There was no contradiction in this complexity.

A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion.

At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was pity for others.
To my delight the world had evidence of this changed Oscar Wilde in a very short time.

On May 28th, a few days after he left prison, there appeared in _The Daily Chronicle_ a letter more than two columns in length, pleading for the kindlier treatment of little children in English prisons.

The letter was written because Warder Martin[8] of Reading prison had been dismissed by the Commissioners for the dreadful crime of "having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child."...
I must quote a few paragraphs of this letter; because it shows how prison had deepened Oscar Wilde, how his own suffering had made him, as Shakespeare says, "pregnant to good pity," and also because it tells us what life was like in an English prison in our time.