Actually...we ARE ready for the 'Romeo and Juliet parallels, why I think Sir Simon and Virginia were very likely married (spiritually, if nothing else) and it was the world's shortest, doomed slowburn romance from the start' conversation.
So, how can I call it a slowburn when the story IS so short? Well, as is standard for all the most frustrating slowburns, they both have a peripheral awareness of each other from the beginning that stretches on for ages, timeline-wise, without any direct interaction. He steals her paint every night, she gets annoyed but sympathizes with him enough to not tell anyone. While he dislikes the rest of her family and plots how he might finally give them a proper scare, his sole prevailing opinion of her is that she’s a nice, pretty girl who's never really bothered him. At worst, he’ll just annoy her a little more than he already has with the paint. His planned attempt to ‘scare’ her amounts to nothing more than metaphorical pigtail pulling. Their only conversation is practically a speedrun of enemies to friends. It's easy to imagine that a longer story would have allowed for more conversations that dragged the evolving dynamic out even slower. Let it build even further.
Perhaps allowing it to unmistakably grow from reluctant friends to romance?
Yes. Because Oscar Wilde is referencing Romeo and Juliet all over the place when they finally talk.
Don't believe me? Check this out. First two lines of the prophecy. "When a golden girl can win/Prayer from out the lips of sin."
Obviously, Simon thinks this means Virginia must pray FOR him because he has no faith, and she'll win him the right to pass on into the afterlife. But! Put together as one sentence, it reads like she has to win a prayer FROM him. And that makes a lot more sense grammatically.
Now, what does Simon do immediately after Virginia agrees to help him? He kisses her hand. Exactly as Romeo does during his first conversation with Juliet, where 'prayer' gradually becomes a metaphor for 'kiss.' In other words, Virginia has just been given a 'prayer' from the lips of someone who has MOST DEFINITELY sinned.
True, Romeo and Juliet would have been written about a decade after Sir Simon was murdered, but bearing in mind prophecies are rarely totally straightforward...let's have a quick peek at that scene, shall we? (Italics for emphasis are mine)
ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.
They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO
Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.
(He kisses her)
Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
JULIET You kiss by th’ book.
And compare it to this snippet of the conversation between Simon and Virginia
‘They mean,’ he said sadly, ‘that you must weep for me for my sins, because I have no tears, and pray with me for my soul, because I have no faith, and then, if you have always been sweet, and good, and gentle, the Angel of Death will have mercy on me. You will see fearful shapes in darkness, and wicked voices will whisper in your ear, but they will not harm you, for against the purity of a little child the powers of Hell cannot prevail.’
Virginia made no answer, and the Ghost wrung his hands in wild despair as he looked down at her bowed golden head. Suddenly she stood up, very pale, and with a strange light in her eyes. ‘I am not afraid,’ she said firmly, ‘and I will ask the Angel to have mercy on you.’
He rose from his seat with a faint cry of joy, and taking her hand bent over it with old-fashioned grace and kissed it. His fingers were as cold as ice, and his lips burned like fire, but Virginia did not falter, as he led her across the dusky room.
Look at the similar wording as each man anticipates potential refusal, faith at war with despair. Notice how the same quality of untouchable purity is emphasized in both girls right before granting the prayer and 'winning' a kiss. (I say ‘man’ and ‘girl,’ not woman because Romeo’s age is unknown, but Simon was middle-aged at the youngest based on description, and Juliet and Virginia -14 and 15, respectively- are noted in text as young girls.)
You can’t convince me that wasn't a massive hint toward doomed, Shakespearean romance. I'm obviously not able to ask old Oscar, myself, but as I said in my other post, more than one article has been written about the fact he was hinting at ghost sex when Virginia crossed through to the other world. So obviously he was putting SOMETHING down, just with maybe a little too much subtlety.
(That 'something' wasn't just sex. It was, on some level, a marriage.)
Further similarities appear when the conversation turns to trees and nightingales. Simon talks wistfully of resting in the earth "where the nightingale sings all night long." Remember, he absolutely canNOT reach this state without Virginia's help.
‘Far away beyond the pine-woods,’ he answered, in a low dreamy voice, ‘there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.’
Now, what have we here, on the morning after Romeo and Juliet's wedding night? Juliet is trying to keep him with her a little longer, insisting that it wasn't a morning lark singing, but a nightingale.
Juliet
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
Romeo, rather morbidly, eventually agrees with her.
Romeo
Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.
I have more care to stay than will to go.
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? Let's talk; it is not day.
The pale 'Cynthia' vainly wished for by Romeo, is the same cold, crystal moon Simon has spent centuries unable to rest beneath. Both are willing, albeit for different reasons, to let this young girl be the instrument of their demise. Come, death, and welcome! Virginia wills it so.
And those trees? A yew and a pomegranate. Have a look at the symbolism on those, because they are VERY similar.
