The Political Philosophy of Oscar Wilde

[Dan Clore]

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The Political Philosophy of Oscar Wilde
by Wendy McElroy
February 25, 2010

The renowned playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “A man who can dominate a
London dinner-table can dominate the world.” At the height of his career
in 1895, Wilde dominated London dinner-tables, stages, and opinion. Two
of his plays opened that year to rave reviews by both critics and the
public. His epigrams and activities were repeated — often by him — in
the best of homes while his philosophy of art and life were printed in
newspapers of note. Wilde was intensely admired and intensely disliked
because he was, among other things, a propagator of radical ideas.

Aesthetically, Wilde advocated art-for-art's-sake — the theory that art
should be judged on its own merits rather than upon the morality or
politics it expressed. Personally, he declared pleasure to be the
purpose of life even though the Victorian era surrounding him assigned
that role to “duty.” He was also homosexual. These aspects of Wilde have
been documented in hundreds of books and essays but Oscar Wilde “the
libertarian” and advocate of social reform has received comparatively
little attention.

In the book Liberty and the Great Libertarians, Charles Sprading
includes an excerpt from Wilde's essay “The Soul of Man Under
Socialism.” This essay and the lengthy poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”
— of which Benjamin Tucker published the first American book edition in
1899 — are Wilde's most important political works. Wilde was primarily a
playwright, a poet, and a novelist who only occasionally strayed into
political theory. His importance as a libertarian stems from the events
and consequences of his life as much or more than from his political
writing. This is particularly true in the area of penal reform.

Part of the reason Wilde's libertarianism is overlooked is because like
many 19th-century libertarians, including Tucker himself, Wilde
sometimes called himself a “socialist.” Just as the term “liberal” has
evolved, however, the term “socialist” was often used in a different way
than it is today.

“The Soul of Man under Socialism” is Wilde's most direct commentary on
politics but the ideal of socialism expressed is confused and
contradictory. For example, Wilde assumes socialism will create a
society in which production problems are solved and machines perform all
drudgery, leaving the individual free to express himself. Thus,
self-expression or “individualism” is the goal of Wilde's socialist
vision. Individualism is defined as the ability to pursue artistic goals
without submitting to the “tyranny of want.” Wilde presents a paradox:
namely, embracing “the collective” will not only result in individualism
but also in artistic expression without social or state control. Thus,
the essay does not argue for socialism on economic or moral grounds but
on rather naive artistic ones.

Wilde's arguments against private property are equally vague,
contradictory, and aesthetic. Wilde believed private property had a
“decaying” effect on man's soul. “It [private property] has made gain
nor growth its aim,” he explained. “So that man thought that the
important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing
was to be.”

What the essay consistently expresses without confusion is Wilde's
rejection of state control over the individual. He writes,

"What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if
there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with
political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies,
then the last state of man will be worse than the first.... I confess
that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to
be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion. Of
course, authority and compulsion are out of the question. All
association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary
associations that man is fine."

In its final form, Wilde's socialism closely resembles Tucker's
libertarian anarchism. Wilde writes,

"Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to. As
a natural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must
give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before
Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such
thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures.
Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably
made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and
ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of
democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by
the people for the people.... The form of government that is most
suitable to the artist is no government at all."

This essay is not considered important by the English Socialist
movement, perhaps because its voluntaryism opposed the movement's
dominant tendencies. But according to Wilde biographer Robert Sherard,
the essay was popular with the public.“ [M]illions of copies were sold
in Central and Eastern Europe.... In America large pirated editions were
printed and sold by revolutionary groups. In England its most immediate
result was to create feelings against Wilde among the influential and
moneyed classes.”

Wilde's ideas created a backlash and his transparent homosexuality
caused gossip. When the prominent father of one of Wilde's lovers
decided to make a public stir, Wilde ignored the advice of friends. On
April 3, 1895, he brought the Marquis of Queensberry to trial on charges
of libel based on a note that Queensberry had written to Wilde, accusing
him of posing as a “somdomite” [sic]. The trial was a disaster. Not only
did Wilde lose his case but information from it made him liable for
criminal prosecution.

On Friday, April 26, 1895, Wilde was tried under Section 11 of the
Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1895. The Act had come into effect four
months prior with a clause that created the new offense of indecency
between male persons in public or in private. Until this point, private
acts had been outside the legal sphere. On the basis of private and
consenting acts, Wilde was prosecuted twice and eventually sentenced to
two years at hard labor. The last one-and-a-half years were spent in
Reading Gaol.

The trials of Wilde were sensational. The best legal professionals of
the day were brought into conflict over a notorious man being prosecuted
under an unpopular law — the recent Act was nicknamed “the blackmailer's
charter.” Although Wilde retained a tenuous foothold in the
sophisticated society he had charmed, he was now thoroughly disliked by
the general public.

