Oscar: A Life
by Matthew Sturgis
Oscar Wilde’s life – like his wit – was alive with paradox. He was both an early exponent and a victim of ‘celebrity culture’: famous for being famous, he was lauded and ridiculed in equal measure. His achievements were frequently downplayed, his successes resented. He had a genius for comedy but strove to write tragedies. He was an unabashed snob who nevertheless delighted in exposing the faults of society. He affected a dandified disdain but was prone to great acts of kindness. Although happily married, he became a passionate lover of men and – at the very peak of his success – brought disaster upon himself. He disparaged authority, yet went to the law to defend his love for Lord Alfred Douglas. Having delighted in fashionable throngs, Wilde died almost alone: barely a dozen people were at his graveside. Yet despite this ruinous end, Wilde’s star continues to shine brightly. His was a life of quite extraordinary drama. Above all, his flamboyant refusal to conform to the social and sexual orthodoxies of his day make him a hero and an inspiration to all who seek to challenge convention. In the first major biography of Oscar Wilde in thirty years, Matthew Sturgis draws on a wealth of new material and fresh research to place the man firmly in the context of his times. He brings alive the distinctive mood and characters of the fin de siècle in the richest and most compelling portrait of Wilde to date.
Within the world of polarizing and controversial figures of the past, a life of drama and scandal that stands out among the rest is the brief and brilliant life of Oscar Wilde. In Oscar: A Life, Matthew Sturgis sets out to explore the path of Oscar’s life and art, from the early influences of his childhood to his firm footing within the clouds of aestheticism, and how, after years of withstanding the public’s ridicule with little more than a characteristically unbothered, witty brush-off, he was brought low by a scandal few could recover from.
Born to a revered Irish poet, Speranza, and nurtured amongst some of the biggest names in poetry and literature as a young child, Oscar was destined to be great—or at least that’s an easy enough conclusion to jump to. The truth is that his life was not at all the easy, beautiful life of an artist whose talent is recognized by all. It’s obvious to me now that I, like countless others who consider themselves fans of his work, fell under the spell of his carefully crafted facade.
With stunning minute detail, Sturgis pulls back the curtain on Wilde’s delicately arranged affectations, shedding light on the social, political, artistic, and historical influences and inspirations that impacted Oscar’s work, interests, and daily life. Oscar: A Life reads as close to a firsthand account as a biography can with a narrative so detailed, organic, and smooth it feels as if I had stepped into Oscar’s life to observe every moment from the eaves.
Art was the axis of Oscar Wilde’s life; without exception, every aspect of his life was influenced by his unique opinions of Art, if not revolving around it completely. From the society he kept and the conversations he held to the exquisite specificity with which he expressed his aesthetic leanings (often including a specially chosen colored flower for his buttonhole and keeping his hair long and waved), Art was the very foundation of Wilde’s being and the voice that spoke most clearly to him. He viewed everything through the lens of Art, willing and eager to see the beauty of the ugliest parts of life through his relentless romanticism.
While Oscar Wilde may have projected the image of having sprung into life fully grown with sophisticated tastes and unmatched wit—and while I’m sure he’d like us all to think that—he wasn’t. Influenced greatly by names such as Baudelaire and Swinburne, Oscar was often ridiculed and accused of trying too hard to affect the same style as his favorites, with some critics going so far as to say he was “borrowing” directly from his greatest influences within some of his published works. Though it’s common knowledge that he was less than adored by most of his peers, Sturgis reveals just how much Oscar was disliked and disrespected by the press and public with fantastic detail, including snippets of articles written about Oscar and exemplifying the joke he’d become to many of London and literature’s elite. Readers can’t help but feel sympathy for Wilde, who withstood the ridicule with a surprising amount of grace and charm, as he seemed to handle everything. Oscar’s feelings are made clear through the inclusion of his own letters and conversation (quoted by friends and acquaintances in their own diaries and letters).
There is not one aspect of Oscar’s life that goes untouched in Oscar: A Life. From his personal finances, to his relationship with his mother, to his friendships and romances, Sturgis weaves the complexities of an incredibly full life together to give the most detailed, personal, and intimate view of Oscar’s life without even toeing the line of feeling extraneous or unnecessary. Being such a comprehensive biography, readers come away feeling they know Oscar as well as one could possibly know him without actually having known him in life. And now, knowing him so well, I am of the opinion that Oscar Wilde was something of a paradox. He was devoted to the philosophy of Art for Art’s sake and to the movement of aestheticism, of which he was a leading and pioneering figure. As such, he was devoted in the deepest sense to the ideas—or ideals—of Beauty and Art and sought to express that in his life, regardless of the public’s reaction to him. Little of what he did was done casually; he was hyperaware of every choice he made, the way he spoke, the way he dressed, the gestures he made, everything. Naturally, such awareness and calculation of his image and impact on the public was met with accusals of affectation. And it was affectation—but also completely genuine. Oscar’s personal expression was true to his every whim and ideal, while also being very much aware of how he presented to the world and often aiming to elicit a reaction. Genuine affectation. Paradoxical, no? Such was the life of the leading aesthete of the day.
