“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” These famous words from the Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde are often quoted to describe all who find themselves downtrodden and suffering, yet optimistic and hopeful. May 19th marks the anniversary of Wilde’s release from prison, a prison sentence that had prompted what would end up being his eventual deathbed conversion to Catholicism.
While this is an admirable interpretation, and certainly conveys the surface meaning of the quote, the actual implication of the line in its original context is a bit more specific and limited yet might helpfully introduce the profile of its author. These words were originally spoken by Lord Darlington in Wilde’s play, Lady Windermere’s Fan. Darlington is in conversation with a few other men on the topic of good women and bad men. When one gentleman claims that all men are good, Lord Darlington rebukes him replying, “No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Wilde certainly fits that description. His was indeed a life spent in the gutter whilst peering at and striving for the stars. Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. Throughout his adult life and writing career, Wilde was a prominent member of the Decadent movement that included other writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Joris-Karl Huysmans. These authors and their movement is often defined by the hedonism and moral decay characteristic of their writing.
Interestingly, all three of these writers, and several others of the Decadent movement, ultimately found their calling and home in the Catholic Church. From a young age, Wilde was intrigued by Catholicism and had a desire to convert, though fear of rejection by his father kept him from conversion until the end of his life.*
Three weeks before Wilde’s death, he told the Daily Chronicle, “Much of my moral obliquity is due to the fact that my father would not allow me to become Catholic. The artistic side of the Church and the fragrance of its teaching would have cured my degeneracies, I intend to be received before long.”** And received he was. On the verge of death on November 29, 1900 Oscar Wilde was conditionally baptized and welcomed home to the Catholic Church, the day before his death.
Another oft-quoted line from one of Wilde’s plays aptly frames the real struggle of Oscar Wilde’s life, and the life of all who earnestly endure the trials of sin and sinful predilections. In A Woman of No Importance, we hear the strikingly true words: “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” Those who have experienced the joyful pain of compunction and conversion can surely recognize the truth of those words. While Wilde was certainly no saint (at least not canonized by the Church) he certainly was a sinner — as are all — which means he met the prerequisite conditions for becoming a saint, pending a pure and persistent conversion of heart.
While modern biographers and literary students will focus on Wilde as a flamboyant figure infamous for his imprisonment for gross indecency and homosexual activity and simply settle there as if there was nothing more to the man than his struggles and sins; a closer inspection reveals the Christian faith that he wrestled with and finally accepted upon his deathbed, which shined through his works, particularly in his fairy tales.
Famous for his many plays and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde is less known for his fairy tales, which were deeply influenced by the Christian virtues and Catholic faith that he genuinely admired and wrestled with. Much like Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Wilde’s stories often include dark twists, are incredibly didactic, and just as formative for adults as they are for children. At the heart of many of his stories are explicit Christian virtues and exquisite religious imagery.
Wilde explores the mystery of love in “The Nightingale and the Rose” where children encounter a young student with an intense love for a young girl, who requires a red rose from the boy to earn him a dance. With no red roses to be found, the young boy is driven to despair. A nightingale looks upon the boy with great empathy and goes on the hunt for the elusive rose to help the boy find love.
White roses and yellow roses are to be found, but not a single red rose. Finally, the sweet bird meets a red rose bush that, injured by the cold winter, is unable to produce a rose. After pleading with the rose bush, the eager bird is told that there is one way to acquire a red rose. The nightingale must create the rose herself, by singing throughout the night, and she can only turn the rose red by piercing herself upon a thorn and sacrificing her life. While “Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,” the nightingale concludes that “Love is better than Life.” And so, the nightingale creates that rose, she sings throughout the night, “she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.” All the while she presses closer and closer against the thorn, until it pierces her heart. Thus, she creates the red rose with her own sacrificial love.
In a dark twist, the hopeless student finds the rose the next morning, joyful at his discovery and racing to present it to his would-be-lover. The young girl, however, rejects the rose and the boy, claiming she has superior suitors with grander prizes. And so, the boy tosses away the rose as he chooses to throw away romance and his desire for it. The prideful girl and the foolish boy both reject far more than romance, they reject true love. In their meddling with eros they lose out on agape. In the end, they both refuse the red rose, but what they really lose out on is Christ’s sacrificial love — a love stronger than death.
Surely this is the love that Oscar Wilde did not want to miss out on, this was the real and true love that he struggled to embrace throughout his life. Despite his flaws and failures, despite his sins and sufferings, Wilde eventually accepted the sacrificial love of Jesus. When, on his deathbed, Oscar Wilde was conditionally baptized into the Church, he truly embodied what it means to be in the gutter, all the while staring at the stars.
*See Joseph Pearce, Catholic Literary Giants (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2005), 343.
**Joseph Pearce, Literary Converts (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1999), 3.
Hunter Leonard
Hunter Leonard is a passionate Catholic with an intense love for learning about and sharing the Faith. He holds an M.A. in Theology from the Augustine Institute and a B.A. in English from California State University at Northridge. Hunter works as a Happiness Engineer with Flocknote and publishes monthly articles with Catholic Stand.