Granted, they end up spending eternity together, but the townspeople they helped are likely to continue living in wretched circumstances. The Swallow becomes collateral damage, as he dies helping the Happy Prince atone for his past neglect.

The Happy Prince may have been charitable in death and helped many families survive the harsh winter, but no true social change comes to pass. Charity is recurrently portrayed as ephemeral, because even when people are motivated by compassion, it rarely if ever solves the underlying problem: Man is self-centered.

In his essay “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” Oscar Wilde declared that “Charity creates a multitude of sins.” This theme is one of the most prevalent in the tales, and Wilde makes it abundantly clear he is no believer in the virtue's putative merits. Whether it be romance, friendship, or even simple kinship, Wilde explores the dark side of these relationships, often by having the character who shows true love suffer immensely. The tales indeed teem with many facets of love. Nevertheless, others have defended Wilde as simply using the kiss as a symbolic gesture of platonic love. This did not dissuade the critics from vocalizing their issues with the kiss between the Swallow and the Happy Prince or the Giant and the Boy, as they deemed them inappropriate and perverse.

Many critics have read homosexual undertones in a few of the depicted relationships, which explains why Wilde felt the need to disclaim these tales as directed to adult audiences rather than children. Love is a recurring theme in the tales of Oscar Wilde.

The happy prince and the other tales