Repression and Morality in Henry James, Decadence in Oscar Wilde

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Bölcsészettudományi Kar
DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ
Lukács Zsuzsanna
“Decadence and Repression in Henry James
and Oscar Wilde”
Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola (ITDI)
Vezetője: Dr. Kállay Géza, egyetemi tanár
Program: Modern angol és amerikai irodalom
Program vezetője: Dr. Péter Ágnes CSc., professor emeritus
A bizottság elnöke: Dr. Péter Ágnes CSc., professor emeritus
Hivatalosan felkért bírálók: Dr. Sarbu Aladár DSc., professor emeritus
Dr. Pellérdi Márta PhD, egyetemi docens
A bizottság további tagjai: Dr. Czigányik Zsolt PhD, egyetemi tanársegéd, a
bizottság titkára
Dr. Juhász Tamás PhD, egyetemi adjunktus
Dr. Farkas Ákos, Dr. Friedrich Judit, Dr. Péteri Éva
(póttagok)
Témavezető: Dr. Kékesi Kun Árpád, egyetemi docens
Budapest, 2012. november 23
Table of Contents
Introduction: Moral Tradition vs. Subversion
pg. 1
1. Late- Victorianism: Social Background
I. Social Background
II. Juvenile Literature and Muscular Christianity
III. Moral Hygiene and Clitoridectomy
IV. Surveillance of the Subculture: trials and
the niches of hedonism
V. On Dandyism
VI. On Decadence
22
23
26
29
2. Textual Interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Works
I. Wilde’s Effete and Decadent Characters
in The Picture of Dorian Gray
II. Homoeroticism and Fetishism in Poems and Salomé
86
3. Textual Interpretation of Henry James’s Works
I. Repression and Sublimation
II. Carlyle and Victorian Asceticism
III. Repression and Homoeroticism in
Roderick Hudson
IV. Homoeroticism and Fetishism in
James’s Short Fiction
V. Sensuality and Art in Roderick Hudson and
The Picture of Dorian Gray
131
132
140
4. Conclusion
217
5. Bibliography
224
6. Index
231
7. Appendix
233
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68
87
117
152
196
209
Decadence and Repression in Henry James and Oscar Wilde
Introduction
Moral Tradition vs. Subversion
Negative preconceptions and stereotypes automatically correlate Victorianism
exclusively with Puritanism, prudery and the trials of Oscar Wilde, thereby reducing and
simplifying the age, even though it was multifaceted, with a flourishing subculture
including the Decadent movement, the molly- houses (taverns where homosexual
practices occurred) and the effete dandies. With regard to Victorian literary figures, Oscar
Wilde and Henry James are mainly contrasted in popular views, with critics highlighting
their opposing personalities and different approaches to aestheticism. Shelley Salamensky
details how “Henry James’s first conversations with Oscar Wilde, the premier talker of
his time, were less than successful” (275), noting that James was outraged by Wilde’s
flamboyancy (275). Moreover, Richard Ellmann remarks that James considered
“`Hosscar`” Wilde a “fatuous fool,” and a “tenth rate cad” (178-9). Joseph Bristow also
falls into the category of those scholars who ascertain that James “showed no hesitation in
expressing his distaste” for Wilde (Bristow, Review 148). James condescendingly
characterized Wilde as “´one of those Irish adventurers who had something of the Roman
character-able but false`” (Bristow, Review 148). Furthermore, in The Tragic Muse, as
Salamensky notes (275), James recalls his negative encounter with Wilde in Washington,
D.C in 1882.
[O]ur paths in life are so different," [Gabriel Nash, representing Wilde, is talking
to the protagonist Nick Dormer]. “Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't
we both live in London, after all, and in the nineteenth century?" “Ah my dear
Dormer, excuse me: I don't live in the nineteenth century. Jamais de la vie!" the
gentleman declared. (29)
Overall, scholars agree that James was flabbergasted by the guises that Wilde inhabited.
Wilde’s alien and conspicuously effete exterior aroused anger and contempt on James’s
part. However, the recent work of Michèle Mendelssohn, entitled Henry James, Oscar
Wilde and Aesthetic Culture (2007) revokes the conventional perception that Henry James
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and Oscar Wilde had opposing views on culture, but too many of Mendelssohn's claims
are overstated. Bristow even notes that “in the end, one is left with the sense that Henry
James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture needed a more disciplined structure to make
better sense of its discoveries” (Review 148).
In addition to James’s animosity towards Wilde, which was personal in nature, some
works, such as Hugh Stevens’ Henry James and Sexuality (1998) and Wendy Graham’s
Henry James’s Thwarted Love (1999) have also directed attention to James’s characters’
repressed homosexuality, despite their Puritan principles. These works’ reassessment of
Henry James and his time have great value. Graham’s Henry James's Thwarted Love
contextualizes James's treatment of homosexual repression and sublimation. However,
there is a need to present some Jamesian texts from a different angle, an angle which
sheds light on how some of James’s works share common characteristics with the
decadent works of the late-Victorian era, specifically Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and
Salomé. Even though Wilde and James are often construed as antithetical figures, and in
spite of James’ vindication of (homo)sexual repression and morality and his conviction
that Wilde was an “unclean beast” (Ellmann 178), works like Roderick Hudson (1878),
“The Author of Beltraffio” (1884), “The Aspern Papers” (1888), and “The Lesson of the
Master” (1892) exhibit surprising similarities with Wilde’s so-called “degenerate”
decadent novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), “The Portrait of Mr. W.H” (1889)
and his novella: Salomé (1894).
It is noteworthy that despite James’s “supposed” prudery: his novels “provid[ing] a
training manual in conservative ideology” (Reitz 3) and Wilde’s decadence, the above
mentioned Jamesian works display decadent and (homo)erotic explicit subtexts that are
very much comparable with Wilde´s Dorian Gray, “The Portrait of Mr. W.H,” and
Salomé. In these works, the narrators paint an ambiguous picture of heterosexual love and
courtship. Furthermore, these works both embrace decadence and avow same-sex passion,
aestheticism, and fetishistic indulgences. Moreover, these writings depict homophobic
and repressed homosexual male fictional characters, and contain gendered metaphors
conflated with phallic imagery. On the one hand, Wilde and James both address themes
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like homosocial affiliations (that are potentially homoerotic), homo-aesthetics,
homoerotic gazes, and also the abomination of heterosexual courtships. On the other
hand, both authors make concessions to New England/ late-Victorian morals and include
the portrayal of moral exemplars. These themes are not only prevalent in Wilde’s and
James’s novels, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson, chosen for
comparison, but even imbue the smaller works by Wilde and James, namely Salomé, “The
Aspern Papers,” “The Lesson of the Master,” and “The Author of Beltraffio.”
Basil, the painter in Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Rowland, an art connoisseur in James’s
Roderick Hudson, are both “artistic middle-aged” men who are incapable of acting
“aggressively or sexually” (Przybylowitcz 4). Both Rowland and Basil are products of the
Victorian status quo, they are long suffering, with great aspirations, and a great aptitude
for morality and self-negation. In addition, the decadent Roderick, the sculptor in
Roderick Hudson and the dandiacal Dorian of Wilde’s Dorian Gray are also similar
characters, who do not hesitate to indulge and suffer the consequences. Late-Victorian
strict morality gave no leeway for such acts, it stigmatized degenerates, made them suffer,
and pay their dues. Furthermore, the descriptions of Rowland’s admiration for Roderick,
reflected in his devotion, loyalty and covert sexual attraction is very much comparable
with Basil’s veneration of Dorian. Both Basil’s and Rowland’s secrets are repressed and
are represented in art, as a result of their homosexual panic. Roderick Hudson and the
Picture of Dorian Gray are thus repositories for a secret that is inadmissible. In both
novels, homoerotic passion between the main characters goes unavowed. Basil is a man of
principle like Rowland, who musters too much of late-Victorian ethics to give himself
over to decadent desires like same-sex passion. Rowland also strives for a higher good,
which is transcendental in nature and that satisfies the soul, not the body. Rowland has
been molded by the moralist conservatism that dominated at the end of the nineteenth
century, which abhorred decadent debauched acts and decreed (homo)sexual repression,
purity and muscular Christianity.
However, Wilde’s Dorian Gray and James’s Roderick Hudson also expose differences,
both in textual artifice and ideology. One distinguishing factor between Wilde’s and
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James’s novels is that Dorian Gray preaches sexual indulgence and embraces sensoriemotional values, which is communicated with alacrity via Dorian and Lord Henry, who
are the focal points of Wilde’s novel. Antithetically, Roderick Hudson clearly rejects and
preaches against the decadent dogmas of the late-Victorian counter-culture, an attitude
which is communicated via Rowland Mallet, a bourgeois and self-controlled moralist,
who is the archetype of virtue and late-Victorian conservative ethics in James’s novel.
Rowland emphasizes a need for control and self-negation, unlike Dorian Gray. Rowland
represses and sublimates his homoerotic passion, thereby conserving his sexual purity and
morality. Obviously, Rowland is a moralist who holds and communicates that the
function of morality and homosexual repression is to construct an ideal self that is
desirable for an entire life.
In contrast, Wilde’s novel endeavors to subvert conventional moral precepts and to
unveil the dogmas of decadence and aestheticism. “Wilde’s transgressive aesthetic
subverted the dominant categories of subjectivity which kept desire in subjection”
(Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence 68), thereby challenging the principles of late-Victorian
mores. Wilde invites the readers in the Preface of Dorian Gray to put morals aside, so he
details, “those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated […] they
are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty” (Dorian Gray 5). For Wilde,
“no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable
mannerism of style” (Dorian Gray 5). Antithetically, Roderick Hudson is the very drama
of ethics, consciousness and negation. For James, Wilde represented a transgendered
sexual identity. By opening up blatant femininity for men, Wilde, complicated things for a
man like James, who in spite of the homoerotic and decadent content in some of his
works, tried to assimilate to the ethical demands of his time more keenly and strictly than
Wilde. Thus, in this context, it is vital to analyze homosexual repression, the
psychological act of excluding homoerotic desires and impulses as a result of homophobia
and homosexual panic, in order to contextualize the moral strictures and conservatism of
James’s and even Wilde’s texts, specifically shedding light on how sexual repression and
a strict adherence to moral principles were believed to lead to total spiritual fulfillment.
5
Furthermore, it is important to show how these conservative dogmas that also decreed
obligatory heterosexuality ran parallel with the productive Decadent Movement.
Despite these differences in attitude, similarly to Wilde, James has also been subsumed
in the gay canon. Robert Drake has categorized James’s Roderick Hudson as a narrative
of “sublimated desire,” predicting that the gay reader will discover in Roderick Hudson a
discontented love story between two men (Drake 178). By the 1980s James was the most
discussed figure in literary criticism concerned with homosexuality (Stevens ix). James
was already regarded as a gay novelist in his early thirties, during which time he was
writing Roderick Hudson, a novel that “explor[es] the worship of same-sex desire , and
the difficulties of admitting such desires, within a cultural formation marked by
homophobic homosexual prohibition where the homosexual was a pathologized and
criminalized type in late-Victorian science and jurisprudence” (Stevens 115, 64). In the
prefaces James frequently refers to his work as “deformed”, “disfigured” and
multilayered, expressions that depict a “degenerate body” (Stevens 64). Hugh Stevens
accentuates that James like Wilde was aware of the existence of the homosexual identity.
