The Importance of Being Different: Disability in Oscar Wilde's Fairy TalesUnderstanding Oscar Wilde’s characteristically unique approach to writing difference Over the course of his remarkable career, Oscar Wilde published two volumes of fairy tales: The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates. Both collections feature numerous stories with protagonists who may be said to be disability-aligned, owing to their pronounced physical differences. In The Importance of Being Different, Chris Foss explores the way that Wilde’s stories problematically replicate many of the Victorian era’s typical responses to disability but also the ways they diverge, offering a more progressive orientation—both through more sympathetic identifications with disability-aligned characters and through a self-conscious foregrounding of the mechanisms of pity and the consumption of pain. The first ever monograph to examine Wilde’s work through a disability studies lens, this groundbreaking book encompasses all of his fairy tales as well as his writings during and after imprisonment. Even though Wilde unflinchingly represented the extent to which these peculiar bodies suffered rejection by society, he encouraged his readers to embrace them and to advocate for emotional responses that engage love and kindness toward both individual transformation and social change. |
Contents
The Happy Prince and the DisabilityAligned Protagonist as Utopian Hero | |
We Are the Zanies of Sorrow | |
Bibliography | |
Other editions - View all
The Importance of Being Different: Disability in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales Chris Foss No preview available - 2025 |
The Importance of Being Different: Disability in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales Chris Foss No preview available - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
ableism aesthetic anomalous bodies arguably beauty bird Birthday blind bodyminds Bristow charity child Children's Literature compassion compassionate action Cultural dance Decay of Lying Dickens Dickens's disability studies disability-aligned characters disability-aligned difference disability-aligned protagonists disabled persons Dwarf dwarfism embodiment emotional response enfreaked Epistola exploitation extraordinary bodies fairy tale fellow feeling figure focus freak show freakery freakish further Happy Prince heart House of Pomegranates Huff and Stoddard human Ibid Infanta insists Killeen lens leper literary representations little Mermaid lives Markey merely narrative Nodelman nondisabled nonetheless nonnormative offers Old Curiosity Shop Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde's Fairy pain peculiar bodies peculiar protagonists pity poor position potential poverty Priest prison privilege queer readers reading reinforce representations of disability role Sea-folk Selfish Giant sentimental sexuality Sleary social sort Soul Star-Child statue stigmatized Stoddard Holmes story suffering suggest Swallow texts things Tiny Tim transformation ugly ultimately Victorian Wilde’s young Fisherman Zipes