The mood of “The Happy Prince” is initially lighthearted and whimsical. The story starts with the image of the beautiful golden prince high above the city full of his admirers. The reader then meets the Swallow, whose introduction involves his courtship of the reed, which is made amusing to the reader by Wilde’s anthropomorphized characterization of the Swallow as a jilted lover who eventually abandons his “lady-love” for their differing ideas about travel.
However, this lighthearted and humorous mood quickly dissipates when the Swallow and the Prince first meet and the reader is told of the town’s poverty and the Prince’s sorrow. From this point on, the mood of the story becomes increasingly dark as the story exposes the depth of the suffering that plagues the city, culminating in the Swallow and the statue’s eventual tragic deaths.
The shift in mood from the whimsical to the sorrowful is emblematic of one of the story’s most prominent themes: that appearances are only surface deep. The story’s title, “The Happy Prince,” for example, as well as its whimsical fairy-tale setting, tricks the reader into expecting a happy tale, when the story is actually very moving and melancholic. The deterioration of the story’s lighthearted appearance is mirrored by the deterioration of the statue of the Happy Prince, which, golden and glowing at the beginning of the story, by the end is “grey and dull.” Just as the statue’s golden appearance is only surface deep, so too is the story’s appearance of triviality and amusement.
However, while the story gets significantly darker as it progresses, the ending, in which the Swallow and Prince are praised and saved by God, is ultimately hopeful. Even the tragic climax of the story—the death of the Swallow and the Prince—possesses a grandeur and beauty that prevents the story from becoming too bleak. While the mood contains elements of sorrow, then, it is also ultimately romantic and champions the virtues of love and sacrifice.
