“It is not the prisoners who need reformation. It is the prisons”: Oscar Wilde’s Path towards Civic Engagement in his (Post-)Prison Years

Abstract

As suggested by the thought-provoking statement “It is not the prisoners who need reformation. It is the prisons”, a quotation from Oscar Wilde’s letter to the Daily Chronicle of 27 May 1897, this paper deals with a relatively less investigated chapter of the author’s life. Here, the focus shifts away from such topoi as the Irish dandy’s brilliant rhetoric and aphoristic wit, or the magnetic aura of the Professor of Aesthetics and man of the theatre. Emphasis is placed instead on the human profile of an artist who, in the wake of his condemnation for ‘acts of gross indecency’, was to come to grips with two harrowing years of imprisonment with hard labour. Light will be shed on various issues as well as medico-scientific, sociocultural and political contexts, ranging from the notions of ‘Decadence’, ‘regression’ or ‘degeneration’ to the penitentiary regime in late nineteenth-century England. Particular attention will be paid to Wilde’s trials, conviction and prison writings – their content, structure, reception – and to an awareness-raising campaign through which he set out to expose the physical and psychological punishments that were routinely inflicted on inmates, including children. From the Clemency Petition to the Home Secretary (2 July 1896) to the two letters to the Daily Chronicle (1897 and 23 March 1898), we will see how the disengaged artist’s stance left room for a deep sense of moral and civic commitment.