Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Like much of Wilde’s other work, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” delights in portraying the illusions—and delusions—of upper-class British society. Appearances create the only reality worth engaging. The exquisite bonbonnière—literally, a box for candy—that encloses a poison pill emblematizes the potential contradiction between appearance and reality, with its charming exterior and deadly contents. But the fact that the pill never has the chance to do its deadly work reveals that the relationship between appearance and reality is not simply one of opposition, nor is the valuation of appearance over “reality” necessarily to be deplored in all cases.

For instance, Lady Windermere treats Mr. Podgers’s failure to appear “mysterious, or esoteric, or romantic-looking” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 19) as at best an inconvenience and at worst an affront to good taste that only his skill can overcome. Moreover, part of the crisis that Mr. Podgers’s palm reading sparks in Lord Arthur’s mind has to do with the idea that Lord Arthur’s destiny as a murderer is inscribed on his body, available for all to see.

More broadly, Wilde develops the theme by exploring how appearances and performance enable people to move through the social world, regardless of what they might be doing behind closed doors or what they might privately think. Part of the pleasure in this exploration is getting too close to the “truth,” as when Mr. Podgers reads the palm of Lady Fermor in Chapter 1:

In fact, many people seemed afraid to face the odd little man with his stereotyped smile, his gold spectacles, and his bright, beady eyes; and when he told poor Lady Fermor, right out before every one, that she did not care a bit for music, but was extremely fond of musicians, it was generally felt that cheiromancy was a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a tête-à-tête (Chapter 1, Paragraph 40).

The partygoers’ fear that Mr. Podgers—not known for his discretion—might reveal something about them that they would rather keep hidden foreshadows, in muted form, Lord Arthur’s panicked walk through London in Chapter 2. At the moment, however, it is Lady Fermor’s turn to be the object of investigation. Her lack of interest in music might be understood simply as a failure of taste, and a relatively forgivable one at that. To be accused of liking the musicians more, however, suggests a failure to maintain proper appearances and, thus, an attack on a reality formed by social consensus. In other words, the problem is not that Lady Fermor enjoys the company of musicians; her true transgression is in not concealing that fact from someone as socially inferior as Mr. Podgers.

Social performance even shapes Lord Arthur’s brief foray into the underworld of political radicals and explosives experts. The aristocratic and eminently respectable Count Rouvaloff puts Lord Arthur in contact with Herr Winckelkopf. In turn, Herr Winckelkopf—who in spite of his criminal profession and the seediness of the street he lives on, turns out also to have been one of Lady Windermere’s guests—recognizes Lord Arthur immediately, and invites him to partake of “the most delicious Marcobrünner out of a pale yellow hock-glass marked with the Imperial monogram” (Chapter 5, Paragraph 10) as they discuss the exploding clock. Even this “famous conspirator” exercises mastery over his appearance. Wilde’s point is not that people simply pretend to be things they are not, but rather that people may be many things, even if they are seemingly contradictory.