James was sure to have read Whitman’s essay “Democratic Vistas” (1871), in which he
advocates his doctrine of adhesive love (Stevens 24). One year after the publication of
Roderick Hudson, James wrote to Baudelaire that “there is little in “Les Fleurs du Mal” to
make the reader of either French or English open his eyes,” also claiming that Baudelaire
in “Debauche aux bras immondes,” “means more by it than is evident to the vulgar
intenser perversity,” (Dowling 130) which showed that James fully understood the
perverse erotic.
Though James was aware of the perverse erotic (homosexuality), he was also tuned into
what went on in the media and medical journals of late-Victorian times. He was sure to
have read Punch, where the dandies of the Decadent movement were parodied, and was
also very likely to have reviewed the journals in which same-sex passion was decreed
degenerate, along with other bodily pleasures. The mainstream moral conservatism of
James’s and Wilde’s age, which was strictly dogmatic, took great pains in trying not to
give any leeway for subversion. Decadence, a reaction against this stern social
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dogmatism, made it its primary goal to challenge and destabilize conventionality, adding
diversity and colour to the era, thereby also indicating the disintegration and weakening of
traditional Victorian norms. However, the conservative late-Victorian society did
everything in its power to subdue the “degenerate” (morally perverse) non-conformists,
for example, by the nascence of movements like The Church of England Purity Society
and The White Cross League.
The radicalism of the campaign for the conservation of sexual purity and morality was
the primary cause of rigidity in the authoritative and average late-Victorian middle class,
whose members strove to adhere to the moral codes proclaimed by conservative
establishments (Stevens 64). In many ways the twenty- first century is an anomaly in its
encouragement of male- female friendships and in its intense, blunt, and unveiled
emotional bonds between men. In order to understand the gravity of the conflict between
late-Victorian Puritanism and its decadent subculture, whose notorious exemplar was
Oscar Wilde, we need to turn a blind eye to the twenty- first century developments and
examine the conservative conventions of late-Victorian times and the movements that
came into existence for the sake of critiquing these orthodox traditionalist ideals.
Late-Victorianism was the golden age of licentiously seditious creative works and acts
of behaviour, which were regarded as “morally degenerate,” (Nordau 20) according to the
late-Victorians’ moral dogmas. The representation of the “morally degenerate” as a type
of human being can be witnessed in a variety of nineteenth century texts like KraftEbbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), pornographic texts like Sins of the Cities of the
Plain (1881) by “Mary-Ann,” or Teleny (1893), and also À rebours (1884) written by
Joris-Karl Huysmans. These promiscuous and subversive works were defiant signs of
difference rebelling against the traditional moralist dogmas of the Victorian age. This is
only natural, since “where there is power, there is resistance” as Michel Foucault said in
The History of Sexuality (95). He further states:
Are there no great radical ruptures, massive binary divisions, then? Occasionally,
yes. But more often one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance,
producing leavages in a society that shift about, fracturing units and effecting
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regroupings, furrowing across individuals themselves, cutting them up and
remoulding them […] (96)
As Foucault notes, power produces resistance (95). In the case of late-Victorian times,
power was in the hands of the middle class moralists and the resistance was
predominantly fuelled by the decadents and their movement. The Decadent movement,
which critiqued and resisted late-Victorian values, advocated the importance of leading a
life of aesthetic vision, sensori-emotional values and indulgence, steeped in the past,
drawing on Ancient Greece for inspiration both social and artistic. However, the lateVictorian moralists made an effort to try to strain these Greek legacies through a moral
filter, without success (Jenkyns 286). The nineteenth century decadent writing and
subculture dressed up the Victorian era. The hedonists transgressed not only gender
boundaries, but middle-class moral behaviour, making the era ambivalent and more
problematic to study and categorize.
Pursuing a life of aesthetic vision was quite a struggle under Victorian doctrines of
godliness and good learning (pertaining to the upbringing of boys with the intention to
breed intelligent, eminent Victorians). The ideal Victorian male strove for religious and
moral living and gentlemanly conduct (Newsome 110), thus celibacy (before marriage)
was also a requisite as it reflected sexual purity. By and large, the late-Victorian mind was
rigid. It had the propensity to follow one line of thought, to look at things from one
perspective, to shut out wide interests. It was remarked by Matthew Arnold that
“flexibility” is needed, however, that “inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing”
is what dominated the mentality of late-Victorian society (Arnold 49). The average
Victorian “moved in the groove of a single order of ideas, he could not place himself in
the position of persons who disagreed with him, and thus he could never see the strong
points of their arguments” (Arnold 49). There was not much effort to examine contrary
theories, and not much likelihood for mediation and compromise. Hugh Stowell observes
in The Age We Live In that because of social, political, and ecclesiastical views men
lacked equilibrium and moderation (3-4). Surprisingly, under such conditions the French
Decadent movement managed to insidiously spread to England. With the birth of
decadent literature, Victorian England had to carry on a continuous fight with the new
8
reformists, a fight that stemmed from the moral panic and rigidity of the Victorian
dominant power structures.
Certain methods implemented by the conservative Victorians helped them in initiating a
moral crusade against immorality, with the intention of maintaining and enforcing
religious orthodoxy. Homophobic and heterosexist attitudes found expression in public
courts, the press, and scholarly discourses. The conservative late-Victorians extolled
marriage and family life, due to fear caused by the thriving homosexuality in public
schools and other sub-cultural venues. To demonstrate this fear and paranoia, Victorian
medical science will be addressed, with the purpose of highlighting the radicalism and
brutality behind the urge of preserving the sexual innocence of men and women.
Antithetically, the late- Victorian subculture, which included the Decadent movement,
the aesthetes, and the dandies, subverted and questioned the late-Victorian conservative
status quo. There are parallels between Decadence, Aestheticism and Dandyism. The
culmination of these movements produced the decadent dandy, the ultimate symbolic
figure of decadence. This dissertation will detail the polemic response of the Victorian
public to the literary products of decadence. Writers like Simon. M. Nordau and Charles
Kingsley represent stringent Victorian dogmas, lifestyles, and fashions in their works.
Their negative responses to moral laxity reflect the strict moralist attitude of the average
conservative middle class late-Victorian, and in addition, a fervor for challenging and
perhaps even silencing reformists who had commenced a protest against the self-sufficient
and repressive Victorian ethic. Before examining the theme of repression, the theme of
decadence and its characteristics in Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Salomé will be analyzed.
The primary focus will be on Dorian Gray and Lord Henry’s influence on him. Dorian
Gray embodies all those pejorative traits and habits that were deemed hedonistic and
“morally degenerate” by the late-Victorian moralist public. He is effete, leisured or
aspiring to be so, aesthetic, amoral, witty, and dandified just like the dandies that were the
products of the Decadent movement.
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Wilde also successfully merged the dandy with the female performer. Wilde’s Salomé
allies herself with the dandies, so much so that even her orientalism reinforces gay
performance. Salomé is suffused with aestheticized and homoerotic phallic fetishism,
frequent in both Wilde´s and James´s works. Furthermore, the establishment of
homosocial environments in late-Victorian culture will also be considered. Similarly to
the male fictional characters in James’s and Wilde’s works, who participate in male social
spheres, Thomas Carlyle also recommended all-male communities, where men will be
endowed with masculine wisdom and moral stamina.
The eminent Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle hence has also been briefly included in the
analysis. Thomas Carlyle´s thoughts on morals, homosocial communities, and ethics run
parallel to James’s and at times even Wilde’s. Similarly to James’s and Wilde’s works,
Past and Present (1843) and Sartor Resartus (1831) exhibit homosocial/erotic undertones
and also a blatant hatred towards women. Carlyle’s ideal environment was woman free
and chaste, where men could sublimate their (homo)sexual drives into productive work,
thereby leading a harmonious life of contemplation and industriousness. Since Carlyle’s
preference for men and animosity towards women is so acute he may, in this respect, be
regarded as a predecessor of late-Victorian homoerotic writing. When closely reading
Carlyle’s texts, it can be observed that that there may be an “indistinguishability” between
homosociality and homosexuality – a phenomenon this dissertation will frequently
address in the interpretation of the literary texts analyzed. Carlyle’s bachelors, who
remain unmarried and prefer homosocial bonds, are in fact exemplary homosexual
figures. Marriage is also denied by Carlylean protagonists for they reject and oppose
compulsory heterosexuality. Carlylean, Wildean, and Jamesian texts embody a correlation
between women hatred and latent homosexuality. In order to point out these parallels, the
themes of homosocial affiliations, asceticism, dislike of women, celibacy, and the
regulation of innate male energy will be also analyzed.
The literary works examined were compiled with the purpose of both noting the
dominant hegemonic positions of James’s Roderick Hudson, “The Author of Beltraffio,”
“The Aspern Papers,” “The Lesson of the Master,” and Wilde’s Dorian Gray, “The
10
Portrait of Mr. W.H,” and Salomé, and at the same time, also identifying the overt/covert
means pertaining to the rejection and/or subversion of late-Victorian hegemonic moral
norms in these texts. The Jamesian works were carefully selected from the complete
canon of his works as their display of decadent and (homo)sexually explicit subtexts,
paradoxically combined with late-Victorian mores, display a surprising range of
similarities with Wilde’s texts.
In these works, either the narrators or the characters display a strong antagonism towards
heterosexual marriage and courtship. There lies a misogynist tension in Jamesian,
Wildean, and Carlylean works, for the realm of the homosocial purposely eradicates the
female sex. Furthermore, these texts also embrace decadence, homo-aesthetics and samesex affiliations, homoeroticism, fetishistic indulgences, and depict characters suffering
from homophobia. They also portray repressed male fictional characters whose
homosexual panic indirectly drives them into a homosocial environment due to their self
ignorance. The modern stereotypes of male homosexuality, which Sedgwick, as will be
seen, elaborates on, are also evident in the chosen literary works. Both Wilde’s and
James’s characters at times transgress, for their performance and exterior discontinue
traditional gender expressions.
Overall, Rowland, of James’s Roderick Hudson, and Basil, the painter in Dorian Gray,
are celibate, ascetic males whose regulation of innate sexual energy typify the
commendable moral men, who are also depicted in Carlyle’s works mentioned. Therefore,
James’s and Wilde’s “heroes” parallel the self-regulating ideal Victorian male that
Thomas Carlyle and also Charles Kingsley idealized. Carlyle advised men to participate
in male social spheres, where they are presented with male wisdom. According to
Carlyle’s premise, detailed in the “Carlyle and Victorian Asceticism” chapter, women are
a threat to male bonding and to the birth of wisdom therefore, the female sex must be
rejected. This respected writer thus extolled male communities where women were
thought to endanger the development of male wisdom. Paradoxically, this homosocial
“ethic” may be coupled with unavowed homoerotic desire. Rowland and Basil seem to
comply with Carlyle’s premise. They repress and sublimate their homosexual desire and,
11
furthermore, cast off the female, which echoes Carlyle’s exemplary model of the man
who avoids marriage, passion and rage by transferring desire from the temptations of
(homo)sexuality to productive work and usefulness. It must be noted that in order for
James and Wilde to portray close male bonds in a positive light and accentuate the futility
of women, it was unavoidable to illustrate marriage as an unhealthy institution. James and
Wilde alike achieved this by shedding light on the proliferation of domestic violence
within marriages. James’s novel is full of beatings, physical and mental cruelty, thereby
insinuating that leading a married life with sexual pleasure dissolves the self and limits
the masculine plot. In Roderick Hudson Rowland’s ambition is to become the ideal
Victorian male, hence he disciplines himself and remains outside the scene of seduction,
deferring his sexual gratifications by means of repression, shunning sexual excitation and
erotic pleasure in order to conserve his energy for the highest philosophic and aesthetic
aims.
