The Importance of Being Different

Disability in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales

Chris Foss

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English

University of Virginia Press
30 April 2025

Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 ; Children's literature studies: general; Disability: social aspects; Folklore, myths & legends

Series: Peculiar Bodies

Summary
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Understanding 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.

By: Chris Foss
Imprint: University of Virginia Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
ISBN: 9780813953014
ISBN 10: 0813953014
Series: Peculiar Bodies
Pages: 182
Publication Date: 30 April 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming