The theme of imperial power is explored by William Wordsworth and Oscar Wilde to illustrate the global climate of their respective periods of time in the history of literature. While the Romantic period that Wordsworth occupied was heavily marked by the influence of the French Revolution and the budding whispers of what would become the British empire, the late Victorian era that Wilde orbited carried with it the burden of witnessing the pivotal moment in world leadership that resulted in the British empire swelling to a colossal size. In Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring,” written in 1798, a reflection on the potential risk of man’s separation from the naturalistic world is illustrated through the Romantic sentiment. It is this quandary that sets the stage for Wilde’s 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest, which makes a significant effort to depict a world in which Wordsworth’s 1798 fear has become a reality—a world in which there exists no connection between humanity and the natural world, and which is instead a world of artificiality, heavily alluded to through subtle themes of corruption by imperialism.
The Romantic period lasted from 1785 until 1832 and was largely defined by the literary works produced by its inhabitants. As the Norton Anthology of English Literature states, poets of the era were “professional imaginers … inclined to claim at this moment, when the literary imagination appeared in new ways both to speak to and to guide historical change, and when political philosophy gained a new authority in and through poetry and fiction” (4). The Romantic period was heavily influenced by the pressure of surrounding political events, including the fall of Napoleon in 1815, and the beginnings of the growing tension brought on through imperial power in Britain with the splitting of social classes. It was Wordsworth himself who penned in the preface to his 1802 Lyrical Ballads that the job of a poet at the time was to “Bind together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time” (11). The choice of categorizing humanity as a vast empire proves that—in 1802 Britain—representations of empirical themes were beginning to arise in literary texts, and authors believed it was their duty to explore the impacts of this on the human temperament.
In “Lines Written in Early Spring” Wordsworth explores the philosophical idea that human nature is linked to physical nature. He writes: “To her fair works did Nature link / The human soul that through me ran; / And much it grieved my heart to think / What man has made of man” (Lines 5–8). The evocation here is that Wordsworth’s speaker is crestfallen at the condition of mankind, and that it is mankind itself that has somehow disrupted the naturally occurring link between itself and the natural world—leading to an irreversible internal corruption. Much in response to the impacts on society of the changing political climate, Wordsworth’s lamentation on the dangers humans pose to each other when they depart from the organic link between themselves and the natural world directly reflects an inherent fear of man-made destruction.
In addition to the consideration of how humans’ behavior towards one another reflects a disruption in the natural state of the universe, Wordsworth uses Romantic sentimentality in his lush descriptions of the scene in which his speaker is reclining. His poetic speaker announces: “The budding twigs spread out their fan, / To catch the breezy air” (Lines 17–18). The imagery of the canopy of leaves and branches above the speaker evokes a sense of a naturalistic empire. Wordsworth’s use of the adjective “spread” to describe the leaves growing from the branches presents an image of one small being evolving to cover more space in the world. The budding twigs spreading out their fan-like leaves evokes the sense of sails, of the power of the plant life and the allusion to naval power, to the Royal Navy of the British Empire. This movement and growth highlights how alive the natural world is, and how easily it spreads out with potential domination. Similar to the growth and spread of the British empire, Wordsworth illustrates that nature itself is an empire, an empire in which all creatures exist, and one that is the ultimate power to which all creatures must submit.
As Britain shifted from the Romantic Age to the Victorian period which spanned the years 1830–1901, a developmental shift in power marked the years of Queen Victoria’s reign. Britain’s imperial powers reached a peak during this time, and the motives of the flourishing empire included wealth, power, and influence. As the Norton Anthology states: “many British people also saw the expansion of empire as a moral responsibility” (535–536). By the late Victorian years, it was evident that there was an inherent strain of sustainability weighing upon the empire, one that was resulting in the deconstruction of Victorian standards (540). This is reflected in literary works, particularly in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, which challenges the romantic sentimentality of Wordsworth that had played a significant role in shaping Victorian realism.
As Wordsworth prophesied in “Lines Written in Early Spring” that a disconnection between humans and the imperial natural world could result in the decline of human behavior, Wilde illustrates a story in which characters have no connection to the nature around them, as their own artificial empire has replaced that of the natural world. Wilde sets the first half of the play in the city and positions the second act in the country—an attempt to shatter the preconceived notion that the country carried with it a sense of purity and rebirth in comparison to the industrious sense of a busy city.