Rowland also suppresses what is faun- and animal-like in Roderick, yet despite this
moralistic tone, a homoerotic subtext is discernable. James resolutely rejects marriage in
Roderick Hudson, “The Author of Beltraffio,” “The Lesson of the Master,” and “The
Aspern Papers,” opting for the glorification of male bonding and an admiration for the
male sex. In Roderick Hudson this is exemplified by Rowland’s veneration of Roderick’s
effeminate poise and gender performance and talent; and in Dorian Gray by Basil’s and
Lord Henry’s reverence for the also effete and youthful Dorian. In these respects,
Roderick Hudson and Dorian Gray share striking similarities, which will be outlined,
specifically when analyzing the themes of homosocial affiliations, homo-aesthetics, and,
homoerotic gazes, on the one hand and the concessions to (New England and lateVictorian) morals and the portrayal of moral exemplars on the other. Roderick Hudson, as
well as short stories like, “The Author of Beltraffio,” “The Aspern Papers,” and “The
Lesson of the Master” embrace decadence by avowing same-sex passion, fetishistic
indulgences, effeminate poise and performance, and aestheticism, just like Wilde’s
Dorian Gray and Salomé. In addition, another similarity between the works of Wilde and
James that will be analyzed is the significance of the erotic appeal of (religious) art. The
appreciation of lavish Christian art serves to indicate a homoerotic subtext. Finally, a
12
paradoxical feature of both Wildean and Jamesian texts will be pointed out, namely the
concessions to contemporary moral standards, the execution of ‘poetic justice,’ and the lip
service paid to conventional norms, which suppress the strong appeal to homosexual
desire these works have established. Thus, in pointing out these parallels and in
accentuating the similarities of the Wildean and Jamesian texts analyzed, a new
perspective may be developed, not only concerning these writings, but also the lateVictorian period, thereby showing how conservatism and decadence paradoxically
overlap, concepts which are usually construed as having been diametrically opposed.
Theory and Methodology
The arguments and the hypotheses formulated in this dissertation are partly based on
Queer Studies, specifically Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s scholarly work on homophobia and
homosexual panic, Judith Butler’s concept of gender performance, and on Leland S.
Person’s and Ed Cohen’s thoughts on homoerotic gazes and homo-aesthetics. Moreover,
some aspects of cultural studies will also be drawn on, in order to contextualize Wildean
and Jamesian texts. An essential task of this dissertation will consist in substantiating the
cultural and social conditions under which homosexual panic and effeminate performance
emanated during the late-Victorian period. It is indispensable to review some of the lateVictorian era’s power structures since these establishments played a significant role in
enforcing late-Victorian moral dogmas. Cultural studies highlights a culture’s material
trappings, in addition it draws attention to the processes employed by contemporary
power structures that disseminate ideology. Thus, some concepts and considerations taken
from cultural studies will serve the purpose of identifying the cultural and social
conditions under which homosexual panic and effeminate performance thrived during the
late-Victorian period. It is necessary to reflect specifically upon some of the late-Victorian
era’s power structures, such as the church, the state, or the academy, since these
establishments played a significant role in administering the late-Victorian conservative
dogma, in addition to disciplinary regulation, like surveillance. Furthermore, it is also
13
essential to review traditional late-Victorian conceptions of gender and sexuality, as well
as popular responses and discourses which were institutional and conservative in
ideology. Thus, this dissertation will, on the one hand, give a broad overview of the
attitudes and moral activities of the late-Victorian middle class moralists, who established
a number of institutions and instituted a great number of different measures to combat
decadence and immorality. On the other hand, a broad survey of the Decadent movement,
aestheticism, and dandyism will also be given. These chapters will contextualize the
literary works selected for analysis, placing their strategies of repression and covert
‘cruising’ into a broader cultural context.
Literature is the product of an epoch, thus it should not be separated from its context. As
Eagleton states, if we separate literature from its context, it loses “its organic unity” and
becomes “fragmented” (Eagleton 19). Literature includes a set of ideological assumptions
and tenets that are also present in society, it is not merely an “autonomous verbal
structure” (Frye 122). Thus, literature has crucial relevance to social life, be it mainstream
conservative, or subversive, for literature encapsulates the energies of its time, reflecting
and engaging with society’s values. Similarly, the works of Wilde and James mirror,
enforce, and even subvert the prescribed values of conservative late-Victorianism, thereby
responding to the cultural climate of their time.
Merging literary texts with their contexts could produce a unified dialogue that
reconciles these two entities. Meaning, if we see a literary text as a reaction to its context
and a reflection of its cultural climate than not only the literary work itself will be
illuminated, by a close reading of the text, but also the moral, social, and cultural concerns
it expresses. In order to address and discuss the ways in which (repressed) homoerotic
desires and fetishistic indulgences are articulated, or the ways in which the era’s values
are reflected in literary texts, a close reading of James’s, Wilde’s, and Carlyle’s selected
works from the perspective of queer studies is fundamental. By means of close reading it
will be shown that the texts not only enunciate their culture's constraints and mores but
also the era's underground movements.
14
The focus of this dissertation is on how homosexual desire is mediated and negotiated in
the texts selected based on their similarities in style, atmosphere, and attitude in the
writings of Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Thomas Carlyle. It will be argued and shown,
in the Wildean, Jamesian and Carlylean works analyzed, that there is a continuum
between the homosocial and the homosexual, for the homosocial may be “potentially”
erotic (Sedgwick, Between Men 1-3). However, in principle, Sedgwick explains that the
homosocial is to be differentiated, on certain grounds, from the “homosexual,” for it
refers to a specific type of male bonding, which is accompanied by a fear of
homosexuality. Men participating in homosocial bonding negotiate their homosexuality.
Male bonding, in fact, may stimulate a homophobic reaction to expressions of passion and
advances, the reason being that Victorian society set certain limitations to the forms of
male bonding. However, at the same time, for the (latent) homosexual, homosociality is
very conducive to expressing homoerotic desire. Sedgwick also notes that “this became a
competition for those who wished to wield it, as well as an implement of oppression”
against those practicing (Between Men 87). It is also characteristic of the texts analyzed
that they straddle the paradoxical tension between the homosocial as homosexual and the
homosocial as homophobic, since they contain a subtext of homoerotic desire, yet at the
same time portray several characters subjected to homosexual panic, at times, preaching
sexual purity.
Homosocial bonds have long been subject to a secularized and psychologized
homophobia. However, paradoxically, homosexual panic “forces” men into homosocial
desire due to the “self ignorance” enforced on man via the manipulative mechanism of the
power structures (Beast in the Closet 159). Male homoerotic desire is "bound up" in male
friendship, entitlement, and mentorship (Between Men 1 ), just like in the cases of
Rowland in James’s Roderick Hudson, Ambient in James’s “The Author of Beltraffio,” or
Basil in Wilde’s Dorian Gray. Thus, the homosocial may be drawn back into the "orbit of
desire" and the "potentially erotic" (Between Men 1). Thus Sedgwick and Sigmund Freud
alike treat the "homosocial" largely in terms of the more fundamental "homosexual." They
both argue that there is an “indistinguishability” (Between Men 90-3) between
homosociality and homosexuality. Indeed, in the literary texts discussed, the bachelors,
15
who remain unmarried and prefer homosocial bonds, for example, Rowland, Basil,
Dorian, or the Syrian in Salomé, are typical representatives of homosexuality. Marriage is
rejected by these single unmarried men, for it is the very embodiment of “heterosexual
compulsion,” which, as Sedgwick states, is society's powerful insistence on
heterosexuality as compulsory. The "heterosexual compulsion" seems to be the menacing
outgrowth of what started as "homosexual panic" and progressed to "homosexual
potential" (Beast in the Closet 161).
Homophobia is the consequence of patriarchal structures that prescribe compulsory
heterosexual marriage. The “historical manifestations of this patriarchal oppression of
homosexuals” have been never-ending (Between Men 3). Its effects are so grave that
homophobia is “knit” (4) into the “texture” of family, gender, age, class, and race
relations (4). Thus, homophobia is a certain type of “mechanism of domination” (87). It is
a way of manipulating the behaviour of the majority by the oppression of the minority.
Importantly, homosexual panic causes men to experience psychological vulnerability to
the social pressure of “homophobic blackmail” (Between Men 88) and it is this psychosis,
caused by paranoia that reveals the mechanisms of homophobia. Paranoia in man may
result from the repression of his homosexual desire, for it is prohibited by society. Thus,
the homosexual man is not only the object of homophobic violence, but he must also
ascertain and convince himself that his homosocial bonds are not homo-erotically charged
(Sedgwick, Beast in the Closet 159). Indeed, most of the examples from the texts selected
for analysis show that homosexuality is only expressed covertly and remains
unacknowledged, although the style – the choice of words, the atmosphere, the context –
suggest a less innocent and more sexually charged reading.
In addition, if we examine the history of homosexual roles in England we find that the
“modern stereotype” of male homosexuality has been present since the seventeenth
century:
the
idiosyncratic
attributes
of
“homosexuality”
include
effeminacy,
“connoisseurship,” religion, and an affinity to Catholicism (Between Men 93). Sedgwick
clearly states that religion and high culture overlap with “homosexual” culture (94), which
is indeed depicted and addressed in the works of both Wilde and James. These
16
phenomena are clearly present in Dorian Gray’s life and Rowland’s, as well. Similarly to
Alan Sinfield, Sedgwick holds that a shift has taken place when the imperative
characteristics of the aristocratic demeanor and role had become accessible for
homosexual men in the upper and middle classes (Between Men 94). This effete
aristocratic demeanor was also emulated by the nineteenth century dandies in general, and
importantly by James (in the case of his fictional character Roderick), and Wilde, and also
some of his fictional characters, like Dorian, Lord Henry, Cyril Graham, and Mr. W.H.
Their characters’ effete behavior shed light on the complexities of gender identity. Their
characters’ untraditional gender identity was, naturally, deemed unacceptable and
indecent by the conservative late-Victorian power structures. Thus, James and Wilde also
bring to the readers’ attention the boundaries of gender roles, which were set by their
conservative society. However, at the same time, they also challenge these institutions’
constrictions by successfully demonstrating the ambiguities of gender and even gender
performance. Wildean and Jamesian texts perfectly problematize homosexual identity,
also revealing the tribulations pertaining to compulsory heterosexuality, which was
prescribed in order to limit male-homoerotic desire.
