Constance Wilde knows how she appears to the public after her husband Oscar’s 1895 conviction for so-called acts of gross indecency. “The poor little waif, the blinkered wifey,” Constance says bitterly in “The Wildes,” a new novel by Louis Bayard. “How could she fail to understand – oh, I think the usual phrasing is (BEG ITAL)her husband’s true nature.”(END ITAL)

But in Bayard’s empathetic retelling of this story, Oscar Wilde’s true nature can’t be captured in a stock phrase such as closeted gay man. As this “novel in five acts” opens in 1892, Oscar – seen through Constance’s eyes – is charmingly elusive, genuinely devoted to his wife and two sons but always in need of a larger audience. The fact that his favored admirers are always attractive young men is not something Constance chooses to dwell on.

Review

Courtesy of Algonquin

“The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts”

By Louis Bayard

Algonquin. 304 pages

$29

Two of Bayard’s previous novels, “Courting Mr. Lincoln” and “Jackie & Me,” examined the intricate maneuvers of a man and woman tentatively moving toward marriage with the intimate involvement of another man who is a confidant to both. “The Wildes” explores the maneuvers within a marriage and the additional intimate involvements – both acknowledged and denied – that shape it.

Constance and Oscar have been married for eight years as Act One begins, and she’s trying to minimize the number of visitors to their rented farmhouse in Norfolk, England, so he can finish his play, “A Woman of No Importance.” Constance is happy to host Oscar’s mother, Lady Wilde (in Bayard’s amusing portrait, an obvious prototype for Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest”), but she’s annoyed that he’s also invited his old friend and lawyer Arthur Clifton and his new wife, Florence, to honeymoon there. Nor is Constance pleased about the imminent arrival of another admirer, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.

Nearly half of “The Wildes” is consumed by the eventful weeks in Norfolk during which Constance realizes the precise nature of Oscar’s connection with Bosie. Bayard, a contributing writer to The Washington Post’s Book World, successfully establishes Constance as a fully fleshed character, and the Wildes’ marriage as a love match between intellectual equals, disrupted by Oscar’s need for something more. “I can’t imagine life without you and the boys and Mamma,” he tells her in Act One’s painful, moving climax. “(But) there is a shoreline in view, and it is beautiful, and it is nowhere I have ever been.”

Bayard’s nuanced depiction of this complex relationship is surrounded by a plethora of setup information: Constance’s ominous health problems; a blackmail attempt involving Bosie; the desperate loneliness of the Wildes’ 7-year-old son, Cyril; the mystery of why Cyril’s younger brother, Vyvyan, has been left behind with friends. These plot strands are skillfully woven, but there are a lot of them, and the Norfolk section’s disproportionate length slightly detracts from the powerful scenes that follow.

Oscar disappears from the action in Act Two and remains offstage for the remainder of the novel, which examines the psychic damage his behavior has inflicted on his family. In their different ways, Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan have each been devastated by the scandal that drove them abroad and by the hurtful knowledge that after he was released from prison, Oscar chose his lover over his wife and sons.

Bayard sticks close to the known facts – Constance died following surgery in 1898; Cyril became a soldier and was killed in World War I; Vyvyan returned to England and became a literary translator – and enriches them by providing vivid inner lives for these wounded souls. Cyril bears the most evident scars, but Vyvyan sums up the hopes all three shared that were dashed when Oscar went back to Bosie: “Through all the exile and terror, what kept us alive was the thought of being a family again.”

We have already seen that the happy family they remember from the days before the scandal was built on evasions and lies. Bayard, building on the contemporary recognition that there are all kinds of families, imagines in Act Five another way that Bosie’s incursion might have played out. On the one hand, the solution he has Constance propose would have been highly unlikely in the 19th century. On the other, it’s a pleasure to see the woman generally viewed as an unwitting victim given some agency and her family given a chance at happiness, however unconventional.

Some might criticize Bayard for rewriting history to suit 21st-century tastes, and it must be admitted that he indulges in some overt signaling; Bosie’s final monologue practically screams, “This way to Act Five.” But why penalize a writer for having a generous spirit and warm sympathy for people who suffered from unjust social stigmas? “The Wildes” gently portrays a complicated man, the family he loved, and the man he loved with understanding and regret for the difficult choices forced upon them.

Wendy Smith is a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Excellence in Reviewing citation and the author of “Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940.”