Thirty years ago, I appeared on Oprah’s television show to discuss the memoir I had published about my marriage, which ended in widowhood “due to complications of AIDS.” A few weeks before the taping, the producer called to see if I could help find other guests: other women who, like me, had married gay men.
A woman married to a gay man? ‘The Wildes’ says that is so 1892.
FICTION: Louis Bayard’s historical novel looks at the marriage of Oscar and Constance Wilde through a fresh lens.
For the Minnesota Star Tribune
September 11, 2024 at 12:30PM
Actually, I couldn’t think of any. My story was not a common one, or if it was, it wasn’t openly discussed.
Times have changed, though, and I’ve been meeting women with complicated marriages, similar to mine, in popular culture. First, Leonard Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre, played so beautifully by Carey Mulligan in “Maestro.” And now, Constance Wilde, brought to life by Louis Bayard in his witty and heartbreaking new novel, “The Wildes.”
Bayard has been doing great things with gay-centric versions of historical fiction for a couple of books now, namely “Jackie and Me” and “Courting Mr. Lincoln.” With “The Wildes,” he flips the narrative, portraying a famously gay person through the lens of the straight people in his life.
He opens with a prologue consisting of a single famous love letter, written by Oscar to Constance in 1884. “[M]y soul and body seem no longer mine, but mingled in some exquisite ecstasy with yours,” he writes.
Eight years later, the thrill is most definitely gone. In a long first section, styled as “Act One: Wildes in the Country,” the family of four is vacationing with Oscar’s mother and another couple in a rented farmhouse in the British countryside. “Tell me if I’ve met this one,” says Constance, reacting to word of an additional houseguest.
Clever banter ensues, then rarely stops. When Constance hopes that the fellow won’t be bringing too much luggage for his weekend stay, Oscar says, “Even two years at Oxford can’t make a fellow a complete imbecile.”
“No,” she replies. “It takes four.”
Unfortunately, this guest is Lord Alfred Douglas, the twenty-something fop Wilde will destroy his life for. By the time we get to Act Two, set in Italy, the playwright has gone to jail and Constance is having tea with the surgeon whose malpractice will leave her dead at 40.
Acts Three and Four follow the children, one of whom has a satisfying run-in with a poorly aged Douglas. Act Five is a charming fantasy version of what might have happened if Constance hadn’t stormed off from the farmhouse back in 1892. It is essentially the same story I made up for myself about what might have happened in my life if the treatment for AIDS had been available a few months earlier.
One can rarely pronounce with confidence about the emotional veracity of historical fiction, but I’ll say it anyway: Louis Bayard has gotten it right.
Baltimore-based writer and professor Marion Winik is the author of the memoir “First Comes Love.”
The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts
By: Louis Bayard.
Publisher: Algonquin, 296 pages, $29.
St. Paul writer Kao Kalia Yang has won four Minnesota Book Awards and was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.
