"'For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts': The Affect of Pity in Oscar Wilde's 'The Birthday of the Infanta'"

[...]the close reading of "The Birthday of the Infanta" in this essay will build on two applications of disability studies to Dickens instead of Wilde, one by Martha Stoddard Holmes, the other by Lillian Craton.What is more, Craton also notes that Nell and Quilp are linked in more disturbing ways as well.Since Quilp's "desire for Nell has lurid overtones," Dickens invites readers "to imagine Nell and Quilp as a pair and, as we enjoy titillating revulsion at the thought of their sexual union, to dwell on the radical differences highlighted by their similar size" (Craton 54). "In doing so," she continues, "it creates a fictional space in which enjoyment and exploitation are often indistinguishable, and so the author's manipulation and [the] audience's consumption of human difference are interrogated alongside the more obvious social ills of child exploitation and poverty" (51-52).[...]The final impact of [Nell's] presence in the novel is not empathy . . . but a collective sense of guilt about the enjoyment we took in her tormented journey.Even readers who laugh at the ludicrous climax may accordingly sympathize with this character, their own guilty realization of collaboration in his suffering redoubling their pathos.[...]Wilde's fairy tale, notwithstanding his heartless joke at Little Nell's expense, does not just give rein to the powerful pull of melodrama, but also urges readers to eschew paternalistic pity for genuine sympathy.