The first prosecution (April 26, 1895) ended inconclusively with the
jury unable to agree on some of the counts. The government could have
dropped the case at this point. Nevertheless, on May 20, 1895, Wilde was
tried again on similar but amended charges. He was found guilty.

The impact of the last case was immense. Considering the controversy it
caused and the reform that followed, the ensuing imprisonment of Wilde
was a mistake even from the government's point of view. “In view of the
sensation which he had created,” the biographer Hesketh Pearson
observed, “he should have been told to leave the country.” Why did the
matter continue? Sir Frank Lockwood, then Soliciter General, is reported
as saying that he dared not drop the matter for “if I did so it would be
said all over the world that we dropped the case owing to the names
mentioned in the Marquis of Queensberry's letters.” These letters had
been introduced by the marquis into the first trial and identified
various members of “high society” as homosexuals. Among them was
Lockwood's nephew by marriage.

Wilde did not receive a fair hearing in court or in public opinion.
Newspaper coverage was so prejudiced that one editor risked being sent
to jail for contempt of court by publishing the details of the jury's
voting in the second of the three trials even though Wilde had not yet
been convicted of any offense. The atmosphere of the court in the third
trial was best expressed by Justice Willis who, in passing sentence
declared it to be totally inadequate as the case had been the worst one
he had ever tried. Presumably this included murder trials.

One of the few newspapers to strongly protest the prosecutions and
imprisonment was Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. “[T]he imprisonment of Oscar
Wilde,” Tucker wrote, “is an outrage that shows how thoroughly the
doctrine of liberty is misconceived. A man who has done nothing in the
least degree invasive of any one; a man whose entire life, so far as
known or charged, has been one of strict conformity with the idea of
equal liberty ... is condemned to spend two years in cruel imprisonment
at hard labor... Men who imprison a man who has committed no crime are
themselves criminals.”

Controversy continued during Wilde's imprisonment. Prison life was
brutal. Hard-labor prisoners were confined to badly ventilated cells for
twenty-three hours of every day, with only primitive sanitation. They
slept on planks of wood. Letters in the London Daily Chronicle
complained loudly about the miserable conditions in which Wilde lived
and his resulting mental state. The controversy prompted R.B. Haldane, a
Liberal M.P. and member of the Home Office Committee, to visit Wilde and
investigate the claims.

Wilde was released from prison on May 19, 1897. That same month a letter
from him was published in the Daily Chronicle under the heading “The
Case of Warder Martin, Some Cruelties of Prison Life.” The letter
described a small child who spent 23 hours a day in hideous conditions
in solitary confinement for stealing food, an offense for which he was
not convicted. When the child refused to eat the wretched prison food,
Warder Martin tried to encourage him with a sweet biscuit; Martin was
dismissed for doing so.

Most of this letter dealt with the treatment of children in prison.
Children were subjected to the same brutality as adults but as Wilde
observed: “a child can understand a punishment inflicted by an
individual such as a parent or guardian, and bear it with a certain
amount of acquiescence. What it cannot understand is a punishment
inflicted by society. It cannot realize what society is.” The letter
continues to describe individual children Wilde had seen during his
imprisonment. “The child’s face was like a white wedge of sheer terror …
the next morning I heard him breakfast-time crying and calling to be let
out. His cry was for his parents…. Yet he was not even convicted of
whatever little offense he has been charged with.” Wilde also described
the plight of a retarded prisoner who was punished constantly for his
harmless but strange behavior. The man went insane.

This letter attracted a great deal of attention and, according to
Francis Winwar, it “succeeded in bringing prison reform.” Biographer
Frank Harris credited the letter with bringing about improvement in the
treatment of children in British prisons.

On March 24, 1898, Wilde published another controversial letter in the
Chronicle. This letter, headed “Don’t Read This If You Want to Be Happy
Today,” was prompted by the Home Secretary’s Prison Reform Bill which
was then under debate in the House. The Bill suggested such reforms as
increasing the number of inspectors and official visitors who had access
to the prisons. Such reforms were “useless,” Wilde argued, and again
pointed to the wretched conditions of prison life.

"The misery and tortures that prisoners go through in consequence of the
revolting sanitary arrangements are quite indescribable. And the foul
air of the prison cells … is so sickening and unwholesome that it is no
uncommon thing for warders, when they come in the morning out of fresh
air and open and inspect each cell, to be violently sick."

