The Nightingale And the Rose

The Nightingale and the Rose - Oscar Wilde 

Welcome readers! As a Part of my Bachelor's studies at shamaldas Arts college, affiliated with MK Bhavnagar university. In this Particular blog, I will discuss the short story 'The Nightingale And Rose' by Oscar Wilde, offering a comprehensive analysis enriched with additional insights. 

"The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde is a poignant tale that explores themes of sacrifice, love, and the disillusionment of romantic ideals. The story follows a nightingale who overhears a young student lamenting that he cannot find a red rose to give to his beloved because he must dance with her at a ball the following night. The nightingale is deeply moved by the student's plight and decides to help him by sacrificing herself to create a red rose.

The nightingale goes on a quest to find a red rose for the student, but all the roses in the garden are white. Eventually, she finds a rose tree that can produce a red rose, but it requires the nightingale to sing to it all night and press her heart against its thorn in order to dye the rose red with her own blood. Despite the pain and sacrifice, the nightingale willingly gives her life to create the red rose for the student.

However, when the student receives the rose, he rejects it, as he has already found a practical solution to his problem. He prioritizes his own desires and the superficial expectations of society over the sincere sacrifice and genuine love symbolized by the nightingale's gift.

In the end, the nightingale's sacrifice is in vain, and the story concludes with a bleak realization of the cruelty and indifference of the world. Wilde uses this story to critique the shallow nature of human love and the inability of society to appreciate true beauty and sacrifice.

About Author :- 

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams  and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross independency for homosexual acts. He also remembered for his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality. 

Oscar wilde's parents were Anglo - Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Peter and John Ruskin. After university, he moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.   His lasting literary fame resides primarily in four or five plays, one of which—The Importance of Being Earnest, first produced in 1895—is a classic of comic theater. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), is flawed as a work of art, but gained him much of his notoriety. This book gives a particularly 1890s perspective on the timeless theme of sin and punishment. Wilde published a volume of poems early in his career as a writer.

He became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. His all plays were highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar Wilde as a Playwright. 

Oscar mostly spent the last three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. Sadly, he was unable to rekindle his creative fires. When a recurrent ear infection became serious several years later, meningitis set in, and Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900. 

Numerous books and articles have been written on Oscar Wilde, reflecting on the life and contributions of this unconventional author since his death over a hundred years ago. A celebrity in his own time, Wilde’s indelible influence will remain as strong as ever and keep audiences captivated in perpetuity.

About the Story :- 

‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), included in his 1888 collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales. It is about Romantic love.  “The Nightingale and the Rose” deals in a similar way with giving, but here the emphasis is on the need to sacrifice for love. Wilde’s love of beauty and his conception of its fleeting quality find expression in this story of a nightingale who sacrifices its life to produce the perfect rose. In the story’s final satirical twist the beautiful rose is rejected because it does not match the color of a young girl’s dress.

The narrative portrays two distinct facets of love: one embodies the essence of pure devotion, exemplified by the Nightingale who selflessly aids the lover, while the other embodies a conditional and materialistic form of affection, epitomized by the Professor's daughter. She demands a red rose from the student as a prerequisite for dancing with him at the Prince's ball. Ultimately, the story reveals the futility of the Nightingale's sacrifice when the daughter spurns the student's offer to dance because another admirer has presented her with jewelry. 

• Title :- The Nightingale and the Rose
• Published Year :- 1888
• Author :- Oscar Wilde 
• Setting :- In a fairy - tale like setting, dreamlike 
• Themes :- Love, Sacrifice, and the true nature of beauty
• Tone :- melancholic and bittersweet
• Symbolism :- Nightingale - Symbol of selfless love and sacrifice, Red Rose - Symbol of Passionate love, White Rose bush - Symbol of Purity and innocence. 

