In The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde and My Scandalous Life, the
impossible ideals of perfect harmony between the sexes and perfect
innocence are symbolically represented by the figures of the Androgyne
and the child. In a process that illustrates the Wildean paradox that “each
man kills the thing he loves,†Oscar and Constance Wilde on the one hand,
Alfred Douglas and Olive Custance on the other, fight each other over
possession of their children, in that very act destroying both the ideal of
androgynous harmony and that of childish innocence. Only by performing
their worst nightmares, embracing the darkness within themselves, and
acknowledging that innocence contains its own corruption, can the
characters restore some form of equilibrium.
