this love was non-sexual, a litany of testimonies proved otherwise. Amongst them was Savoy Hotel Chamber Maid Margaret Cotta, who described her discovery of a 14-year-old boy, amongst traces of ‘vaseline, soil and semen’, in Wilde’s bed. 

The Jury also heard from 16-year-old Alphonse Conway, who Wilde seduced and ‘touched’, whilst holidaying with his unsuspecting wife and children. 

After his release, Wilde, then 46, again sought the company of a younger man, describing his short-lived relationship with Giuseppe Loverde, 15, in a series of letters released after his death. 

It’s crucial to note that Wilde was convicted due to the sex of his partners, rather than their age. The shell-shocked jury also heard testimony from several adult men, whose words equally appalled those present. Regardless of his partner's ages, Wilde was a Queer man, imprisoned solely for said queerness. His conviction of ‘gross indecency’ was an abominable miscarriage of justice, a startling illustration of the rancid homophobia rampant at the time. 

Still, Wilde’s relations with adolescents, and the manner in which they came about cannot simply be ignored. Applied to 21st century standards, his actions are nothing short of predatory. Especially considering his lofty social standings, Wilde’s ephebophilic dealings fit the modern definition of grooming, and fall well short of consensual. 

Time has been kind to Oscar Wilde. In the century since his death, the penman’s stocks have skyrocketed. No longer disgraced, Wilde’s legacy is that of a martyr - a shining queer light unjustly dimmed by oppression. 

Yet such a legacy fails to recognise the real man. A nuanced, troubled man, whose views, and crucially actions, disgrace his stellar professional reputation. Furthermore, said views don't come close to matching the inclusive ideals of our modern Queer community. 

Wronged as he was, Oscar Wilde was no Martyr. To paint him as such only serves to insult the thousands who really fought the Queer corner - living and dying under oppression, without abusing whatever status they had.