As Sedgwick also maintains, the overlapping of the idiosyncratic attributes of the
aristocrats with homosexuality motivated the state to decree the oppression and seclusion
of the homosexuals (Between Men 95). Importantly, this shift produced the middle class
“homophobic culture” (95) of male bonding. It may be also argued that the homosexuality
which was attributed predominantly to aristocrats or aristocratic behaviour/performance,
generated homophobia.
This paranoia prompted authors like James and Wilde to be very discreet about
homoerotic desire, which could in most instances be only reflected in a character’s erotic
gaze, effeminate performance, sensori-emotional values, fetishism, and a propensity to
establish close homosocial affiliations, as well as in his keen hatred towards the institution
of heterosexual marriage and a fervent loathing of women, because the latent homosexual
presupposes himself to be so repulsive that the affection of any woman is read as a mark
17
of her abnormality, a psychotic attraction to the inherently unlovable, just like in the case
of Rowland. Miss Christina Light, obviously, shows a keen interest in Rowland, for she is
taken by his moral aptitude. However, Rowland is indifferent to her advances, in fact he
finds the beautiful Christina not only repulsive, but also demon-like. Evidently, Rowland
sees Miss Christina’s affection as a sign of pity.
Overall, the similarity between “socially acceptable” homosocial desire and “socially
condemned” homosexuality lies at the root of homophobia. However, this “tension” is
also misogynistic because the realm of homosocial affiliations purposefully eradicates the
female sex, Lord Henry, Aspern, and Rowland, and many other fictional characters are
excellent examples.
Importantly, the Wildean and Jamesian works discussed do not reflect an ideal and
functional utopian society. James’s and Wilde’s male characters, alike, are defeated
during their attempt to deliver themselves from the hegemonic fabric of society. Thus,
they either become morose, or depressed, for they submit to society, and find an
acceptable compromise and get married, like Henry St. George in “The Lesson of the
Master,” or in the worst case scenario choose death, like Dorian and the Syrian in Salomé.
Sedgwick mentions that homosexuality was experienced differently by the various
classes (Between Men 83) and even nations (for example the Orient was imagined to be a
safeguarded region where foreign men could unleash their desires and submit themselves
to homoeroticism freely). The middle and upper class men of England, as in the cases of
Ambient, Aspern, Dorian, and Cyril Graham could not easily hide their homosexuality,
and the moment that they were “found out,” their shame made their life unbearable, for a
visible display of homosexuality often erupts in a crisis. Perhaps this may have been the
reason why Wilde himself, and figures like Dorian, or Lord Henry adopted and emulated
an aristocratic and dandified lifestyle; it was a “cover up,” in order not to be found out,
and this is exactly why their performance and posing gain importance. Their performance
not only “legalized” their transgression, but also produced an effect, which may have
covertly signaled illegitimate sexual passion. A dandified lifestyle thus served both as a
18
mask to cover up homosexual desire and as a covert signal to the initiated. Importantly,
this effete aristocratic exterior and performance was soon found to be suspicious by the
late-Victorian authorities, and ultimately generated a crusade against deviant men.
This effete and aristocratic deviant performance managed to lure gazes. Butler states that
acts, gestures, and desire produce an effect. This production takes place on the surface of
the body, meaning on its exterior. Thus, the “performative” body has no ontological
status, for it is performance that “constitutes its reality” (Butler, Gender Trouble 41). It
will be argued that acts and gestures articulate desire, and thereby create the illusion of
gender and even sexual orientation. Butler maintains that through performance man is
reasserting social norms (Gender Trouble 178), however, it may also be argued that via
the performance of the prohibited, man, in fact, questions the norm. Thus, contrary to
Butler’s premise, performance of gender may very well be an indication of sexual practice
(Gender Trouble xiv). It is the character or rather the performance that signifies the act.
The Oscar Wilde trials and his witty seditious remarks are perfect examples: “Strange,
that a pair of silk stockings should so upset a nation” (Oscar Wilde, quoted in Richard
Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde 157).
Wilde set a different tone for aesthetic fashion and performance. He deliberately
embraced feminization, offending, and often challenging the conservative late-Victorian
viewers. The fashion and the performance of the dandies and that of Wilde in particular
embodied female characteristics. The dandy’s self-creation is an embracement and an
appropriation of female character traits and idiosyncrasies. Wilde’s and the dandies’
subversive performance reinterprets the psychological presuppositions of gender and
sexuality. The performance of the dandies, aesthetes, and effeminate aristocrats
destabilizes the norm, in fact, more specifically it destabilizes and questions the position
and the attributes of the natural and artificial. This means that dandyism and other forms
of effeminate behavior are transgressive strategies, which were obviously influenced by
the female sex. Therefore, this form of transgressive performance discontinues traditional
gender expressions, thereby disavowing claims of the innate nature of gender.
Untraditional, effeminate (androgynous) and aesthetic performance of men confront
19
society with an intention of acknowledging gender diversity. The body ceases to be a
passive surface upon which gender meaning is inscribed and instead becomes a site for
“denaturalized performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself”
(Gender Trouble 146). It is at this point that hegemony steps in and endeavors to put an
end to aberrant acts of behaviour and performance. Thus, compulsory heterosexuality is
proclaimed through the establishment of binaries, like the masculine and the feminine.
The intention is to deter bodies in “action,” hence putting an end to subversive
performance.
So, it seems that the more visible the homosexuality, the more acute the crisis. Unlawful
and ‘unethical’ behavior induced the moralist Victorian establishments and authorities to
produce and mold conservative gentlemen (Dellamora, Masculine Desire 208). The
“vagueness” of the law under which Wilde was prosecuted “broadened” the crime
“beyond acts of sodomy” (Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side 72). Particularly, “The
Labouchere Amendment,” or section I of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885
[made] further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of
brothels, and other purposes" (Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side 72, 91). This Act outlawed
males who committed in public or in private any act of gross indecency with another male
(Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side 92). The amendment shifted the focus of the law from the
crime of sodomy to a crime which was specifically against gender. This way male
behavior could be regulated. The Wilde Trials are a good example, for Wilde was not
only persecuted for his indecent behavior and sexual violations, but also for the
subversion of male identity and gender.
Both Wilde and James were aware of the persecution that haunted men and women alike
who took part in homosexual practices or even wrote about aberrant sexuality.
Compulsory morality manipulated heterosexual and homosexual men alike into
homophobic positions (Sedgwick, Epistemology 196), thus Wilde and James had to be
covert, leaving only the visual experiences, art, and deep homosocial affiliations as signs
of same-sex passion. For this reason both Wildean and Jamesian homosexual characters
exhibit their celebration of same-sex desire visually and/or homo-aesthetically. The
20
location of their desire is either located in their homoerotic gaze or in their homoerotic art.
James and Wilde highlight visual experiences between their characters, which not only
constitute a masculine desire for power, but also negotiate physical contact within the
same-sex subculture. The homosexual male proposes sexual invitation through his gaze.
The subtle gaze signals interest, openness, and the fear of rejection as well. Importantly,
Savoy notes that “the subtle play of glances through the mask of repression is the essential
mode of the homotext, the operation by which the writer may [be] said to cruise the reader
and thus to construct his receptive community” (Savoy 20). This mask is not only a
concealment, but a “construction,” arising from desire while it conceals its “origins”
(Savoy 20). The availability of the male body to the male gaze is quite striking in Dorian
Gray, Salomé, Roderick Hudson and “The Author of Beltraffio.” Overall, the typical
features of the homotext outlined above shed light on the fact that James’s works
discussed are not asexual but contain a homosexual subtext that relates him to Wilde.
As has been noted the deployment of male desire is in the characters’ performance and
behaviour, specifically in their gazes, and in their art. Thus, the homoerotic gaze of a
Wildean or Jamesian fictional character and the process of his art making may be
correlated. At one point Person proposes that writing is a metaphor for homosexual
penetration, for it is its use of the male gaze that produces its homoerotic “outcome”
(194). This premise may even be applied to art making, specifically painting and
sculpting. Similarly, it is a painter’s or a sculptor’s homoerotic gaze that creates an
aesthetic outcome, like a beautiful youthful image of a young man.
Thus, homosexuality may be mediated on multiple levels, homo-aesthetically, through
works of art, and also in acts of writing and reading between men. An artist sharing his
privacy with a youthful effete man, who expresses a keen interest in his art or writing,
may experience keen pleasure. Thus, homoeroticism may be circulated via painting, as in
Basil’s example in Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and also writing, like in “The Author of
Beltraffio,” “The Aspern Papers,” and “The Lesson of the Master.” Importantly, the
writers or artists in the Jamesian and Wildean texts mentioned not only transcribe
homosexuality into their written works or art objects, but also engage in a closeted
21
relationship
with their admirer or muse. This “interdependency” (Person 188) most
definitely has an erotic appeal, not only an aesthetic one, for James and Wilde configure
these homo-aesthetic bonds in both “phallogocentric and dominant-subordinate terms,
while making the Master more often the object than the subject of male desire” (Person
189). Thus, homoerotic desire is the “product of an intersubjective, homosocial
transaction” (Person 189). Importantly, however, James and Wilde, consciously
destabilize this ideal and potentially homoerotic homosociality by the introduction of the
woman, whose sole purpose is to interrupt the established close knit male to male bonds,
thereby reinstating compulsory heterosexuality. Thus, when analyzing Wildean and
Jamesian texts and the concept of repressed and unavowed homosexuality, it is necessary
to make gender identities and gender practice the sites of close reading and relate them to
a wider social and cultural context to unveil the endlessly manifold dynamics of sexuality
and gender.
The interpretations of the literary texts will, then, focus on the way in which the texts
mirror, comment, react to, and are influenced by the cultural, social and moral atmosphere
of their time, and in which the authors negotiate a paradoxical compromise between
decadent provocation and moral conformity. In a broad range of stylistic analyses and
close readings it will be pointed out how homoerotic desire is both mediated and denied
or repressed in the texts, how homosocial bonding and fetishism contribute to a
homosexual subtext in these works of literature, and how a homoerotic gaze is invited,
and desire is aroused, but at the same time how lip-service is paid to late-Victorian moral
standards.
22
Chapter I
Late Victorianism: Social Background
23
I. Social Background
The late-Victorian period in which Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and Henry James (18431916) lived, may be characterized by sexual, moral, and homosexual panic. Religion and
social orthodoxies were anchored to the minds of the Victorians, but by the same token, a
thriving sub-cultural Decadent movement existed that counterattacked this patriarchal
structure. Starting in the late eighteenth century British society invested great strengths in
reforming manners, sexuality, morality, and in promoting compulsory heterosexuality, out
of the fear of the moral and religious degeneration of their nation.
Britain already started a “crusade” (Binhammer 412-3) against sexual anomaly and
immorality in the 18th century by proclaiming sexual asceticism, self- control, and
spiritual and physical purity. The majority of the Victorians supported a “Victorian
regime” (Binhammer 412-3) of prudery that restrained sexuality. As Michel Foucault puts
it tongue in cheek, “followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie”
sexuality was subdued, normality was enforced and the subject of sex was silenced in the
social space (Binhammer 413). The reason was primarily homophobia, the fear of the
abnormal and the fear of degeneration. Also, in essence, sexual purity or public morality
was correlated and aligned with the nation’s “body politic” (Binhammer 413). It was
believed that sexual purity and morality were the true formations of national honour and
that the nation can be judged through the condition of the country’s morals. The moral
man and woman was an inspirational image that symbolized the nation. For this reason it
was indispensable for late-Victorian society to implant this moralistic ideology into the
minds of the Victorian populace through literature, science, philosophy, religion, and
religious/political organizations (Binhammer 413). Sexuality became pathologized and
subsequently medicalized, and psychiatrized (Binhammer 413). Foucault’s hypothesis
also stresses the discursive analysis sexuality was subjected to:
Sex was driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence. From
the singular Imperialism that compels everyone to transform their sexuality into a
perpetual discourse, to the manifold mechanisms which, in the areas of economy,
pedagogy, medicine, and justice, incite, extract, distribute, and institutionalize the
24
sexual discourse, an immense verbosity is what our civilization has required and
organized. (Foucault 33)
Foucault’s observations are relevant. The following will strongly support both
Binhammer’s and Foucault’s premise on sex and sexuality.
George Mosse’s study of masculinity in The Image of Man (1996) presents a dominant
masculine Victorian stereotype: the manly “moral” man, whose focus was the
perfectibility of his body and soul, which was the consequence of the “mechanism of
domination” (Between Men 87) initiated by the late-Victorian conservative patriarchal
power structures.
A perfect body paired up with a perfect soul was a sign of man’s “moral superiority” and
“inner strength of character” (Glover 56). The body served as a “locus” of restraint
(Glover 56). Discipline was encouraged in order to “surmount” obstacles and overcome
emotional weaknesses. Furthermore, purification and purging the body of its
imperfections were day to day tasks that a Victorian man, striving for moral uprightness
had to undertake. This ideal masculinity demanded intense effort. Firstly, man must
struggle against himself, conceiving and viewing his body as an enemy, forcing himself to
repress his worldly and sexual desires. This meant that bad examples and anomalous
sexuality, like homosexuality had to be shunned and avoided at all costs. Sexual desire,
eroticism, and (sexual) decadence, namely homosexuality and masturbation, were
temptations that were considered lethal countertypes to man’s spiritual development,
therefore posing an immense threat to the healthy body and mind. Bodily pleasures were
thus shunned. The nineteenth century synonym for masturbation was “self-pollution,” a
term that infers self- destruction leading to “enfeeblement,” insanity, and even death
(Glover 56), like in the cases of Wilde’s Dorian Gray and James’s Roderick Hudson.
“Muscular Christianity” allowed no room for such licentious acts as masturbation, not to
speak of homoeroticism.
25
The moral ideal was a perfectly healthy man who exercised intelligence, strength, and
self-control, and even entered into a heterosexual marriage, and produced children. Such a
lifestyle encapsulated morality and manliness, which was instilled into the Victorians
from a very young age.
This understanding of manliness was seriously infused in the public schools, as a way of
regulating the behavior of the many, which was often followed by the eradication of the
minority and the abnormal (Between Men 88). Thus, the enjoyment of work was
frequently articulated and an exceptional enthusiasm for virtue and morality were
encouraged. The Victorians viewed education of young boys and religion as inseparable.
Their aim was to bring the young pupils to personal and moral maturity (Richards 103).
The application of the doctrine of godliness and good learning to the upbringing of
boys in the public schools did much to create that breed of diligent, earnest,
intellectual, eminent Victorians which has left its impress on almost every aspect
of the age. (Richards 103)
For British society, manliness meant the application and practice of the prescribed mores
of patriarchal structures, like heterosexual marriage, religious and moral principles,
gentlemanly conduct, and intellectual ability: the perfect equation for Christian manliness.
Even the groups of the cricketing schoolboys in the children’s paper entitled The Boy's
Own Paper, were all characterized by strength, endurance, and most importantly
manliness. “Manliness, of course, is what enables our hero to win rugger caps, medals,
and the hearts of African tribes” (Nelson 527). Claudia Nelson adds in her essay entitled
Sex and the Single Boy (Nelson 527) that manliness was not just a function of spiritual
hard labour, but of race and geography, and as for the middle-class British, manliness was
a “native virtue” (Nelson 527). The strength of this late-Victorian stereotype was so
powerful and penetrating that it “overpowered earlier versions of the Victorian boyish
ideal, and indeed earlier definitions of manliness as well,” she further states1 (527).
1
For further read these sources are recommended:
The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud ( vols. 1,2). New York: Oxford University Press, 1985: pp. 468.
Hughes, Thomas. The Manliness of Christ. Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1879: pp. 19, 17-18, 30-31.
Worth’s "Of Muscles and Manliness: Some Reflections on Thomas Hughes.” Victorian Literature and Society: Essays Presented to
Richard D. Mtick. Eds. James R. Kincaid and Albert J. Kuhn. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984: pp. 310.
26
II. Juvenile Literature and Muscular Christianity
“Christian manliness is a wonderful thing,” noted the Bishop of Down, Connor and
Dromore, addressing the Boys’ Brigade at a convention at the Queen’s Hall, London, on 3
May 1895 ( Springhall 52). The public schoolboy was subjected to stern Christian training
in manliness and morality. The ideals of Christian manliness also known as “muscular
Christianity” (Springhall 52) were associated with Charles Kingsley’s and Thomas
Hughes’s principle, which was communicated via such media as the Boys’ Brigade,
furthermore, juvenile literature such as Boy’s Own Paper, and writers for boys such as
George Alfred Henty, who will also be referred to in relation to the masculine ideal.
The Boys’ Brigade was founded in late Victorian Glasgow. It was said to have “the
advantage of Christ’s Kingdom among Boys and the promotion of habits of Obedience,
Reverence, Discipline, Self-Respect and all that tends towards a true Christian Manliness”
(Springhall 53). The Brigade was a powerful instrument for the spreading of Christian
manliness, their goal was to bring Christianity down to the level of the average Victorian
by emphasizing that religion was not a feminine pious affair, but a manly affair and a
heroic struggle. This organization inspired its members to abstain from personal comforts
and (sexual) desires, thereby cultivating truth, self-reliance, and independence.
To enforce this moral attitude, which stemmed from a deeply rooted fear of
homosexuality and moral degeneracy, juvenile literature, including novellas, magazines
and novels, were also promoted with the intention of exemplifying sturdy traditional
English manliness and morality. One eminent writer of such literature was George Alfred
Henty (1832-1902), who published such novels as Held Fast for England (1893), and
thought himself to be the messenger of manliness, morality, and steadfastness, thus
carrying out a similar task to that of the Boys’ Brigade (Springhall 64). Almost half of his
output included schoolboy protagonists who win victory over their enemies in a far-off
British colony. Henty aspired to encourage moral and straight living, implementing the
public schoolboy hero as the ideal medium (Springhall 64).
27
In 1884 a survey of juvenile reading habits initiated by Edward Salmon, calculated that
out of six hundred young lads, about two thirds read The Boy’s Own Paper. This weekly
paper, which included stories of “healthy vigour,” (Springhall 64) had greater success
than any other boys’ paper of Britain. The launching of the Boy’s Own Paper was
propelled by the Religious Tract Society to set a moral and Christian example to the
youths. Manly and intrepid traits were presented, thus making the Boy’s Own Paper the
“unofficial organ” of the muscular Christianity movement. Manliness and morality were
held in its pages as the highest good that a British boy should attain (Springhall 64).
Another prevailing trend of the late-Victorians was athletic manliness, which became
deeply engrained in the public school system and in the household of the average
Victorian middle class families. This athletic manliness was mainly propagated by two
writers named Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, who had been very influential in
popularizing this novel way of living, which was in complete acquiescence with the
ideologies of muscular Christianity.
The principle themes of Kingsley were the popularization of physical strength, bravery,
family life, duty and service, and last but not least the discovery of the divine. Thomas
Hughes went as far as claiming Christ for the league of muscular Christians in his book
entitled The Manliness of Christ. In this cause, games and sports were important to
maintain a healthy, fit body, and to mold character in order to civilize the world
(Springhall 65).
In The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture Bruce Haley has emphasized that besides
religion the Victorian mind was preoccupied with health to a great extent. Their obsession
with health and fitness were signs of their fear of degeneration, and homophobia being
one of its symptoms. By the 1860s health was given expression through “the games
playing cult” (Haley 8). The athlete was the new hero and the human form of the divine.
The athlete was the conspicuous exemplar of a man who knew how to discipline himself,
resist temptation, and dedicate his efforts to the pursuit of excellence. The athlete
28
embodied power and prowess, iconic characteristics that could serve as a model, and were
worthy of emulation. Late-Victorian moralists were convinced that physical well-being
and temperance were the two roads to spiritual salvation and a moral life. Attention to
good home construction and sanitation were detailed by reformers like Henry Ward
Beecher and Dioclesian Lewis, authors of books on digestion and exercise. Advocates of
the “New Gymnastics,” composed of “calisthenic exercises” found salvation in strength
training (Haley 8). Parents believed that the capacity and will to endure physical and
psychological hardships were the best things to ever happen to a young boy. The middle
class public school system was most eager in teaching morality and physical endurance.
Thus, religious upbringing imbued the children’s education. Children's books throughout
the middle of the century brought their heroes and heroines to spiritual perfection,
stimulating them to address their Creator as their main source for counsel (Nelson 528).
Much of the enthusiasm for health reform was founded on the optimistic and stringent
view that the responsibility of attaining moral perfection was on the individual.
Development of strength and character, as well as, the achievement of health were the
individual’s task. Physical illnesses and sexual degeneration were seen as spiritual and
physiological problems (Haley 8-9).
However, ironically, the very school system that was supposed to protect young men
from anomalous sexual indulgence was the place where same-sex practices were thriving.
After all, Greek and Roman texts were essential part of the curriculum, and such literature
also included the theme of same-sex love affairs and homoeroticism (Jenkyns 281).
29
III. Moral Hygiene and Clitoridectomy
Towards the end of the century, theories about attaining health by training and exercise
were an assortment based on traditional beliefs, which could be “traced back to
Hippocratic and Galenic tradition” (Haley 9). One of the most elaborate debates
concerned the theory that the nature of the mind had a close relationship to the body; the
mind was the seat of the will, thus having a defining role in the character development of
an individual. Assuming that the mind and body were in direct relationship, by
strengthening the body, one could also strengthen the will (Haley 9). John Jeffries, a
Boston physician, noted that physical culture was a moral obligation. In addition, he
firmly stated that “the powers of the body should be cultivated, because of its connection
with the mind” (Haley 9). He explained that the union of the body and the soul is a
“mysterious thing,” which the Creator concealed (Haley 9). Jeffries saw a mutual action
of the mind and matter, the products of a divine wisdom that had established harmony
between structure and function.
