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A Giant’s Garden : Special ‘Fairy Tales’ Issue |
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Spring 2009 |
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‘They
whisper into my ears the tale of their perilous joys’: |
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Helen Davies |
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Leeds Metropolitan University |
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In the book Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles and
Imitations (1996), John Stokes examines the various ‘versions’ of Wilde –
myths, imitations, appropriations, spectral reappearances - that have
manifested throughout the twentieth century. Stokes uses the phrase ‘the oral
Wilde’ to represent a strain of the Wilde myth that focuses on the purported
power of Wilde’s voice; both in his prowess as an oral storyteller and in
terms of the aural impact that his mellifluous tones had upon his listening
audience (Stokes 1996: 23). Wilde’s reputation as a fabulous speaker has
produced various interpretations of his work that focus on the significance
of orality in his writing, concentrating specifically on the link between
verbal virtuosity and Wilde’s Irish heritage. Deirdre Toomey, for example,
argues that Wilde privileged orality over textual production and suggests
that Ireland: ‘the most oral culture in Western Europe, a culture which
retained primary orality as well as oral/writing diaglossia well into the twentieth century’ informs Wilde’s
recognition of the ‘hostile symbiosis’ between talking and writing (Toomey
1994: 406-407). Toomey restricts her analysis of the ‘oral’ Wilde to accounts
of his spoken word compositions, transcribed over the years in various
memoirs and biographies. Jerusha McCormack, however, applies a similar
association between Irish culture and orality to her interpretation of
Wilde’s literary fairy tales, proposing that the fairy tales represent a
‘hybrid’ form that attempt to bridge the gap between oral and
textual/literary cultures: |
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Wilde was writing at a turning-point for Ireland when,
of two divergent cultures – the rural and the oral, the urban and the
literate – the balance was beginning to be tipped towards to latter. But
insofar as Wilde drew upon a tradition considered primitive and degraded, his
tales – as a first major literary venture – are also the means by which he
invented himself as an Irish writer for an English audience (McCormack 1997:
103). |
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McCormack pertinently
recognises the development of the folk tale into the fairy story as an
important juncture for the conflict between oral and literary culture; oral
folk tales have existed for thousands of years, passed between generations as
stories preserved by memory and characterised by a certain degree of fluidity
depending on the teller of the tale and the tale’s audience. As Jarlath
Killeen summarises in his recent monograph on Wilde’s fairy tales: |
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Sometime in the medieval period, although where and
when exactly this occurred is unknown for certain, the narrative elements
which link the oral wonder tale and the folk tale to the literary fairy tale
began to appear in Europe and these tales began to be written down, first in
Latin and then, gradually, in the vernacular and the form of the fairy tale
established certain relatively stable features and conventions (Killeen 2007:
3) |
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Several critics have
traced Wilde’s interest in the folk/fairy tale as in part due to his father’s
influence.[1] In his work as an eye and
ear doctor, Sir William Wilde would often accept legends, superstitions,
tales and charms in the place of monetary payment for his medical services
(Ellmann 1987, 1988: 10). Sir William published a volume during his lifetime,
Irish Popular Superstitions (1852),
and further two volumes were edited and published by his wife Speranza after
his death: Ancient Legends, Mystic
Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland (1888) and Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland (1890).[2] Paul K. Saint-Amour has
argued that Wilde was aware from an early age of the uncomfortable
relationship between oral and textual cultures, the necessary violence that
is done to an oral tale through its transcription: |
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Transcription and publication not only calcified a plural,
mutable narrative into a single telling, they also brought under the rubric
of private accumulation (the sole authorship and copyright of Sir William
Robert Wills Wilde) material whose value had originally dwelt in its
circulation and in its status as the property of a community. Through his
parents’ Dublin salon life and their folkloric interests, Oscar Wilde
observed not only the wonders of talk circulated and dispersed but also the
losses incurred when talk was annexed, set down, owned, and sold.
(Saint-Amour 2000: 93) |
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There is, therefore, a
paradoxical tension between the desire to preserve oral folk tales and the
potentially reductive practice of transcription; a dichotomy is formed
between orality (voice) and literature (text). Though Toomey has suggested
that Wilde does attempt to preserve the motif of orality in his literary
productions, there still appears to be an intractable barrier to the
effective transfer of oral properties into written text; how could the powers
of the spoken word ever be satisfactorily textually presented?[3] |
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This article does not seek
to provide a finite answer this (probably insurmountable) quandary, but
instead aims to broaden the critical perspective for thinking about the
representation of ‘voice’ in Wilde’s work. I argue that the extant
dichotomisation of ‘voice’/ ‘text’ in critical analyses of Wilde’s work risks
constructing the concept of ‘voice’ as being a monolithic signifier, of
eliding the diverse interpretations of who is seeking to produce a ‘voice’
and what should actually be encompassed within the definition of ‘voice’.
