"The Gift of the Magi"

In case you can’t find the significance in “The Gift of the Magi,” O. Henry is sure to tell you.

As if the title were not enough, he directly compares the young couple “who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house” to the wise men “who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.”  And then he declares them “the wisest” of “all who give and receive gifts….They are the magi.”

Unwise because they sell their most valuable possessions, Della her hair and Jim his watch, so that she can buy him a watch chain and he can buy her a set of combs.  Yet wise because their love for each other is greater than their love for their “greatest treasures.”

The message is sentimental, beautiful, and hard to miss:  human love is by far the greatest gift, greater than any material gift, regardless of its value.

I have no quarrel with the message, but it might have been more effectively delivered if O. Henry had just told the story and spared us the commentary.

And forgive me if I find the buying and selling of hair somewhat discomforting, to say the least, but maybe that’s because of my daughter’s recent meeting with the rather strange proprietor of Leila’s Hair Museum in Kansas City (http://oisforobscure.blogspot.com/2011/10/leilas-hair-museum.html).  Beyond that, though, hair is traditionally associated with power and sexuality.  Think Samson and Rapunzel.  Is there a subliminal and, no doubt, wholly unintended message in Della giving up her power and taming her sexuality?  Does she turn herself into the traditional submissive, modest wife of the Victorian era, sacrificing her independence and assertiveness on the altar of love and marriage?  Or am I stretching it a bit?

And Jim, selling his father’s watch.  Would it be a stretch to see that act as symbolic of an Oedipal killing of the father?  Probably.  But, if you see it that way, then, perhaps his newly shorn Della is, Oedipally speaking, a substitute for his, no doubt, very proper Victorian mother.

Now we’ve really gone out on an interpretive limb.  You can be the judge of whether “The Gift of the Magi” is a sweet, simple, sentimental story of love and sacrifice or whether it masks a representation of darker depths hidden in the human psyche.  In any case, Merry Christmas! (Or, should I say "Bah, Humbug!"?)