Andrew William Alcott’s didactic text The House I Live In (1837), intended for use by
families and schools, discussed the structures of the body in moralistic terms. The skeletal
structure of the human body is presented as the frame, the roof and the doors of the
“house” and the internal organs are its “furniture” (Alcott 193). Figuratively, the book
communicates that God has created the harmony of form with a function. This didactic
text gives an account of the nature and structure of the body as well, expounding on why
exercise is needed. Alcott maintained the Christian ideology that “order is heaven’s first
law, but one might regard motion before order. God had moved to bring order out of
chaos” (Park 16). Alcott details how muscles, ligaments and cartilage are put into action
by the will, arguing that when we will motion certain muscles contract to provide
movement. Our mind is the initiator, it wills something and somehow the body inclines
and thus completes the action (Alcott v., 239).
30
Knowing that the mind is a powerful organ, the Victorian man had to be careful what it
willed. Moral and health reform were the individual’s responsibility, however, “help”
(more like mechanisms of regulation and ethical surveillance) from hegemonic Victorian
society was eagerly provided. Each and every individual was considered to be part of a
whole, therefore the conservative Victorian society made it its mission to save its
civilians, and for this purpose a vigilance association was founded. The National
Vigilance Association (1885) advocated morality, social purity and made it its duty to
prevent moral degeneration. Purity movements that were founded in the 1880s lead social
purity crusades aiming at terminating all public manifestations of vice and sin (Smith
215-6).
The social purity movements’ intentions of purifying and moralizing society developed
because of fear and moral unease. These purity movements quickly gained recognition
and won the allegiance of the mass public through demonstrations, public meetings and
via the diffusion of pamphlets. The main groups involved in the campaign included The
Social Purity Alliance (1873); The Church of England Purity Society (1883); The White
Cross League (1883). These movements were affiliated with the Anglicans, also
demanding a morally upright code. The various groups involved in the campaign put
emphasis on monogamy and compulsory heterosexuality, regarded as the foundation of
political stability and social cohesion. The greatest sin threatening the nation, in their
eyes, was male infidelity (men having extra-marital affairs with men and women alike),
which was thought to have grave consequences. Syphilis, spread by unfaithful and
immoral men, was associated with debauchery and same-sex practices. Both of these
activities were thought to have threatened the “integrity of family and state” (Smith 216).2
Overall, it is well noted that “most patriarchies structurally include homophobia”
(Between Men 4). The conservative power structures wanted to deter and prevent sexually
aberrant behavior, thus their best mode was a mechanism which “regulated the behavior
of the many by the specific oppression of the few” (Between Men 88). For this very
reason, great publicity was given to homosexual trials, for example, the Boulton and Park
2
For more information on discourses of moral regulation and l purity movements see Alan Hunt’s article .
31
transvestite scandal in 1871 and the conviction of Oscar Wilde, which will be detailed
later. These trials not only cautioned and startled the public of what awaits “degenerates”
via the arousal of fear and panic, but by the same token these trials had an impact, and
also an input in forming stereotypes of deviancy.
The social purity organizations of the 1880s were convinced that if adolescents are
taught the virtues of self- restraint and control, they will not give in to decadence and
immoral acts. This late-Victorian conservative conviction supports Sedgwick’s claim that
“the progression from schoolboy desire to adult homophobia seems to take its structure
from the distinctive anxieties that come with being educated” by the rigid middle class
(Between Men 177).
In the 1880s “religio-medical tracts” also spoke out against the evils of self-abuse that
were wide-spread in the middle and upper-class schools and universities. Their goal was
to warn the public of the “defiling effects” of masturbation and other bodily pleasures on
the mind, body and soul. During the 1880s the Church of England Purity Society founded
a Schoolmasters Committee to address this subject. The Reverend J. M. Wilson,
Headmaster of Clifton College, asked his students to strengthen their will by practice and
“subdue” desires of the flesh through hard work and temperance; in addition students
were asked to steer away from effeminacy and renounce acts of pleasure (Smith 217).
Polemicists Ellice Hopkins and Alfred Dyer made it their duty to inform the young of
the ‘facts of life’ and the birds and the bees. Dyer’s lectures were targeted towards
working men, and were published as “tracts sold for 2d” (Smith 217). The content of
these tracts were warnings about self-abuse, degenerate art and literature. These tracts
were promoted good health, self- restraint, cold baths, energetic exercise, and moderation
in sex, eating and drinking. Smith notes that:
If you would keep yourself pure, you must set yourself against sensuous Literature
and Art as resolutely as against foul tongued companions […] An artist, or a
writer, whether in poetry or prose, who knowingly uses his talents in a manner
adapted to excite the animal passions, whatever the conventionalities of society
may term him, is a mental prostitute. (Smith 217)
32
There was a proliferation of male clubs and other societies that were keen on ingraining
sexual self restraint into the minds of their members. Many of these societies used the
imagery of Christian chivalry to illustrate gallantry and the spiritual conquest of “unmanly
impulses” (Smith 215). The White Cross League promoted the perseverance of Christ and
the attainment of strength. In 1883 Ellice Hopkins issued multiple rules for proper
conduct with the aid of the League:
1. To treat all women with respect and to protect them from degeneration.
2. To fulfill the command KEEP THYSELF PURE.
3. To put down indecent language and jest.
4. To maintain the law of purity, men and women equally.
5. To spread these principles among companions and help your younger brothers.
(Smith 217)
The obsession and mania with social purity propelled recordings of cases of sexual
misdemeanor with a conscious purpose and an intention to “manipulate” male bonding
(Between Men 16), also stimulating homophobia in the average male, thereby regulating
the sexual behaviour of the populace (Between Men 112, 89, 177). The press played an
essential role in this by disclosing scandals in order to provoke fear (homophobia) and
influence public opinion, winning over sympathizers for regulation and authoritative
intervention (Smith 217).
The publication of ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” in the Pall Mall Gazette
was the catalyst for the outburst of moral fervour. In this article, W.T. Stead exposed the
corruption in London society. He unveiled the iniquities in the trade of prostitution. All
social organizations pressed for immediate action the moment the article was published.
The uproar finally brought the Criminal Amendment Act into effect. The Act introduced a
policy of regulation, raising the “age of consent for girls to sixteen,” repressing brothels
and bringing new penalties for “incest” and same-sex practices. The Act also had an “antiaristocratic” bias, “the clause against homosexuality being very much an attack on the
debasement of youth by the per-class profligates” (Smith 217). Associations were made
33
between vice and upper-class customs. For Victorian moralists aestheticism was
aristocratic and thus linked with degeneracy, which undermined the whole ethical basis of
Christian teaching. This bred an immense amount of pessimism.
Another example of a more strict and coercive state policy was the critical reception of
the nude. In the 1890s the New Scotland Yard pressured by the National Vigilance
Association (NVA) erected a specific department to deal with corrupt and indecent books
and pictures. In the 1880s the artistic nude was denounced and discredited in highbrow
art. Billboards advertising dancers, actresses and acrobats were sanctioned to be removed
due to their supposedly demoralizing influence. “The rising pornography threatens family
life, the foundation of society,” stated William Coote, the founder of NVA (Smith 220).
Coote greatly objected to the advertisement that was put up by the Royal Aquarium in
Westminster to publicize acrobatic entertainments. The billboard depicted the acrobat
Zaoe, with her lower limbs exposed and unclothed, which became a target of a big
campaign. In 1885 the Church of England Purity Society issued an indictment against the
Royal Academy for the promotion of indecency, and requested the courts to take action
and ban the indecent studies offered by the Academy (Smith 220, O’Neill 548). Women
were also urged not to model, undrape themselves, and pose nude for artists. In this
debate, the females were undermined, they could not defend and stand up for themselves,
in fact, women were blamed for infringing womanly modesty and exciting and arousing
the opposite sex (Smith 220).
In summary, it has been established that the purity movement was keen to instill selfdiscipline in men and also women to purify society. Social status was not a “mitigating
factor,” no difference was made between high cultural representation and mass
entertainment (Smith 220) when indecency and immorality were in question. There was a
decided anti-aristocratic bias, since the moralist propaganda was mainly organized and
formulated by the conservative middle-class establishments, which associated the
aristocracy with moral laxity. Christianity presented a body of philosophy and a system of
ethics that strongly influenced the attitudes of Victorian society. Late-Victorian
conservative establishments put the emphasis on Christianity’s ethical and moral codes. It
was thus argued that regulation of sexual conduct was indispensable and promiscuity had
34
to be fought. Hence sexual morals and practices were immensely regimented. Based on
their understanding of Christian philosophy the Victorians built up a system of sexual
ethics that was rigid and antagonistic towards homosexuality and corporal pleasures. This
negative attitude towards (homo)sexuality was in a way the outcome of the high moral
standards and rigid religious beliefs that were propagated. Homophobia and the fear of
degeneracy were thus instilled into men. Interestingly, in English society only the
aristocrats and the most educated did not regard sexual activity as sinful (Comfort 86).
In Christian philosophy and history the value of suffering and repression has great
significance. Christian doctrines focused on pain and privation, specifically, the deliberate
seeking out of pain “as a substitute for the claims of the flesh” and privation (Comfort
87). The benefits and merits of “privation” that purged the mind and body of impurities
and shame were deeply ingrained in European culture, as the concept of atonement and
suffering are in correlation with guilt and even fear (Comfort 88).
The impact of Christian teaching produced the thought that the morally delinquent
commit the gravest sin and that sexual misdeeds are the most lethal, which can only be
evaded by suffering and abstinence, which embody purity. The late-Victorian moralists
were convinced that repressed impulses, like sexual abstinence, may be worked out in
harmless forms (Comfort 88). This will be discussed in more detail in later chapters.
The association between moral delinquency and sin stimulated scientific theories to
rescue man. There was great fear of the physical effects of masturbation, and other impure
sexual acts, for example the panic of neurosis haunted young men, which is evinced in
multiple books and pamphlets dating from the mid nineteenth century (Comfort 90).
The fear of the negative physical effects of female masturbation and same-sex passion
were also of concern. This unease is well reflected in the scientific attitudes of the
Victorians. Clitoridectomy (a scientific intervention performed on women to prevent them
from masturbating and participating in homoerotic practices), male circumcision, and the
politics of sexual pleasure are all essential themes that reflect a concern for regulating the
35
average man’s and woman’s sexuality and even sexual preference. Clitoridectomy,
circumcision, and other medical pursuits and precautions are partly the result of
homophobia, the very mechanism of domination. Victorian professional experts and
medical practitioners asserted medical science to be the safeguard of morality. They
composed medico-moral discourses that arranged polarities like health/disease,
virtue/vice, cleanliness/filth, morality/depravity, civilization/barbarity (Mosucci 60). The
sexuality of the labour and the aristocratic classes (especially after the Wilde trials) were
associated with disease, sexual degeneracy, and depravity, antithetically, the identity of
the middle class was centred around health, restraint and purity. There were further
dichotomies set up such as “normal/pathological,” and “civilization/animality” (Mosucci
60). An additional development of this principle resulted in the experimentation with
gynecology, which was set out to better the instinctual “sexual desires,” especially the
pathological and primitive nature of femininity (Mosucci 60-61).
Medical practitioners saw it as their responsibility to popularize health and spiritual well
being by reforming degeneracy, bad habits and maintaining monopoly over the middleclass’ rule over moral hygiene. Doctors wanted to gain victory “over the evils of society”
(Mosucci 60) by preaching moderation to the masses. This was also achieved by warnings
against excess in sexual pleasures when married. Masturbation was the focal point of the
practitioners’ concern as the masturbator was regarded as one of the archetypal
degenerates. One abominable manifestation of this unease with this sin was the
introduction of clitoridectomy, which was thought to be a cure for masturbation and other
sexual acts of pleasure, like same-sex practices for women.