Firstly, as Cora Kaplan remarks: ‘How we speak, whom we listen to, who
listens to us, and how we are spoken to all says a great deal about our place
in culture [...] to be socially marginalised is to be linguistically
marginalised’ (Kaplan 2001: 63), and it is in this context that the notion of
‘having a voice’ has become one of the more compelling motifs of identity
politics. Susan Snaider Lanser meditates upon the scope of this preoccupation
with socio-political voice: |
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Few words are as resonant to contemporary feminists as
‘voice’. The term appears in history and philosophy, in sociology,
literature, and psychology, spanning disciplinary and theoretical differences
[...] Other silenced communities – peoples of colour, peoples struggling
against colonial rule, gay men and lesbians – have also written and spoken
about the urgency of ‘coming to voice’ [...] for the collectively and
personally silenced the term has become a trope of identity and power.
(Lanser 1992: 3) |
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In other words, access to
‘voice’ in terms of linguistic production, and the impact that this has on
the individual’s status within a society,
represents a spectrum of power relationships and struggles that are
relevant to factors such as gender, race, and sexuality. |
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Secondly, as Leslie C.
Dunn and Nancy A. Jones have observed, critical interrogations of the concept
of ‘voice’ in literature frequently conflate voice with speech, thus language
is privileged as the primary carrier of meaning. Dunn and Jones note that
concept of vocality actually encompasses a wide spectrum of vocal sounds –
for instance: singing, laughing, crying – that are not necessarily determined
by linguistic content but that can still be subjected to interpretation.
(Dunn and Jones 1994, 1996: 1).[4] |
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Taking into consideration
the impact that interrogating the trope of ‘voice’ has upon our understanding
of vocality in Wilde’s work, therefore, this article will examine the account
of feminine vocality, specifically singing, in Wilde’s fairy tales. Focusing
on the portrayal of the gendered singing voice in ‘The Fisherman and his
Soul’, I intend to explore the meaning of the Mermaid’s song in relation to
Wilde’s reference to mythic archetypes of the singing woman, and to
demonstrate Wilde’s simultaneous adherence to and challenging of accepted
images of feminine vocality.[5] |
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Charles Segal remarks that
to understand the complex mythologizing and mystification that female voice
has undergone in Western patriarchal civilisation, we must first return to
the foundations of that civilisation; Ancient Greece (Segal 1994, 1996: 17).
Numerous critics have identified the mythical figures of the Sirens as
signifying Western preoccupations with the power, fascination and danger of
feminine song.[6] The Sirens appear in
various incarnations, but perhaps most famously in Homer’s Odyssey where they are depicted as a
group of bird-women who live by the sea and lure sailors to their doom
through the influence of their irresistibly seductive singing voices.
Odysseus is only able to survive the Siren’s deadly oral seduction by
insisting that his crew block their ears with wax and by having him bound to
the mast of his ship (Warner 1998, 2000: 272). The myth of the Sirens tends
to be interpreted in sexualised terms;
as Segal notes, the power of this gendered voice is linked with the body on a
fundamental level, considering that the Siren’s power is only effective if
physically experienced (Segal 1994, 1996: 18). More generally, however, the
Siren myth can also be understood as representing and perpetuating a central
tenet of patriarchal culture through the association of femininity with the
body: |
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The anchoring of the female voice in the female body
confers upon it all the conventional associations of femininity with bodily
fluids (milk, menstrual blood) and the consequent devaluation of feminine
utterance as formless and free-flowing babble, a sign of uncontrolled female
generativity. Such associations further point to the identification of
women’s vocality with her sexuality: like the body from which it emanates,
the female voice is constructed as both a signifier of sexual otherness and a
source of sexual power, an object at once of desire and fear. (Dunn and Jones
1994, 1996: 3) |
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Marina Warner comments on
the gradual conflation of the Siren myth with that of the mermaid and, again,
the mermaid is explicitly linked to the sexualised, seductive powers of the
feminine singing voice: |
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[...] the aural affinity between the elements of water
and the flow of song, between the sea and music (sound-waves), determines the
character of the Siren in nineteenth and twentieth century fairy tales. The
imagination’s response to the coupled figure hair/voice stirs memories of
water, and with water, of bliss of erotic engulfment. (Warner 1994, 1995:
307) |
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Bearing Warner’s synthesis
