Oscar Wilde's relationship with religion at the time of writing 'The Doer of Good', a prose poem

Last year I published an article regarding Wilde's relationship with religion at the time he wrote his short story The Happy Prince. ‘The Doer of Good,’ a prose poem, differs from both The Happy Prince and The Picture of Dorian Gray in that it literally features Christ as opposed to featuring a character symbolising him or mentioning him. I believe that at this point in his career, Wilde exploited Christianity entirely. He has gone from writing a children’s tale with the teachings of charity and sacrifice in tow to then writing off the downward spiral of a moral character who becomes entangled in hedonism. To finish, in 1894 Wilde portrays the founder of Christianity in a pathos-evoking and upsetting way; John Allen Quintus, who wrote Christ, Christianity, and Oscar Wilde, writes that the poem ‘features an ironic and disturbing parable of Christ.’ I infer that the ‘He’ in the poem is Christ as evidenced by its capitalisation, however, Wilde’s constant repetition of the pronoun almost strips him of his divine nature. 

Quintus infers that in ‘The Doer of Good,’ ‘Christ confronts people he has cured only to find them unregenerate and ungrateful.’ This assertion suggests that people have taken advantage of the miracles Christ performed on them. Christ discovers a man ‘whose hair was crowned with red roses and whose lips were red with wine.’ The colour red is symbolic of recklessness and danger, also reminiscent of the Devil, who is described in the Book of Revelations as ‘a scarlet beast that was covered in blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten thorns.’ This suggests that he lives his life with sinister and selfish intentions and when asked why, he tells Christ ‘but I was a leper once, and you healed me’ before rhetorically questioning ‘how else should I live?’ The exploitation of Christianity is illustrated through Wilde deeming the miracles Christ performed as wasted.  This continues to be the case when He sees ‘the eyes of the young man bright with lust.’ Christ had previously gifted the man with sight; he had once been blind. When Christ confronts the male, he too questions back at Him and asks, ‘at what else should I look?’ Wilde’s repetition of rhetorical questions emphasises the nonchalance and disregard for moral behaviour amongst the population. I also infer that Wilde attempts to convey that the human tendency to sin is too strong to overcome; he writes in De Profundis, the letter he wrote during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, that ‘people whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going’. Wilde believed that those who only sought to learn more about themselves, such as a blind mind being given his sight, will naturally be led away from any given morals. He exploits Christianity by conveying Christ in limited terms, repeatedly referring to him by pronoun and never naming him, and by describing his miracles as wasted. 

I do love a bit of Oscar Wilde! Thanks for reading everyone.

See you soon,

Karisma

xxx