It is in a man-made garden situated in the country that Wilde creates a second allusion to the departure of Romantic sensibilities through subtle use of the rose plant and a suggestion of the impact of imperialism. To begin with, the character of Algernon meets his love interest Cecily, and asks that she remove one of the roses from her garden. He requests a pink rose, “because you are like a pink rose, cousin Cecily” (961). By comparing Cecily to a flower produced by nature, Algernon is seemingly comparing Cecily to the beauty of nature itself. The error in this assumption is that the roses growing in her garden would not have been naturally abundant, and instead would have been chosen and planted as a result of societal standards—nature cultivated to be fashionable and influenced by the man-made empire of wealth. While the rose garden itself is naturally appropriate and realistic, Algernon’s attempt to attach sentimentality in comparing Cecily to a rose is filled with false intention, as he sees the object of a rose as instead a symbol of fashion to both adorn his suit and compliment a woman, not as something naturally beautiful.
The cultivation of plant life in Cecily’s garden is such a stark departure from the “primrose tufts, in that green bower” (Line 9) where “The periwinkle trailed its wreaths'' (Line 10) in the purely domestic empire of Nature in which Wordsworth’s speaker reflects. Wilde seems to be suggesting that the characters in his work have moved past the need to feel a connection with nature as they have cultivated their own empire using strikingly recognizable naturalistic elements that are merely artificial realism. Nature functions to adorn the self, not as something to be respected and adorned as an imperial power in the world.
Cecily’s cultivated rose garden functions as a representation of man-made imperialism particularly through Wilde’s mention of the “Maréchal Niel” rose (961). As the Norton Anthology footnote informs, the Maréchal Niel rose is: “named after Adolphe Niel (1802–1869), one of the generals of Napoleon III” (961). In mention of Adolphe Niel’s rose, Wilde would have inevitably been alluding to Napoleon III, the last monarch to reign over France. As Adolphe Niel fought in both the Crimean War and the Franco-Austrian War, yet failed to reorganize the French Army in 1868, Wilde is undoubtedly evoking a reminder of the violent realities of a man-made empire—in essence proving the quandary that the speaker poses in Wordsworth: “Have I not reason to lament / What man has made of man?” (Lines 23–24).
In further inquiry of Adolphe Niel’s namesake rose—the “Maréchal Niel”—and its representation of man-made empire, the horticulturist Thomas Meehan wrote extensively on the introduction of the rose breed in the twenty-fourth edition of The Gardener’s Monthly and Horticulturist published in 1882. Meehan outlines that this rose is one that naturally has a desire to submit to decay and explains that the rose naturally desires a period of aging before it will begin to flower freely. As the 1882 publication suggests, the rose variation that Wilde chooses to represent is one that exhibits intense tempermentalism prior to reaching its full fruition. One might argue that this artificially created piece of nature is a reflection on the nature of imperialism itself. The success of the British empire was gradual, as the early tensions can be traced from the Romantic quandary of what man is capable of to the inevitable decline and rebirth that occurred at the end of the Victorian period. In further comparison, the article “Florist Flowers,” written by A. Veitch in the same 1882 edition, argues that in contrast to man-made roses, in natural roses perfection is not to be desired; “objects of this nature address themselves directly to the finer feelings of mankind, and excite a sympathy which is ever responsive to the calls, or seeming calls of everything that is tender and beautiful” (68). This argument that natural roses evoke a certain sentimentality in man shows the emotional impact lost through cultivation, imperial greed, and need for perfection.
If the rise and fall of the British empire is any indication of the state of mankind, Wordsworth’s speaker in 1798 had every reason to lament what man was capable of making of his fellow man. As the natural empire he observed deteriorated into the artificiality Wilde emphasizes in 1895 through Cecily’s garden filled with foreign roses cultivated to fit the fashionable requirements of society, the imperial nature of society became a power that ebbed and flowed—flowering in its respective seasons and deteriorating as the seasons of humanity shift. The flowers grown to represent romance no longer represent something naturally occurring, but instead are objects of man-made imperialism to represent the idea of love, not the true act. Both authors undoubtedly wrote to address the imperial conditions of their respective periods. As Wordsworth wrote to the hopefulness of a country not yet fully powerful, he predicted the inevitable fall that would not occur for another hundred years, as depicted in Wilde’s attention to the decline of the Victorian period and the striking shift away from Romanticism. Wilde was merely responding to the question of fear regarding power that resonates with Wordsworth’s romantic drive to exist inherently at the mercy of the natural world—that is, if the natural world exists as an empire over mankind, what happens to the power of man?
Works Cited & Consulted
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Adolphe Niel". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Sep. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolphe-Niel. Accessed 13 May 2021.
Meehan, Thomas. “The Origin of the Marechal Niel Rose.” The Gardener's Monthly and Horticulturist, vol. 24, 1882. Biodiversity Heritage Library, www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/30902#page/78/mode/1up.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2. WW Norton & Co, 2019.
Valynseele, Joseph. “Niel, Adolphe.” Napoleon.org, www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/niel-adolphe/.
Veitch, A. “Florist Flowers.” The Gardener's Monthly and Horticulturist, vol. 24, 1882. Biodiversity Heritage Library, www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/30902#page/78/mode/1up.