Clitoridectomy is an element of a religious ritual, mostly in Muslim and African
cultures. It involves the “excision or removal of the whole clitoris with the labia minora
or the removal of the hood of tissue that surrounds the organ” (Mosucci 61).
Clitoridectomy also demonstrated the excessive radicalism and obsession with purity of
the late-Victorians therefore, it is indispensable to address this archaic form of medical
intervention. Until the mid-nineteenth century this operation was solely performed for
grave diseases like tumors and malformations. However, during the 1850s the excision of
36
the clitoris and the labia were recommended by physicians as a cure and solution to
masturbation and other sexual pleasures. In 1848 an obstetrician named Samuel Ashwell
proposed excision “whenever an enlarged clitoris was marked by ‘exquisite sensibility of
its mucous membrane giving rise to sexual passion’” (Mosucci 61). According to Ornella
Mosucci the earliest account of a clitoridectomy was in 1851 appearing in a work of an
Italian physician named Riberi. Riberi considered onanism to be successfully treated by
the excision of the “clitoris” and the “nymphae” (Mosucci 61). A late nineteenth-century
American practitioner, on the other hand, advised cutting the hood of the clitoris instead.
This method was much favoured by American doctors. British doctors were a little more
careful about taking on this surgical method since most had misgivings about the
operation. However, Isaac Brown, a British gynecologist, made the mistake of performing
this procedure on a patient, resulting in his “loss of membership” in the Obstetricial
Society of London (Mosucci 61-2).
However, in the case of men, the late-Victorian conservative society did not object to
circumcision, in fact favoured it fervently. It was recommended as a treatment for
masturbation for men also. The procedure became so popular in the English-speaking
countries, including Britain, that by the 1930s two thirds of public school boys were
circumcised (Mosucci 62). On the other hand, this craze for circumcision is quite
surprising since it had been unthinkable in Christian countries in the past. Seventeenth
century writers were quite uncertain about this practice, which was thought to eradicate
male sexual pleasure. However, in the nineteenth century, many also thought of
circumcision to have “mutilating consequences” (Mosucci 62). One anthropologist named
Nancy Schepher-Hughes made a case against circumcision as a mother who endeavored
to prevent circumcision being performed on her son without success. She claimed that
circumcision was traumatic and that her son was permanently harmed and his sexual
pleasure was denied him (Mosucci 62).
Unease about masturbation began in the early eighteenth-century, when a book Onania
or, The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (1707-1717) written by Dr. Balthazar Bekker, was
published in Holland and sold multiple copies. Samuel-Auguste Tissot’s famous discourse
37
was entitled Onanism: or A Treatise Upon the Disorders Produced by Masturbation
(1760). Tissot argued that the loss of semen leads to physical illnesses like “debility,”
“consumption,” “deterioration of eyesight,” and “disturbance of the nervous system”3
(Mosucci 62). From 1800, the evils of masturbation were in the spotlight and were widely
discussed among medical experts and religious institutions. It was regarded as an egotistic
indulgence that polluted and “debilitated” the individual, preventing marriage, family life
and procreation. Lesley Hall researched to prove that masturbation induced disgust and
self-loathing. Posters, pamphlets, and handbills described the debilitating effect of the evil
act. “For two guineas a piece,” a device which consisted of a “metal ring with a screw
passing through its sides” (Mosucci 62) was advised to be applied to the penis at bed time.
Some doctors directed men to avoid arousing “amusements” and temptations like “lolling
in bed” in the morning. Some suggested a more “robust approach,” like the application of
“caustics” to the urethra in order to inhibit masturbation (Mosucci 62). Sometimes
vasectomy and castration were also practiced. In 1870 the “use of blisters” was advised
that caused “soreness,” and therefore making erection painful (Mosucci 62-3).
Interest in circumcision as the means of preventing masturbation began to become
popular in the 1850s. Medical discourses focused on the uncleanliness and wantonness of
the masturbatory activity. James Copland was the first to have advocated circumcision,
stating that circumcision was a means of relieving irritations caused by “smegmatic
accumulations” (Mosucci 63). He advised his patients to get circumcised in order to attain
genital cleanliness and gain “physical resilience”(Mosucci 64). An American physician
named Remondino claimed that circumcision was a way of gaining a longer life, greater
capacity for labour, less nervousness, and better health. Physicians like Remondino had
no difficulty convincing the middle-class of the importance of sexual restraint and
hygiene. Mosucci states that what really differentiated the middle-class from the
debauched aristocracy and degenerate lower- classes was the observance of regular habits
3 Stolberg’s “Self-pollution, moral reform, and the venereal trade: Notes on the sources and historical context of Onania (1716) further states that the publication of
"Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution" in the early eighteenth century was an important landmark in the history of sexuality in European society. Few works
have had as profound an influence on the culture and society of their time, and few have acquired so dubious a reputation. With the appearance of this publication, the
idea that masturbation was not only sinful, but also the cause of a wide range of terrible diseases, took firm root. Going through dozens of editions and translations,
Onania decisively shaped nineteenth century western perceptions of masturbation.
38
and restraint (64)4. Ronald Hyam, scholar, accentuated that circumcision was salient and
important to the late-Victorian “redefinition of manliness” in terms of restraint and purity
(Mosucci 64).
Overall, this infatuation with purity can be seen as a defense against moral pollution and
a response to the fears of the public. These public fears were stimulated by homophobia,
the fear of decadence and moral degeneration. Foldy makes mention of the fact that:
[… ] a perceived decline in moral standards in the 1850s and 60s […] associated
with the economic prosperity of those years […] and 1885, the annus mirabilis of
sexual politics, was also the year of the expansion of the electorate, fear of
national decline following the defeat of General Gordon at Khartum, anxieties
about the future of Ireland, and all this in the context of socialist revival and
feminist agitation. (Foldy 137)
As the purity campaign took off in the last ten years of the nineteenth century, the
meaning of masculinity shifted from the cult of moral integrity to the cult of muscular
Christianity, where the emphasis was on athletics as a means of sublimating (homo)sexual
desire. Be it the cult of moral integrity or muscular Christianity, it is evident that
Victorian society had a never-ending battle with lust, requiring supervision and strict
discipline.
This chapter has outlined that there was a strict supervision of venues in Victorian
Britain. The goal was to reinvigorate Christian piety and eradicate temptation and desire
with the aid of the social purity movements, medical intervention, like clitoridectomy and
circumcision. A correlation between physical and moral health has also been
substantiated, in addition detailed surveys of some theories and practices have been
described that may well seem abstruse to the modern mind but give evidence of the
uncompromising radicalism and aggressiveness of the moralist campaign, which will help
to explain the reasoning behind James’s and Wilde’s subterfuge, when addressing
4
See also The History of Sexuality vol. 1 pp. 116-131 in which Foucault also details how sexuality was subjugated to a
regime of repression.
39
homosexuality, and also Wilde’s and other degenerates’ persecution. It is obvious that the
conservative late Victorians thought quite a lot about (homo)sexuality, which was
reflected in their contriving theories, regulation, homophobia, and medical practices.
However, the late- Victorian period was more than a morally rigid and sterile society. It
was an era where the cult of decadence flourished, while stringent moral codes were
stipulated by society. A never ending battle between lust and moral integrity is evident in
these times, when close supervision was implemented with the purpose of punishing and
sedating the sexually liberated individuals (O’Neill 545), in other words oppressing the
few who engaged in homosexual and other sexually degenerate activities.
40
IV. Surveillance of the Subculture: trials and the niches of hedonism
Moral supervision in Victorian Britain, as a result of homophobia, a mechanism of
domination of the conservative late-Victorian power structures, worked on multiple
levels. The level that surveillance was executed by societies that quickly spread
throughout London and beyond. These groups looked to each other for support and
advice. Furthermore, they corresponded among themselves to uphold Christian ethics.
The enforcements were mediated between the Church, the law, and the public sphere. The
populace was policed and unethical acts were reported and then subjected to legal and
regulatory enforcement actions. Similarly, Foucault maintains that sex became a “police”
matter (Foucault 24).The state concerned itself with serving the public’s welfare by the
policing of sex and its regulation. Institutions intervened with the purpose of surveying
the movements of life. Not only indecent sexual acts were analyzed and medicalized, but
“birth rates,” “marriages,” “illegitimate births,” the frequency of marriages, “fertility,”
and “sterility” were subjected to analysis. Thus, the population was taken as an object of
analysis, intervention, and supervision (Foucault 24). Men who had sex with men were
regularly arrested, “pilloried,” and hanged, as a result of homophobic violence, in many
cities across Britain, including Bristol, Cambridge, Reading, Maidstone, Ipswich and
York, but the greatest amount of information available to historians relates to London, and
is found in printed trial records such as the Old Bailey Proceedings, part of the
“burgeoning print culture of the capital” (Norton 40).
The thriving homophobia and homosexual panic paradoxically urged men into
homosocial affiliations and in more blatant incidents to an experimentation with
homosexual practices. As a result of both its size, and the unique sources charting the
behaviour of its citizens, London is the only city in Britain in which a well-organised gay
subculture has been detected. Rictor Norton notes that full-scale male brothels were
unknown until about 1810. Nevertheless, 'disorderly houses' where men could meet up to
have sexual intercourse with each other were known and recorded from the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Throughout these two centuries the “casual practice” (Norton 40-
41
41) of accepting 'treats' was very popular: sexual services were regularly offered by
guardsmen. This flourishing gay subculture established a visible urban gay space, a
“distinct geography of homosexuality” as Norton calls it (40). He mentions that there
were three types of “homosexual cruising”:
First, there were major thoroughfares and piazzas where large numbers of people
passed to and fro and where one could loiter unnoticed. Patterns of arrest establish
the main cruising areas as London Bridge, the covered arcades of the Royal
Exchange, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the Savoy precinct. In 1707 alone more than
20 men were indicted for homosexual solicitation on London Bridge and in the
Royal Exchange. Second, London possessed large open spaces and public parks
with easy access to all classes of people, and with dark corners where one could
withdraw and converse. The fields and parks most used for homosexual activity
were St George's Fields, Moorfields and St James's Park. In Bird Cage Alley, St
James's Park, homosexuals employed coded gestures and signals to indicate their
desires to one another, such as poking a white handkerchief through the tails of
their coats and waving it to and fro. The path that ran across the middle of
Moorfields was notoriously known as 'the Sodomite's Walk'. The basic technique
involved standing against a wall pretending to urinate, and waiting to see if any
passer-by expressed an interest. (41)
Moreover, Norton further elaborates how the sanitation facilities in a great city were an
“integral part” (Norton 42) of gay cruising:
What is now called 'cottaging' frequently took place in the 'houses of office'
outside alehouses, and in the bog-houses or public latrines with multiple cubicles
that were built in London from the late seventeenth century. Men were frequently
arrested in the bog-house of Lincoln's Inn Fields (built in 1692), and the boghouse in the Temple precinct had a hole cut in the partition between two stalls as
early as 1707 - the first recorded 'glory hole'. To these spaces were added new
social institutions for public pleasure that flourished in London: innumerable
coffee houses and masquerades, such as those at Vauxhall Gardens, both of which
were exploited by mollies. (Norton 42)
The third type of “homosexual cruising,” (42) according to Norton was more perilous as the
underground homosexual venues were violently raided by police officers. Obviously, these raids
were stimulated by the fear of the homosexual, which sought to regulate the behavior of citizens.
