Prunes and Miss Prism

PRUNES AND MISS PRISM HAROLD E. TOLIVER, analyzing ''\Tilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in his· article, "Wilde and the Importance of 'Sincere and Studied Triviality'" (Modern Drama, February, 1963), makes good use of the character of the governess, Miss Laetitia Prism, as one means of demonstrating his thesis. In the process he comments, in passing, on the appropriateness of her name, or names, to her character . A closer examination of these names, however, will reveal even lower and solider strata of connotative application than Mr. Toliver has noted. First, shortly after Miss Prism is introduced at the beginning of Act II, Canon Chasuble (the derivation of whose "humors" name from the ecclesiastical vestment associated with his profession is of course obvious) remarks archly: "But I must not disturb Egeria and her pupil any longer." Mr. Toliver's only comment here is that the Canon calls her this "after the mythical patron of Roman law and order." Chasuble himself, explaining and defending his feeble attempt at a bit of academic flattery when Miss Prism stiffly corrects him by echoing, "Egeria? My name is Laetitia, Doctor," responds politely, "A classical allusion merely, drawn from the Pagan authors." No attempt is made by either character, or by Wilde himself (though Toliver makes one), to remind the spectator who is so unfortunate as not to possess a classical background that "laetitia" means "joy" or "happiness"-a temperament completely at variance with the governess 's whole appearance and demeanor. This appearance is described by Lady Bracknell toward the end of the play in the following question: "Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education?" To this impression Canon Chasuble "somewhat indignantly" replies: "She is the most cultivated of ladies, and the very picture of respectability." The name "Egeria," however, has even more overtones to the classicist . A composite of the descriptions of the original Egeria in the classical and mythological dictionaries makes her a water nymph associated with both the grove of the Camenae outside the Porta Capena of Rome and the stream in the grove of Diana near Aricia. She became the instructor of Numa, the second king of Rome, and from her he was supposed to have derived the authority for the laws and lessons of wisdom which, as Bulfinch says, "he embodied in the 112 1963 PRUNES AND MISS PRISM 113 institutions of his rising nation." According to other legends, she became Numa's wife as well as his counsellor and, as Ovid tells, dissolved into tears on his death and was metamorphosed into a fountain by her chief, Diana. She also had powers as a prophetic goddess, and was worshiped by pregnant women. How many of these associations were in the mind of the pedantic canon when he chose his epithet can only be speculated on, but the associations with the chaste Diana and with law-giving and discipline would be directly appropriate. On the other hand, the nymph's pupil was a man, not a young girl like Cecily Cardew. Certainly Laetitia would have been shocked to find herself associated with pregnant women. Wilde must have smiled a gleeful inner smile when he intimated that to the dignified and pompous lover, Chasuble, the object of his modest affection was a nymph. Wilde's selection of the surname "Prism" is even more amusing and appropriate. Mr. Toliver merely comments, without naming any specific sources, that her "name, as critics have pointed out, is a combination of prim, prissy, and perhaps prison." These overtones are undoubtedly set in motion by the word "prism," but they are actually only incidental and accidental, for an exact source can be indicated, not only in a Victorian expression which had become almost proverbial but also in a popular Victorian novel by perhaps the most popular Victorian novelist. He may either have originated it"or have picked it up from some Victorian manual on the instruction of young girls, in both elocution and the niceties of facial control. In the second book of Little Dorrit (1857), after Mr. Dorrit, unexpectedly finding himself a wealthy man, has finally been released from his long residence in the Marshalsea debtor's prison and...