A book that exemplifies and explores the personality and life of so extraordinary and unique a man as Oscar Wilde would have to work to be dull. From his literary endeavors to the place he secured himself within London society, Oscar’s life is hard to look away from. From pursuing his literary and aesthetic dreams and developing friendships with leading literary figures to watching those same friendships sour and the unbelievable course of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, there is not a moment of this biography that is less than compelling. Oscar’s own approach his life was remarkable. As mentioned before, his romanticism was relentless. Even when his own great, tumultuous love led to his very public and exceptionally horrid downfall, Oscar still couldn’t stray from romanticizing his own experiences for too long. In his own mind, he was something of a martyr, the punishment he faced reduced to the challenge of his great role in the larger scheme of his perfect and forbidden love of Lord Alfred Douglas. This image was, of course, duly challenged by the grim realities of life in prison, where he was permitted none of the many simple pleasures he’d found difficult to resist in his freedom, free-flowing conversation not the least important among them. Though prison certainly changed Oscar, even once regaining his freedom, he couldn’t help but romanticize some of his time behind bars and its effect on him. The details of Oscar’s infamous relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas are fantastically dramatic and scandalous, leading to the demise perhaps everybody but Oscar could see coming.
Sturgis lays out the facts while drawing sympathy from the reader, not for just Oscar himself, but for others who perhaps got less than the best of Oscar in his desire to live according to his ideals and whims. The instability of his life was nearly constant, swinging from lows of borrowing money extensively from friends just to survive to living well in the wake of a brief success. His finances were a near constant source of stress and concern. Whenever he made money, he owed most of it to the debts he’d acquired while pinching pennies, but still managed to spend what was left lavishly. When in desperate need of funds, he never hesitated to spend other people’s money lavishly. (It is worth mentioning that Oscar was also quite generous with his funds when he had them. Perhaps too generous for someone who was never far from being without.) Publication and success came with surprising difficultly and published works, even when they did generally well, were met with harsh criticisms from those who refused to think of him as anything but a silly aesthete. After letting the press make a joke of him consistently for years just to gain notoriety, he had to fight to be seen as the talented poet, playwright, novelist, and uniquely intelligent thinker and conversationalist he was. He could usually manage to sway people he met face to face, charming and impressing them with his intelligence, but there were many people who wrote him off completely. With his endless efforts to have a play brought to the stage or a collection of poems bound together in a book often met by unkept promises or simple denials, he never seemed firmly established as anything but a personality. A next publication was never guaranteed. Though it appears Oscar let little get in the way of his enjoyment and amusements, his inclinations often led him down questionable paths. With periods of excessive drinking, spending, and parades of young boys, Oscar wasn’t always—or, at times, ever—thinking about how his actions affected his family of a wife and two sons. Though loving and not unkind, he often lived selfishly, applying his “Art for Art’s sake” motto to his life in a more direct way than he perhaps should’ve, often adopting an attitude of “Oscar for Oscar’s sake.”
In a twist I didn’t see coming, Sturgis’s fantastically illuminating biography showed me that Oscar Wilde was not perfect.
While I’ve learned many a less-than-admirable thing about Oscar Wilde’s life from this biography, it only serves to make him all the more real to me and no less worthy of admiration. His life was flawed in deeply complex ways as all are, and though my initially simplistic opinion of his golden presence within the history of literature has been expanded and challenged, his presence is no less golden because of it. Oscar was a uniquely individualistic person, someone who saw the worthiness and depth of subjects and beliefs deemed “shallow” by wider society. The truth of it is simple: Oscar Wilde was a brilliantly talented artist who never failed to be true to himself, regardless of the opinions of others. Throughout the course of this astoundingly in-depth book, Sturgis takes readers beyond the veil of Wilde’s image and lets us get to know the real man behind the legend and his path to writing unmatched classics such as The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Grey.
Oscar’s end was brought about painfully early, at age 46, nearly alone after spending a lonely, mostly unsuccessful, few years in exile in Europe. It was a devastating death for so incredible and talented a person, but his few remaining friends had seen a sadness creeping into their friend. He’d been unable to focus on work and had been drinking too much far too steadily by the time the medical problems arose. His friends didn’t see how his life could turn around and become something happy again. It was their opinion that perhaps Oscar’s death was for the best.
Reading about Oscar Wilde’s life in such detail has brought him down to earth in my mind, made him so much more full, well rounded, and real. And now that I’ve finished the biography, he can reclaim his place atop the pedestal in my mind, as I’m sure he’d want.
5/5
Would you read Oscar: A Life? Are you a fan of Oscar Wilde’s work? Let me know what you think in the comments!
Thanks for reading,
Madison