The world of “The Happy Prince” is one where it is taken for granted that animals and inanimate objects can speak and feel. The use of such anthropomorphism works both to create the whimsical setting of the story’s fairy tale genre and to create a safe vehicle which through Wilde can express ideas that were controversial at the time, such as homosexual love.
Indeed, not only can animals and objects speak in this world, but they are also capable of human emotions such as love, compassion, and sorrow. This is made clear from the very start, when we are told that the Swallow stayed behind while his friends flew to Egypt “for he was in love.” In this way, the story asks readers to take for granted the fact that Swallows can feel and love. By doing so, the story forces readers to suspend their disbelief, engage their imaginations, and step outside their conventional set of beliefs and assumptions to immerse themselves in this fairy-tale landscape. By asking readers to step outside the limits of reality in this way, Wilde also asks them to open their minds to other ideas that they may otherwise dismiss. Indeed, the emotional climax of the story comes when the Swallow and the Happy Prince declare their love for each other through a kiss:
And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet. At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.
Here, the image of the leaden heart snapping in two—which takes the figurative concept of a broken heart and makes it literal—enhances the fairy-tale whimsy of the story while emphasizing the great tragedy of the Swallow and the Prince’s love, which is powerful enough to break lead in two. The moment’s proof of the grandeur of this love is hugely significant for presenting the love between two male characters as something beautiful. That Wilde tempers this moment in the story with the wry comment that “it certainly was a dreadfully hard frost” mocks the way that homosexual love would have been dismissed by his contemporaries.
That Wilde chooses to depict this love as between a male bird and statue—rather than between two human men—is important because it stands more of a chance of getting through to his Victorian audience, for whom homosexual love was something deeply frowned upon. Indeed, Wilde himself was at one point imprisoned because he was gay. The use of anthropomorphism in the story thus provides Wilde a safe and effective vehicle with which he can portray ideas that would otherwise have been deemed too controversial. After all, if readers can be convinced to suspend their disbelief to accept the idea of animals and statues talking, they should also be willing and able to set aside their bigoted, prejudiced ideas about homosexual love.
