I read Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose on Thursday night, which was a mistake only because I then couldn’t fall asleep.
It’s on the IGCSE World Literature list for this year. Short. Pretty. The kind of story people call a fairy tale when they want you to relax. I did not relax.
A student wants to dance with a girl. She says she’ll only dance with him if he brings her a red rose. His garden has none, so he lies on the grass and complains. A nightingale hears him and decides this is True Love — a lot of confidence in a boy she just met.
The only way to get a red rose is to sing all night with her breast against a thorn, until the thorn kills her and her blood turns the flower red. She does it. She dies. In the morning there is a perfect rose.
The student picks it, pleased with himself, and takes it to the girl. She says no. The Chamberlain’s nephew sent her jewels, and everybody knows jewels cost far more than flowers. He throws the rose into the street. A cartwheel crushes it. He goes back to his room and opens a book. The nightingale is already forgotten.
I sat there like: that’s a balance sheet.
I know that sounds cold. I don’t mean the nightingale should have invoiced anyone. I mean the story is about three different prices for the same rose, and they don’t match, and that’s the whole tragedy.
To the nightingale, the rose costs a life. She pays it on purpose. She thinks love is worth more than living, which is either beautiful or insane, depending on the hour.
To the girl, the rose is cheaper than jewels. She says this out loud, like she’s being reasonable. In a way she is. If you only count what you can wear to a dance, jewels win. A flower wilts. A necklace doesn’t. I thought about Mathilde in The Necklace when I read that line, which is unfair and also exactly what my brain does now.
To the student, the rose is worth one evening, until it isn’t. Then it’s worth nothing. He doesn’t even stay angry. He just decides love is silly and philosophy is better. He wanted the rose as a ticket. When the ticket didn’t work, he discarded it. He never asked what it cost to make.
That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. In Business they talk about price versus value. Price is what you pay. Value is what you think you got. Wilde is doing that, except the person who paid isn’t the person who got the thing, and the person who got the thing didn’t want it.
Art does this constantly. A song that took someone three years can be skipped in twelve seconds. My favourite book cost less than lunch. I have a lunch I don’t remember and a book I do.
I used to think “value” was a money word. Now I think money is just one of the louder ways people announce what they care about. The girl announces it with jewels. The student announces it by throwing the rose away. The nightingale announces it by dying, which is a terrible pricing strategy and also the only honest one in the story.
I don’t want to study finance so I can become the Chamberlain’s nephew. I want to get better at noticing when the price and the cost are not the same thing. Wilde already knew. He just put a bird in it so you’d feel it first.
Also — this made me laugh, then feel bad for laughing — the student is studying, like it’s a personality. He talks about love in big words and goes back to his books the second it becomes inconvenient. I wrote that down and stared at it. I go back to my books too.
Anyway. I have to read it again for class. I’ll probably find a symbol I missed. I already found a price tag I wasn’t supposed to look for.