The reform measures he suggested were: adequate food, improved
sanitation, adequate reading material, visitors once a month, the right
to send and receive a letter at least once a month, non-censorship of
mail, and adequate medical care. The letter ends: “And the first and
perhaps the most difficult task is to humanize the governors of prisons,
to civilize the warders, and to Christianize the chaplains.” The letter
was signed “the author of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’”

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is one of the most acclaimed poems of the
English language. It is also a major piece of literature in penal
reform. The Ballad deals with the hanging of a prisoner named C.T.
Wooldridge that occurred while Wilde was imprisoned. It chronicles
Wilde’s horror and despair.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other's way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;

In the Ballad, Wilde does not question the validity of any particular
law, but deals with the cruelty and degradation caused by all Law:

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.

Because of Wilde’s notoriety, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was published
under the pseudonym C.3.3. — the number assigned to Wilde at Reading
Gaol — Block C, third cell on the third floor. The poem was immensely
popular. The first edition of 800 copies (plus 30 copies on vellum) sold
within the first week and was quickly followed by a second edition of
1000. Within three months there were six printings and translations
appeared in almost every European language. It has remained one of the
most published works in English.

It was widely and loudly received. Even the London Times devoted a lead
article to praising it. Although the ballad was poetry, it was received
as though it were a pamphlet on prison reform. The Daily Chronicle’s
review was typical; the Chronicle devoted two-thirds of a column on the
leader page and concentrated heavily on the horrors of prison life
portrayed by the poem rather than the poem itself.

Liberty devoted a column to reviewing this (as Tucker put it)
“incomparable poem.” He urged “every reader of Liberty … to help this
book to a wide circulation by asking for it at the bookstores and
newsstand in his vicinity.” One-quarter of the next issue’s space was
used in reporting the response of other publications to the Ballad.

Shortly after its publication Wilde wrote to George Ives, a
criminologist and leading figure in penal reform: “I have no doubt we
shall win, but the road is long and red with monstrous martyrdoms.
Nothing but the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act would do any
good.” Wilde planned another work on prison life but he died before it
could be actualized.

The aftermath of prison killed Wilde, both psychologically and
physically. During his imprisonment, his beloved mother died. His wife
divorced him and Wilde never again saw the two sons for whom so much of
his work had been written. He was bankrupt and deserted by friends. Upon
release Wilde left England but even in France, where he initially
settled, many hotels refused to house or feed him. Although money was a
constant problem and inhibited his ability to write, he sent checks to
prisoners he knew were being released. Other than “The Ballad of Reading
Gaol,” Wilde produced no work of quality after his release.

Physically, Wilde’s death was the result of an injury to his ear caused
when he fainted one Sunday during compulsory religious services. Despite
his complaints of great pain, Wilde was denied treatment for months. It
was only through the pressure of Wilde’s friends and officials that he
was eventually hospitalized for the injury. Unfortunately, it formed
into an abscess.

Many people considered Wilde's social conscience to be a break with his
past but Wilde had consistently opposed injustice. Years earlier in
1886, a bomb exploded in the Chicago Haymarket killing several
policemen; a show trial resulted and ended in the hanging of a group of
socialist anarchists who became known as the “Chicago Martyrs.” In
England, George Bernard Shaw assumed the thankless task of circulating a
petition on their behalf. With one exception he was unable to obtain a
single signature of note to protest the injustice. Shaw wrote that of
all “heroic rebels and sceptics on paper, there was only one of them who
had sufficiently the courage of his convictions to make a public gesture
on behalf of the anarchists. This was Oscar Wilde.”

Wilde’s sympathy toward radicals was shown again when a young poet, John
Barlas, felt impelled by social indignation to commit an act of
“propaganda by deed.” It consisted of firing a revolver in the House of
Commons. Although he and Barlas were not on good terms, Wilde went
forward to bail him out and afterwards stood as his security when Barlas
was bound over.

His sympathy toward penal reform can be traced back to “The Soul of Man”
in which he wrote, “One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that
the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have
inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual
employment of punishment, than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”

Throughout his career, Wilde also spoke out against censorship. The
rehearsals for his play “Salome” were in their third week when, in June
1892, a license necessary for public performance was denied on the
grounds that the play introduced biblical characters onto the stage;
this was prohibited by an ancient law whose original purpose was to
suppress Catholic mystery plays. Wilde deplored this action in a lecture
at the Author’s Club and in interviews. In more dramatic moments he
declared intentions to renounce his British citizenship. Nevertheless,
“Salome” was not produced in England until 13 years later, 5 years after
Wilde’s death.

Today Wilde is remembered, and rightly so, on the merits of his later
plays which satirized the moral/political/social customs and standards
of his day. He was a brilliant man with a tragic life that — as Benjamin
Tucker put it — was “one of strict conformity with the idea of equal
liberty.”

Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to
Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998).

-- 
Dan Clore

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Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"