De Profundis

Narrator

The first-person voice of the letter, recounting his imprisonment, reflections, and hopes for release.

Oscar Wilde

The imprisoned writer whose first-person account forms the text; he reflects on his conviction, his family, and how suffering may shape his life and art.

Narrator’s mother

The narrator’s late mother, who often quoted Goethe’s lines about sorrow and was a source of wisdom to him.

Narrator’s father

The narrator’s father, who helped bequeath him his family name and sent him to Oxford.

Narrator’s wife

The narrator’s kind and gentle wife, who travelled from Genoa to England to tell him of his mother’s death.

Unnamed friend who raised his hat

A man who silently raised his hat to the handcuffed narrator in a courthouse corridor, an act of kindness the narrator remembers with gratitude.

R---

A friend who visits the narrator in prison and is expected to meet him at the gate upon his release; the text gives only this abbreviated name.

Unnamed compassionate woman

A woman whose sympathy and kindness have helped the narrator bear his troubles; her presence has deeply influenced him.

Jesus of Nazareth

Also known as Christ · Jesus

The central religious figure discussed by the narrator as a poet, romantic individualist, and embodiment of imaginative sympathy and love.

André Gide

A writer with whom the narrator recalls discussing how the teachings of Plato and Christ could find fulfilment in art.

Greek woman

A woman in a story told in the Gospel of Mark who answers Christ’s test by saying that little dogs eat the crumbs beneath the table.

Mary Magdalen

Also known as Mary Magdalene

A sinner whom Christ forgives; the narrator depicts her offering costly ointment to Christ as a beautiful moment of love and repentance.

St. Francis of Assisi

Also known as Saint Francis of Assisi

A poet and Christian whom the narrator regards as a rare true imitator of Christ; he took poverty as his bride.

Unnamed friend addressed by the narrator

The person addressed as “you” in the letter, to whom the narrator explains his reflections and hopes; no name is supplied in the passage.

Marsyas

Also known as Phrygian Faun

A mythic musician whose song was said to end when Apollo defeated him; the narrator hears an echo of his cry in modern art.

Apollo

The god who defeats Marsyas in the musical contest, winning with the lyre over Marsyas’s reed.

Charles Baudelaire

Also known as Baudelaire

A poet whose modern art, the narrator says, carries a bitter echo of Marsyas’s cry.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Also known as Lamartine

A poet whose work the narrator describes as carrying a sweet, plaintive echo of Marsyas’s cry.

Paul Verlaine

Also known as Verlaine

A poet whose work the narrator describes as carrying a mystic echo of Marsyas’s cry.

Frédéric Chopin

Also known as Chopin

A composer whose music, the narrator says, expresses Marsyas’s cry through its deferred resolutions.

Edward Burne-Jones

Also known as Burne-Jones

An artist whose women, the narrator says, are haunted by discontent.

Matthew Arnold

A poet whose song of Callicles celebrates the lyre’s victory, though the narrator hears doubt and distress in his verses.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Also known as Goethe

A writer whom Matthew Arnold followed; the narrator says he could not relieve Arnold’s troubled undertone.

William Wordsworth

Also known as Wordsworth

A poet whom Matthew Arnold followed; the narrator says he could not relieve Arnold’s troubled undertone.

Thyrsis

A figure Matthew Arnold mourns in verse, mentioned by the narrator.

Unnamed jeering onlookers at Clapham Junction

The crowd who laughed at the narrator in convict dress and handcuffs as he stood on the station platform.

Unnamed friend of ten years’ standing

A longtime friend who visits the narrator in prison, says he believes him innocent and a victim of a plot, and remains his friend after hearing the narrator acknowledge his perverse pleasures.

Rosencrantz

One of Hamlet’s college friends in Shakespeare’s play; he and Guildenstern fail to understand Hamlet’s anguish and are presented by the narrator as enduring types of limited sympathy.

Guildenstern

One of Hamlet’s college friends in Shakespeare’s play; he and Rosencrantz fail to understand Hamlet’s anguish and are presented by the narrator as enduring types of limited sympathy.

Hamlet

The dreaming, divided protagonist of Shakespeare’s play, burdened by a mission to act and unable to resolve his will.

Brutus

A figure cited by the narrator as having used madness as a cloak for his purposeful will.

Claudius

Also known as the King

The king in Hamlet, whose guilty conscience Hamlet exposes through the play within the play.

Horatio

Hamlet’s companion, who survives to report Hamlet’s story and accepts the pain of remaining in the world.

Angelo

A character type from drama whom the narrator compares with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as enduring beyond their stories.

Tartuffe

A character type from drama whom the narrator compares with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as enduring beyond their stories.

Euripides

A playwright whose play about Iphigeneia contains the saying that the sea washes away the world’s stains and wounds.

Iphigeneia

The subject of a play by Euripides, mentioned by the narrator.

Carl Linnaeus

Also known as Linnaeus

A naturalist whom the narrator says wept for joy at the sight of an English upland covered in flowering furze.

Théophile Gautier

Also known as Gautier

A writer whose phrase about those for whom the visible world exists expresses the narrator’s lifelong response to visible beauty.