SUMMARY
This article examines Wilde’s fairy tales in The Happy Prince (1888) and The House of Pomegranates (1891). By examining the relationships of the characters in these tales, I argue that Wilde creates a positive counter-discourse about homosexuality through coded representations of Greek Love. The fairy tales work to subvert or oppose the dominant homophobic discourse on same-sex eroticism either by stressing the positive, ennobling and spiritual quality of love between men or by showing the damaging effects of denying men their capacity to love or achieve their heart’s desire. This is proved by examining the tales through the lens of Greek Love and how the ancient ideals as practiced by the Greeks were unaccepted in Victorian society. I demonstrate Wilde’s coded support for Greek Love by beginning with an examination of his trials when he invoked the purity of devoted friendships as a defense mechanism for questions concerning the perceived homosexuality of his work and life. The chapter continues with an explanation of Greek Love as articulated in the work of John Addington Symonds, an early apologist for love between men. It then looks at Linda Dowling’s argument about homosexuality in Victorian Oxford University as a context for understanding some of the tales in The Happy Prince. In the discussion of the tales in The House of Pomegranates, I argue that Wilde uses the mask of fantasy as a shield, as he codes same-sex, non-procreative sexual relationship under the cover of cross-species pairings. In these unlikely pairings of mermaids and mortals or ducks and linnets, I argue, Wilde examines the value and worth of Greek Love while suggesting how society’s rejection and shaming of it in his own era will someday be transformed into acceptance.