Appearance vs. Reality Theme Analysis

“The Model Millionaire” is full of deceptive appearances. Physical attractiveness goes a long way in late-19th-century London society: Hughie Erskine’s good looks make him widely admired, but he lacks brilliance and ambition. His friend Alan Trevor, meanwhile, is an unattractive “strange rough fellow” but a brilliant artist who reaps financial success from his work. Although the characters seem to invest themselves in the idea that appearances bring themselves to bear on wealth and success, the lives they lead don’t necessarily support this idea. In fact, the story challenges the notion that appearances count for much at all.

Hughie and Alan disagree over the true reality of what they see, specifically in the case of a beggar modeling for Alan’s painting. Hughie laments the man’s poor condition, but Alan replies, “What you call rags I call romance. What seems poverty to you is picturesqueness to me.” The idea here is that Alan aesthetically romanticizes suffering and hardship while Hughie considers the reality of such things and what it would be like to actually experience them. Yet the whole debate rests on a false appearance: the beggar model is actually the millionaire, Baron Hausberg, who commissioned the portrait. Alan’s apparent cynicism thus turns out to be an accurate description of Hausberg’s own romantic request.

Ultimately, the story undercuts the importance of superficial things like appearance or status, as the attractive but seemingly insubstantial Hughie shows himself to be good to the core by giving the disguised Hausberg his last sovereign. And Hausberg, in turn, eschews typical wealthy pretensions and greed by handsomely repaying Hughie, thus proving himself a “model millionaire.” Hughie’s fortunate outcome demonstrates that, for Wilde, what matters is how people behave, not necessarily how they present themselves.