of hair/voice in mind, then, it is worth noting that our introduction to the
Mermaid of Wilde’s story focuses upon her hair and body: |
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Her hair was a wet fleece of gold, and each separate
hair as a thread of fine gold in a cup of glass. Her body was as white ivory,
and her tail was of silver and pearl. Silver and pearl was her tail, and the
green weeds of the sea coiled around it; and like sea-shells were her ears,
and her lips were like sea-coral. The cold waves dashed over her cold
breasts, and the salt glistened upon her eyelids. (CW: 236) |
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The description of her
physical charms, however, is soon surpassed by the influence of her
‘marvellous song’ upon the Fisherman: |
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[...] of the Sirens who tell of such wonderful things
that the merchants have to stop their ears with wax lest they should hear
them, and leap into the water and be drowned [...] of the happy Mermen who
play upon their harps and can charm the Kraken to sleep [...] of the Mermaids
who lie in the white foam and hold out their arms to the mariners. (CW: 237) |
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There are two facets of
influence apparent in this quotation; the content of the merfolk’s stories
and the form (the song) in which the stories are expressed. It is possible to
argue that it is the content that initially seems to be more significant, as
emphasis is placed upon the compelling narrative of the song as opposed to
the power of the singing voice. The reference to the Sirens, however,
introduces the theme of seductive aural influence which, as discussed above,
has been historically associated with the feminine singing voice. The power
of the Mermaid’s singing voice is
explicitly linked with that of the Sirens’, and though there is also
reference to the ‘charming’ music produced by the Mermen it is only the
feminine music, generated by the female body, that is aimed specifically at
men. The Siren reference in this quotation also emphasises the feminine voice
as a medium that transcends reason; the merchants behave irrationally when
they are under the aural spell of the female’s song. |
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The Fisherman is evidently
similarly captivated by the Mermaid’s singing: |
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[...] each day
the sound of her voice became sweeter to his ears. So sweet was her voice that
he forgot his nets and his cunning, and had no care of his craft [...] His
spear lay by his side unused, and his baskets of plaited osier were empty.
With lips parted, and eyes dim with wonder, he sat idle in his boat and
listened, listening till the sea-mists crept round him, and the wandering
moon stained his brown limbs with silver’. (CW: 237) |
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Her song disrupts the
masculine sphere of industry, and the image of the Fisherman’s redundant
spear could potentially be interpreted as signifying his ‘unmanning’; he is
placed into a traditionally feminised role of passivity under the dominance
of the female singing voice and his plea to be united with her: ‘Take me for
thy bridegroom for I love thee’ (CW:
237) places the autonomy of decision with the Mermaid. |
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On learning that he must
first discard his soul before joining his beloved, the Fisherman consults the
Priest and in the clergyman’s response the boundaries between ‘sacred’ and
‘profane’ voices become complicated: |
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The love of the body is vile [...] and vile and evil
are the pagan things God suffers to wander through His world. Accursed be the
Fauns of the woodland, and accursed be the singers of the sea! I have heard
them at night-time, and they have sought to lure me from my beads. They tap
at the window and laugh. They whisper into my ears the tale of their perilous
joys. They tempt me with temptations, and when I would pray they make mouths
at me. They are lost, I tell thee, they are lost. For them there is no heaven
for hell, and in neither shall they praise God’s name’. (CW: 238-9) |
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The influence exercised by
the Mermaid’s song is again associated with carnality - ‘the love of the
body’ - as opposed to spirituality, and this spirituality is overtly
associated with the possession of a soul. It is worth considering the
etymological link between the words ‘spirit’ (as in ‘soul’ or ethereal
manifestation) and ‘breath’ or ‘breathe’ (Warner 2006: 61). Breathing is
obviously an essential part of speech, but the association between ‘soul’ and
‘speech’ has a deeper metaphorical and philosophical connection whereby
speech is united with the interiority of an individual’s sense of self. As
Jonathan Rée elaborates: |
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[...] vocality has had to bear some very heavy
symbolic freight. The fact that our voice is carried by our breath means that
it is easily taken as a kind of messenger despatched from the soul, a
metaphorical or even literal exhalation of some original inwardness hidden
away in our head or breast [...] The voice is the place where the inward
subjectivity of individual spirits intersects with the social and historical
reality of human languages. (Rée 1999, 2000: 8) |
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Contrary to the concept of
the ‘voice’ being a simple representation of spoken language, therefore, the
Priest’s condemnation of ‘vile’ bodily whisperings of ‘perilous joys’ and
‘temptations’ sets up a hierarchical division between the Divinely-influenced
Word of his prayers and the carnal voices of the merfolk, whose very
seductiveness reminds us of the previous description of the Mermaid’s
charming song. Considering this division of ‘proper’/ ‘improper’ voice
further, Sarah Webster Goodwin’s work draws attention to the singing voice’s
potential correlation with the realm of pre-linguistic utterance. Goodwin,
again noting the cultural association between feminine voice and the body,
argues that the feminine singing voice has connotations of the infantile
sphere of the pre-articulate, the animalistic, the primitive; voice without
clear linguistic meaning is culturally devalued and is constructed as a
regression (Goodwin 1994, 1996: 66). The Priest’s reference to the creatures
that ‘make mouths’ whilst he attempts to pray implies that this form of
vocality is a profane mockery of ‘proper’ language, as they mimic the bodily
process of speech without producing divinely-inspired language. |
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The amalgamation of soul
with speech, however, is disrupted by the separation of the Fisherman from
his Soul – it transpires that his Soul actually has a voice of its own: ‘its
voice was low and flute-like, and its lips hardly moved while it spake’ (CW: 244). The Fisherman and his Soul
part company, but once a year the Soul returns to the sea-shore to speak to
the Fisherman, and a significant role-reversal occurs: ‘[...] the Soul came
down to the shore of the sea and called to the young Fisherman, and he rose
out of the deep, and said ‘Why dost thou call me?’ (CW: 244). Though the Fisherman does not exactly welcome the
summoning voice of the Soul, it appears that he is compelled to respond to
its call. Each time the Soul visits the Fisherman it frames the stories of
its experiences ashore in the same terms: ‘Come nearer, that I may speak with
thee, for I have seen marvellous things’ (CW:
244), and the purpose of the tales are to persuade the Fisherman to reunite with
it: ‘Do but suffer me to enter into thee again [...] Suffer me to enter into
thee, and none will be as wise as thou’ (CW:
247). The Soul’s stories, therefore, are for the purposes of seduction or
temptation, and it is difficult to disregard the distinctly sexualised tone
of the Soul’s repeated plea to be allowed to ‘enter in’ to the Fisherman.
Crucially, this oral/aural seduction is not associated with the carnal
singing voice of the Mermaid, but the ostensibly superior linguistic
utterance of the Soul. In Wilde’s story, therefore, possession of the power
of seductive, corrupting voice is not limited to the watery, feminine realm,
but transgresses into the traditionally Divine spiritual realm of the Soul.
The temptation of the Soul’s words ultimately proves overwhelming for the
Fisherman; they reunite and journey on under the Soul’s command. The oral
power that the Soul has acquired, however, is explicitly revealed to be evil,
though even after the Fisherman vows to return to his Mermaid the Soul’s oral
seduction continues: ‘And ever did his Soul tempt him with evil, and whisper
of terrible things’ (CW: 256). The
use of the word ‘whisper’ evokes the Priest’s description of the ‘perilous
joys’ of the merfolk, and yet clearly contradicts the Priest’s previous
conceptualisation of the soul/body, sacred/profane vocal dichotomy. |
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The Mermaid does not
respond to the Fisherman’s calls and her Siren song is never revisited, as
her body is eventually discovered on the shore. He seizes the corpse, and:
‘[...] to the dead thing he made confession. Into the shell of its ears he
poured the harsh wine of his tale. He put the little hands around his neck,
and with his fingers he touched the thin reed of the throat’ (CW: 257). This process of oral
confession has an overt connection to the concept of the spiritual powers of
language to atone and heal, and yet this particular power of the voice is
rendered inadequate; he does not possess the seductive magic of the mermaid’s
song, and her own voice is silenced. She is finally reduced to a body
representing the organ for producing voice (‘the thin reed of the throat’),
but nothing more. The story concludes with the Priest reconsidering his
condemnation of the merfolk, praying, and returning to bless the sea. We
discover, however, that his invocation of the Divine Word is ineffectual; no
more flowers will grow on the grave of the Fisherman and the Mermaid, and the
merfolk remain silent, never returning again (CW: 259). |
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Wilde’s tale is
ambivalent; the depiction of the Mermaid as Siren-temptress appears to
collude with the traditional, misogynistic conflation of feminine song with
carnality, danger, transgression, and the female voice is ultimately
silenced. The depiction of the seductive power of vocality, however, does not
