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Anthropomorphism
Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Wealth vs. Poverty:
Wilde uses a foil in “The Happy Prince” to emphasize the opposing characteristics of the rich and poor. The seamstress, for example, serves as a foil for the Queen’s "maids-of-honour," for whom she is making a luxurious dress:
Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen’s maids-of-honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. […] His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying.
Wilde emphasizes the seamstress’s diligence, with her face made “thin and worn” and her hands turned “coarse” and “red” by her work. The poverty of her situation (with her son sick and helpless) strongly contrasts the luxury of the decorative “satin gown” she is making. The seamstress’s industriousness is further highlighted when the Swallow sees the maid-of-honour—for whom the dress is being made—when she emerges onto a balcony at one of the palace dances:
“I hope my dress will be ready in time for the State-ball,” she answered; “I have ordered passion-flowers to be embroidered on it: but the seamstresses are so lazy.”
The maid-of-honour’s branding of the seamstresses as lazy reveals her ignorance to the industriousness of the town’s workers. The irony of her comment is emphasized by its context, with the maid-of-honour speaking to a lover at a palace dance and, in this way, reveling in luxury while supposedly "lazy" people like the seamstress work so hard that they barely have time to care for their own children. Such situational irony emphasizes the broader contrast between the idleness of the town’s rich and the industriousness of its poor.
Related Themes:
