Wilde came from a squarely middle-class background: his father was a doctor his mother, a writer and Irish patriot. A knighthood like that of Wilde’s father was closer to a reward for outstanding service than a sign of belonging to the aristocracy. Writers sometimes credit Wilde with a higher rank than he had because he was the son of “Sir” and “Lady” Wilde. My goal is less to give new information than to correct misimpressions sometimes found in popular writing about Wilde. Nevertheless, mysterious as the trials may be, some common mistakes can be fixed. For example, transcripts of the second two trials have disappeared, so historians have to use biased, incomplete newspaper reports. Even after volumes of writing, much about the trials remains cloudy. Homophobia (or, more specifically, revulsion at anal sex) mattered in the Wilde trials, but no single cause explains the complex, disastrous events. Without denying the potency of the image of Wilde as martyr or the justifiable outrage that many still feel about the trials, I want to focus on Wilde the individual, not Wilde the archetype. All their events become the seemingly inevitable consequence of homophobia. By turning Wilde into the archetypal gay martyr, it washes out the contingencies, surprises, and sheer strangeness of his trials. Unfortunately, although some parts of this story are true, others are not. It makes Wilde a gay martyr proves stereotypes about the Victorians as judgmental, ignorant hypocrites and confirms paranoia about “the system” when faced with supposedly deviant behaviors. This sketch has the seeds of a great story. His trials made homosexuality even more invisible than it had been before. Only after decades did it become possible to mention him. The scandal made his name unspeakable and works unsalable. Wilde was hunted down, prosecuted for his homosexuality, and thrown into prison he died soon after his release. Yet when his homosexuality came to light, Victorian society was shocked. Figure 1: Photograph of Oscar Wilde, by Napoleon SaronyAn outline of popular knowledge of Oscar Wilde’s downfall might read like this: Wilde was a rich, glamorous, aristocratic celebrity, famous for his wit and funny plays.
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