Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright and poet in the late 1800s. He wrote poems, plays, and novels with some of his most notable works being "A Picture of Dorian Gray" 1891, "The Importance of Being Ernest" 1895, and "Lady Windermere's Fan" 1992.  Wilde was a well-known celebrity in London during the early 1890s. He was also recognized as a celebrity in France before and after his Libel trial. The reason for the trial was a result of being charged with sodomy and "gross indecency" in London in 1895. Here's what Ari Adit, a scholar and writer for the American Journal of Sociology, said about Oscar Wilde: "Oscar Wilde is considered to be the iconic victim of 19th-century British puritanism. Yet the victorian authorities rarely and only reluctantly enforced homosexuality laws. Moreover, Wilde's sexual predilections had long been common knowledge in London before his trials without affecting the dramatist's wide popularity" (Adut pg. 213). As Adut points out, Wildes's sexual orientation was something that the public was aware of, although this topic of conversation was very taboo during this time, which would explain why people would not talk openly about it. In addition, homosexuality was also illegal at this time in London. The trial had a far-reaching effect as seen in Nancy Erber's "The French Trials of Oscar Wilde." The article reads, "Wilde's suit against the marques of Queensbury came to public notice in the french press in April 1895, midway through the decade marked by the seemingly never-ending drama of the Dreyfus affair. While the debates provoked by Wilde's subsequent arrest and imprisonment never attained the intensity and magnitude of those surrounding the accusation and sentencing of Captain Alfred Dreyfus during the spring of 1895 the Wilde trials received ample and sustained coverage in the daily press of the French capital. The nature and extent of press attention suggest that more was at stake than a simple news event" (Erber 549). An AandE article also explains that "The famed writer of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Ernest brought attention to his private life in a feud with Sir John Sholto Douglas, whose son was intimately involved with Wilde" (A&E). The aftermath of the aforementioned quotation is something pathetic and unworthy of respect.  Sir John Sholto Douglas ended up going around spouting and grunting about Wilde and Douglas's son's private life. He yelled and gossiped all over London, spilling the tea about things that shouldn't matter, saying things like, "Oscar Wilde should be in jail!", and "He's a Homosexual and a sinner!". Sir John Douglas was a raging homophobe, to say the least. Wilde was eventually convicted and had to serve two years of hard labor in prison. He lost his will to write after being made to feel an amount of shame that no human being should feel for simply being who they are. The bogus trials of Oscar Wilde are yet another instance of stagnation in the fight for equality. We are forever in a state of wonder as to what other remarkable works of literature Wilde would've produced if not for his unjust sentence, hard labor, and imprisonment. Oscar Wilde's spirit was crushed by the time he got out of prison. He ended up living the final years of his life in Paris. Oscar Wilde died 2 years after getting out of prison.

Despite his tragic end, Wilde has left us with some delightfully funny reads, an ideology on art/aestheticism, and has also shown us the beauty of personal freedom. The published works of Oscar Wilde show how rich in color his style and prose were. There are a few quotes from Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", that are in sync with what Harvey Milk stood for, as seen in my other timeline entry about Prop. 6 and Harvey Milk. Milk strongly advocated the value of being proud of who we are by coming out about sexuality and that would, in turn, push society closer to doing away with the bigoted myths about LGBTQ. One of Oscar Wilde's quotes, that I see as connected to this is, "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken" (Wilde). Another quote that I believe is related to Harvey Milk, and the argument that being gay is unnatural goes, "Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know" (Wilde). This quote, to me, is in opposition to those who use the term "natural" in a socially constructed, subjective manner to dehumanize LGBTQ. In addition to these quotes, Wilde left us with some thought-provoking ideas on aestheticism.   

When looking back on Wildes's philosophy on the aesthetic movement, it becomes evident that Wilde viewed beauty as a virtue. The aesthetic movement valued art, beauty, and sensuality for its own sake. What I mean by this is, that regardless of deeper meaning, beauty and art were seen as having intrinsic value by means of their aesthetics. The fuel for the movement came from a desire to get away from the ugliness of the industrial age among other ugly or dull things lacking in style. Patrick Duggan of the BU Journal of the Arts and Sciences explains Wilde's view of the aesthetic movement in the following quote: "The Aesthetic Movement in fin-de-siecle England, as interpreted by Oscar Wilde, revolved around the ideal that the utility of one's actions should be to create the maximum amount of beauty and pleasure in one's life, and nothing more" (Duggan). These ideas relate back to the Pre-Raphaelit Brotherhood Movement, Christina Rossetti, and her narrative style poem "The Goblin Market." The main connection to the Goblin Market can be seen in some of the symbolism of the poem as well as the accompanying illustrations done by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the poem, the goblin men's fruit symbolizes things that are forbidden and sensual. As noted earlier, sensuality was something that was valued by Wilde and the Aesthetic Movement in general. The illustrations by Dante Rossetti show the two beautiful sisters in a passionate embrace which is also something that resonates with the aesthetic movement by showing their beauty and love for one another.

Oscar Wilde wrote, "Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part" (Wilde). By recognizing the injustice of Oscar Wilde's libel trial, conviction, hard labor, and jail time, it is my hope that those who read this timeline entry will play a part, not apart, in the ongoing battle for equality that the LGBTQ community deserves. Oscar Wilde's last words in the Paris Hotel he was living in were said to be, "This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes, or I do." Although Wilde had, just under two years ago, gone through the toughest time in his life, he kept with him his wittingly funny demeanor right up until his very last breath.         

Works Cited

Terpening, William. "The Picture of Oscar Wilde: A Brief Life." Brown University (Undergraduate Research Fellow). Image #1, June 8, 2007.

https://victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/wildebio.html 

Adut, Ari. "A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde." American Journal of Sociology. Vol.111, No.1, pp.213-

 248. July 2005. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/428816?searchText=oscar%20wilde&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Doscar%2Bwilde%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aab81dd5e572de05faff9c4841d81598d 

Erber, Nancy. "The French Trial of Oscar Wilde." Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol.6, No.4, April 1996. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4617221 

Editors, History. "Oscar Wilde is Sent to Prison for Indecency." A and E Television Networks, November 13, 2009. 

 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oscar-wilde-is-sent-to-prison-for-indecency

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London; New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 2003.

Duggan, Patrick. "The Conflict Between Aestheticism and Morality in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray." BU Arts & Sciences Writing 

Program, Issue 1, 2007. https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-1/duggan/#:~:text=The%20Aesthetic%20Movement%20in%20fin,one's%20life%2C%20and%20nothing%20more.