 Plot Summary :-

 ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is about a Student who is in love with a woman, a Professor’s daughter. She has told him she will dance with him if he brings her red roses, but the Student’s garden does not contain any roses. The Nightingale listens to the lovelorn student lamenting his hopeless love, and feels sorry for him.  She knows how rare true love is, and she knows it when she sees it. The Prince is giving a ball the following night, but although the Student and the woman he loves will both be there, she will not dance with him without a red rose. 

A Lizard, a Butterfly, and a Daisy all tell the Nightingale that it’s ridiculous that the young Student is weeping over a red rose, but the Nightingale sympathises with him. She flies to a nearby grass-plot and asks the Rose-tree to give her a red rose, and in exchange she will sing for it. But the Rose-tree says it produces only white roses, so cannot give her what she wants. It suggests going to the Rose-tree by the sun-dial.  The Nightingale proposes the same deal with this tree, but it replies that it only produces yellow roses, so cannot help. However, it directs her to the Rose-tree right under the student’s window. However, although this Rose-tree does produce red roses, the winter has frozen its branches and it cannot produce any.

The Nightingale asks if there is any way she can get one red rose for the Student. The tree replies that the only way of producing a red rose is for the Nightingale to sing by moonlight while allowing a thorn to pierce her heart, so her blood seeps through to the tree and produces a red rose. The Nightingale agrees to this, because she believes Love to be more valuable than Life, and a human heart more precious than hers.  She goes and tells the forlorn Student what she is going to do, but he doesn’t understand her, because he only understands things written down in books. The Oak-tree, in which the Nightingale has built her nest, does understand her words, however, and requests one last song from the Nightingale. She sings, but the Student, taking out his notebook, is rather unimpressed, because the bird’s song has no practical use.

That night, the Nightingale sings with her heart against the thorn, until it eventually pierces her heart while she sings of love. Her heart’s blood seeps into the tree and produces a red rose, but by the time the flower is formed the Nightingale has died.

The next morning, the Student opens his window and sees the red rose on the tree, and believes that it is there thanks to mere good luck. Plucking the rose, he goes to the house where his sweetheart lives, and presents her with the red rose. But another suitor, the Chamberlain’s nephew, has sent her jewels, which are more valuable than flowers, so she says she will dance with him instead at the ball that night.

The Student denounces the girl for her fickleness, and she calls him rude. He throws the red rose into the gutter, where a cart rolls over it. As he walks home, he decides to reject Love in favour of Logic and Philosophy, which have a more practical use. 

An Overview of the Nightingale and the Rose :- 

 The story starts from a lamenting poor young student who fails to woo the professor’s daughter because he could not acquire the red rose, that she desires. Although he is taunted by a lizard, a butterfly and a daisy, his plight and pure love moves a nightingale intensely. The nightingale scours the garden and visits several rose trees, only to find no blooming red rose in the freezing cold winter. She was noted that, to produce a red rose for the helpless student, the only way is to sing the sweetest song while impaling herself to the thorn of roses and painting the flower with her fresh heart-blood. As a votary of true love, the nightingale carries out the ritual painfully and accomplishes the deadly task. Ironically, the young student with the glistening red rose is still rejected by the professor’s daughter as she has already taken an invitation of a man of generational wealth. In the end, the red rose is crumpled by a wagon along with the young student’s belief in true love. 

Major themes of this tale appear to be rather obvious. Comparing the natural red rose and jewelries, Wilde depicted the direct conflict between aestheticism and utilitarianism. The passion of nightingale resonates with the deep theme “Art is for Art’s sake”, and the cruel upshot criticizes the materialistic civilization which murders the purity of love. From the reactions of the minor characters, the indifference and snobbery of the society at that time were explicitly displayed. 

Thematic Study of the Story :- 

Conclusion :-  To Conclude, "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde is a poignant tale that explores themes of sacrifice, love, and the nature of beauty. Through the nightingale's selfless act of giving her life to create a red rose for the Student's beloved, only to have her sacrifice go unappreciated, Wilde highlights the fleeting and often unacknowledged nature of true love and the superficiality of human desires. The story serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made for love and the importance of recognizing and valuing genuine beauty and sincerity in our lives.

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