Yew: death, obviously. But, also, resurrection. Which, for Christians, means going to Heaven. Virginia, clearly knowing something we don't, says that God has forgiven Simon. And the final line of the prophecy states that 'peace will come to Canterville.' Meaning the house, as per the preceding line, but we're also given hints that Simon de Canterville has been judged as suffering long enough and will be allowed in.
Pomegranate: There's the obvious connection with the myth of Persephone. Six seeds, six months in The Underworld. The cycle of the Earth dying and being reborn. Basically the same as the yew tree, with the addition of being a symbol of fertility. Growing outside the bedroom of a young bride, it gives a pretty clear hint to what we all know took place the night before.
Of course, fertility and the possibility of children could only apply to a living couple, not a living girl and a ghost. Right? It's just compounding the tragedy of the fact that young couple didn't survive long enough to see that possibility through. Not something relevant to...
Oh...hang on...what's this...?
There's another important tree growing at Canterville. One that's specifically mentioned in the prophecy. "When the barren almond bears." Simon moved on, the dead almond tree suddenly came back to life. All very straightforward.
Or, IS it? Remember, prophecies rarely are.
We've got a tree associated with hope and promise, both of which are pretty obvious. He was hoping to finally pass on, and Virginia promised to help...aaaaand, it's also linked with fertility...hmm.
Yes, the parallel CAN still stand, there. Because while neither couple ever stood a chance of having children, in ye olden days there was really only one way to get pregnant. Linking fertility hand in hand with sex.
(Being totally honest, with all the fertility symbolism floating around, it would be easy to read Virginia's blush after Cecil's remark about children as being aware that she's pregnant by a ghost and he doesn't realize it. But, since their marriage takes place years later, it's the kind of thing that wouldn't have gone unnoticed. We may say, then, for both Romeo and Juliet, as well as Simon and Virginia, it was only ever a distant, doomed impossibility.)
But to really understand the almond tree, we need to move away from Shakespeare and draw attention to YET ANOTHER another doomed marriage. Phyllis and Demophon. Here, we switch the roles of male and female. Virginia is Demophon, Simon is Phyllis.
Why? Here's the backstory. She was a Thracian princess, and he was the son of King Theseus. Demophon had been away from home for years, fighting in the Trojan War. Then he met and fell in love with Phyllis. Not long after the wedding, for reasons I'm not exactly clear on, he has to make a duty visit home without her. But he promises to return.
Pay attention to this next part: she sends him away with a casket containing a 'sacrement of Rhea' (it never specifies what that was, but we're back to motherhood and fertility here with that goddess, btw) and says to only open it if he's lost all hope of returning to her.
Time goes by, he never shows up. She either kills herself or wastes away from grief. Either way, she's dead and transformed into a bare almond tree. In some versions, Demophon finally opens the casket and is so horrified by the contents he jumps on his horse and rides like a madman until falling on his own sword.
In others, he simply returns, finds the almond tree at her grave and embraces it out of grief. It blossoms to show he is forgiven. The barren almond bears.
Virginia returns from the other world holding a box of jewels, positioning her as Demophon leaving Phyllis behind. I'm not going to make the obvious 'family jewels' joke, but with all the other fertility symbols in play...I'm just saying. It's kind of on the nose. Although, I will, at least, note there is particular emphasis on a ruby. A gem having a long association with protection (a thing Lord Canterville readily admits Virginia has from Simon while adamantly refusing to take the jewels from her) passionate love, and devotion.
He’s already dead, allowing for the box to be opened because there was never any hope of her returning. We may assume the embracing has ALSO already happened, since the tree is in full bloom by the time anyone looks at it. And with this story in mind, perhaps it wasn't only a sign that God has forgiven Simon, but that whatever happened, Virginia has Simon's blessing to move on with her life. Just like Phyllis forgave Demophon.
One last little, teeny tiny, interesting tidbit...
Almond blossoms are a symbol of eternal love, lasting beyond death. The very flowers Virginia first placed on Simon's grave, at a funeral where she was given the widow's position. And when she returns years later, what does she leave? Roses. Another flower commonly associated with love.
Plus, the very last thing she says, when Cecil is teasing her about her secret?
He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.’
Weird thing to say. Why 'love'? Why is it stronger than death? Love was never mentioned as a requirement for getting Simon through to the other side, only purity, goodness, and gentleness. Why is her behaviour so solemn, standing in direct contrast to the laughter she gently rebukes Cecil for?
Why, also, does her husband feel the need to clarify after that, that she may keep her secret, as long as HE has her heart. Which she immediately assures him he always has. Notably, however, it's not phrased as "ONLY you have always had that." It feels like, for all his teasing and smiles, he's got a vague idea there's something here to be jealous of.
Like he knows he’s standing with the widow at the first husband's grave.