remain shackled to gendered stereotypes. The Soul, the ostensible repository
of the patriarchally prescribed divine Word (thus language), is revealed to
possess a similar ‘perilous’ persuasive influence as the sacrilegious
‘mouthing’ of the merfolk. Indeed, the seductive power of the Soul’s words
exercise a more devastating effect upon the Fisherman than the Mermaid’s
beautiful yet socially/culturally devalued singing, as he is sickened by the
Soul’s transgressions and ultimately craves to return to the pagan realm of
song. The tale’s conclusion renders vocal language ineffective, and resonates
with the melancholic loss of the love, forged by the powers of the feminine
singing voice, between the Fisherman and the Mermaid. ‘The Fisherman and his
Soul’ thus represents a compelling thematic meditation on the privileging of
certain forms of vocal expression over others, and the losses incurred
through refusing to recognise the validity of a spectrum of voices. |
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Works cited |
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(ed.) Dunn, Leslie C., and Jones, Nancy A.,
1994, 1996. Embodied Voices:
Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. |
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Ellmann, Richard, 1987,
1988. Oscar Wilde, London: Penguin. |
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Goodwin, Sarah Webster,
1994, 1996. ‘Wordsworth and Romantic Voice: The Poet’s Song and the
Prostitute’s Cry’ in (ed.) Dunn, Leslie C., and Jones, Nancy A., 1994, 1996. Embodied Voices: Representing Female
Vocality in Western Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.
65-79. |
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Jones, Nancy A., 1994,
1996. ‘Music and the Maternal Voice in Purgatorio
XIX’ in (ed.) Dunn, Leslie C., and Jones, Nancy A., 1994, 1996. Embodied Voices: Representing Female
Vocality in Western Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.
35-49. |
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Kaplan, Cora, 2001. ‘Talk
to me’: Talk Ethics and Erotics’ in (ed.) S.I. Salamensky, Talk Talk Talk: The Cultural Life of
Everyday Conversation, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 63-75 |
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Killeen, Jarlath, 2007. The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde,
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited. |
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Lanser, Susan Sniader,
1992. Fictions of Authority: Women
Writers and Narrative Voice, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. |
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Losseff, Nicky, 2004. ‘The
Voice, the Breath, and the Soul: Song and Poverty in Thyrza, Mary Barton,
Alton Locke and A Child of the Jago’ in (ed.) Sophie Fuller and Nicky
Losseff, The Idea of Music in Victorian
Fiction, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 3-25. |
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McCormack, Jerusha, 1997.
‘Wilde’s Fiction(s)’ in (ed.) Peter Raby, The
Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp.96-117. |
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Rée, Jonathan, 1999, 2000.
I See a Voice: A Philosophical History,
London: Flamingo |
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Saint-Amour, Paul K.,
2000. ‘Oscar Wilde: Orality, Literary Property, and Crimes of Writing’ in Nineteenth Century Literature, Vol.55,
No.1, June, pp. 55-91. |
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Segal, Charles, 1994,
1996. ‘The Gorgon and the Nightingale: The Voice of Female Lament and
Pindar’s Twelfth Pythian Ode’ in (ed.)
Dunn, Leslie C., and Jones, Nancy A., 1994, 1996. Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 17-34. |
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Shillinglaw, Ann, 2003.
‘Fairy Tales and Oscar Wilde’s Public Charms’, in (ed.) Robert A. Keane, Oscar Wilde: The Man, his Writings and his
World, New York: AMS Press, pp. 81-91. |
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Sjogren, Britta, 2006. Into the Vortex: Female Voice and Paradox
in Film, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. |
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Stokes, John, 1996. Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles and
Imitations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
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Toomey, Deirdre, 1994.
‘The Story-Teller at Fault’ in (ed.) C. George Sandulescu, 1994. Rediscovering Oscar Wilde,
Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe Limited, pp. 405-419. |
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Warner, Marina, 1994,
1995. From the Beast to the Blonde: On
Fairy Tales and their Tellers, London: Vintage. |
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Warner, Marina, 1998,
2000. No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring,
Lulling and Making Mock, London: Vintage. |
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Warner, Marina, 2006. Phantasmagoria, Oxford: Oxford
University Press. |
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Wilde, Oscar, 1892, 2003.
‘The Fisherman and his Soul’, in Collins
Complete Works of Oscar Wilde,
Glasgow: Harper Collins, pp. 236-259. |
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