A type of ‘secular power” over male homoerotic bonds was in effect (Between Men 88),
42
meaning that legalized violence was implemented in molly house persecutions, but more
subtle strategies were also utilized, in order to restrain the bonds among men, who were
active members of the homosexual subculture (Sedgwick, Between Men 88).
These popular practices of “sodomy and transvestitism” are graphically demonstrated in
documents describing a series of trials that resulted from raids and surveillance on
London’s molly houses where same-sex erotic activities took place “behind closed doors”
(Hyde, The Other Love 48). The premises that exclusively catered for queers were the
'molly houses.'
Norton notes that 'molly' derives from slang for a female prostitute; other terms for gay
men used in the trials, news reports and satires were 'sodomites,' 'buggerers,’ and
'indorsers.’ In the 1720s alone there were about twenty molly houses in London. Norton
writes that “some of these were back rooms in gin cellars, some were private lodgings,
and some were commercial alehouses and coffee houses where fifty or sixty men
socialised, especially on Sunday nights” (42). Some of the molly houses were kept by
married men or women, and some by homosexuals. Robert Whale and York Homer, also
known as Peggy and Pru, “resided under one roof for at least three years before their
molly pub on King Street, Westminster was raided” (Norton 42). Horsing around, singing
and dancing to music were the activities at these houses, for example at Thomas Wright's
molly house in Beech Lane, the mollies organised masquerade parties and festival nights.
John Bleak Cowland played music on his fiddle at private drag parties in Black Lion
Yard, and Whitechapel. Cowland was later sentenced to death for sodomy, during his trial
he cried that “he only went to Muff's House, to learn to play on the Violin” (Norton 42).
The most renowned molly house was a cafe in Field Lane owned by Margaret Clap,
known as Mother Clap. She was frequented by mollies from as far away as fifty miles
outside London (Norton 42)5. Mollies attending these houses were subjected to
continuous danger due to ongoing and incessant raids. The raids of these molly houses
5. For more information on London’s gay subculture see news reports at www.infopt.demon.co.uk/l726news.htm and
www.infopt.demon.co.uk/1727news.htm
43
were initiated by the societies for the reformation of ethics. The representation of these
cases not only reveals the strict moral codes imposed on British society, but the existence
of a highly developed London subculture within which men engaged in physical
intimacies with one another.
The document entitled Select Trials indicates that informers went regularly to the
London pubs where these men congregated and “passed themselves off” (Hyde, The other
love 57) as sympathetic to their activities, while in fact documenting the elaborate rituals
that accompanied these transgressive practices. For example, the Select Trials version of
the proceeding against Gabriel Lawrence for sodomy indicates what one of the informers
had testified:
Mother Clap’s house was in Field-Lane, it was notorious for being a molly- house.
I have been there several times in order to detect those who frequented it. I have
seen twenty or thirty of them hugging and making love in an indecent manner.
Then they used to go out by couples into another room and when they had come
back they would tell me what they had been doing, which in their dialect they
call’d marrying. (Hyde, The other love 57)
This so called “marrying” is a comical reenactment of the “sacramental and legal
affirmation of marriage” (Hyde, The other love 57). This reenactment is of significance
since it is a parody of heterosexual compulsion sanctioned by patriarchal powers and it
reflects how little the mollies thought of the institution of marriage.
The accounts go even further into depth, referring to the inner room where sexual
intercourse took place as “the chapel,” thus, indicating that the partners involved in the
sexual act were designated as “husbands” and “wives” (Hyde, The other love 57). After
the intercourse some men enacted childbirth, sometimes even baptizing their newborn.
According to Montgomery Hyde the source Select Trials depicts the transgression against
the laws of man and the laws of ethics in Victorian England, which gives the readers a
good insight into the Victorian social context (Hyde, The other love 78).
44
To present in more detail the homophobia of Victorian society attention needs to be
drawn to the notorious legal case in London during the 1870s of Boulton and Park, two
young men who were arrested under the Vagrancy Act as they left the Strand Theatre on
28 April, 1870, because they were dressed in female attire. Their case was heard at Bow
Street Magistrates’ Court, where the Prosecution alleged that they and other accomplices
had frequented the Strand Theatre with the intention of committing a felony. Their case,
which was often “cited” as the forerunner of the Oscar Wilde trials, has received great
attention and scrutiny (Davis 50).
The appearance of Mr. Boulton and Mr. Park before the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court
was something quite extraordinary and eccentric indeed. Boulton wore a “cherry coloured
evening dress made of silk; his arms were bare and he wore a wig and plaited chignon”
(Davis 53). Park’s ensemble consisted of a “dark-green satin dress, low-necked and
trimmed with black lace” (Davis 53). Boulton and Park had been under surveillance for
over twelve months. The problem was that the police had not been certain whether they
were women who occasionally dressed as men or men who dressed as women. They had
frequented multiple theatres in both men’s and women’s clothing. When they were
apprehended they were accompanied by two gentlemen. Boulton and Park visited other
public resorts like “music halls, in female clothing,” (Davis 53) but their most
conspicuous appearance was through amateur theatricals, which was later to be the reason
for their acquittal in 1871. Performing as an amateur actor on stage provided the only
excuse for the existence of such a large wardrobe of female attire. Park had played a
female role in a piece entitled Retained for Defence (Davis 53).
The Strand Theatre where Boulton and Park were arrested had been a leading place of
burlesque in London. The Daily Telegraph indicated that the burlesque and the
androgynous actors appearing on stage were a grave ethical problem and an indecency
since they lead to the appearance of drag in public places, note the Boulton and Park case
as an example.
How drag originated we do not pretend to know. But it appears that for some years
past it has been the fancy of some empty headed, effeminate young men to play
45
female parts in amateur theatricals. The public stage may have suggested, by
contrast, to the theatre-going youths, the idea of such a transformation. The
modern burlesque relies for success on the adoption of male costume by handsome
and well-made young women. The leading actresses all want to be young Princes,
and so forth. An assiduous study of this noble form of drama may, perhaps, have
put it into the heads of one or two of these young men that it would be a clever
thing to turn the effeminacy of their own features to account by playing women’s
parts, just as women on the regular stage made up as young men. This seems to
have been the beginnings of a course of disguises which, on the assumption most
favourable on the prisoners, seems to have gone beyond the bounds of decency
[…] They went to the theatre, took private boxes, talk with this man, and that, and
whether dressed as men or women, contrived, it would seem, to convey the
impression that they were women. (Davis 66)
Their behaviour set a tension between spectatorship and performance. Their inclination
for exhibitionism and the ambiguous impact of their appearance and performance
signified that they were not concerned with passing in one gender or the other, but their
desire was to question mid-Victorian parameters of both gender and moral codes of
behaviour. As Butler states, acts, gestures, and desire produce an effect on the surface of
the body. It is obvious that Boulton and Park were aware of this fact. Their acts and
gestures culminated in performance and articulated desire, thereby creating the illusion of
gender (Gender Trouble 178). In Boulton’s and Park’s case the illusionary gender created
often varied, at times the female, and at other instances the male gender was in the
forefront.
Boulton’s and Park’s cross-dressing occurred both on and off stage (like theatre foyers,
boat races, and restaurants). The amateur stage was a legitimate site, but parading on the
streets and in public spheres was unbearable for mid-Victorian society, and thought to be
very unethical (Davis 66). Their cross-dressing off stage was a disturbing critique of
gender, conventionality, and morality. They wished to erode the boundaries of gender
performance, but society caught them and put a stop to their plot. They were a threat to
the moral standards of Victorian society because they represented unfathomable desires
and offered surrogate gender alternatives. Their behaviour shed light on the rigidly
“stratified notions” (Davis 66) of gender and morality held by the Victorian public. They
willfully wanted to confuse distinctions of gender and class, which the conservative
46
power structures wanted to keep distinct. Therefore, such men and women who exposed
themselves in this manner, in public, embodied a foreign infection which was linked to
chaos, degeneracy, and a social disorder. Such behaviour was controversial because it
raised questions of disturbance about desire, gender performance, and social
representation, which Victorian society meant to restrain and keep intact. Park’s and
Boulton’s endeavor in transgressing traditional male performance of gender was a
celebration of deviance. Rebellious acts as such surge from a deep desire to stimulate
thought, empty out the deep self, and release oneself from the correlatives of dominant
morality. Boulton, Park, and even Oscar Wilde recognized this and found pleasure in
these subversive acts of gender performance.
The social context of the Oscar Wilde trials is also indispensable for the understanding
of the late-Victorian binary opposites, decadence and morality, for the Wilde trials
occurred within a prevailing cultural climate which, as it has been described, was very
rigid, homophobic, and heterosexist. It has been stated that homophobia, an “intrapsychic
phenomenon which describes irrational feelings of fear and hatred” towards individuals
who “espouse same-sex desire and/or engage in sexual practices with members of the
same gender” (Griffin 66), may very well be experienced by (latent or repressed)
homosexuals and/or heterosexuals alike, in either passive or aggressive ways. The trials of
Oscar Wilde and their outcome took place in an atmosphere, which had articulate fears
towards homosexuals, and as a result advocated compulsory heterosexuality in society
and culture (Davis 66). This thriving heterosexism promotes and popularizes
heterosexuality as the ideal way of living and provides justification for hatred and
oppression of individuals who embrace homosexuality and decadence. It is
institutionalized in discourses and treatises and stipulated in ecclesiastical and civil laws
(Davis 66, Sedgwick 93). Compulsory heterosexuality was enforced. The courts, the
press, and discourses promoted and espoused heterosexuality. The purpose of publicity as
such was to eradicate the new self-consciousness of homosexuality and homoerotic
desire. To characterize a culture as heterosexist is to say nothing about the minority
culture. Furthermore, the advocacy of restraint and other forms of repression signify the
47
heterosexism embedded in Victorian culture, completely normalizing heterosexist
attitudes (Davis 66-67).
By the end of the nineteenth century, heterosexism was gradually characterized by
harsher and more unforgiving attitudes. Throughout the nineteenth-century professional
discourses were published that made an effort to comprehend same-sex passion on the
basis of science. Through “labeling processes in legal and scientific circles” same-sex
passion was deemed criminal by civil and ecclesiastical laws. As has been pointed out in
the previous sub-chapter, Victorian moralists emphasized the responsibility of each
individual for his or her moral well-being and the importance of exerting one’s will to
avoid sinfulness. Hence same-sex passion was viewed as an act that is the result of
willpower deficiency and lack of self-control, and which is dissipated and dissolute
(Foldy 67-8). In addition, the “invert” (as homosexuals were called) was described by
medical professionals in terms of a mental illness that is characterized by a type of
“psychological disturbance” (Foldy 67-8). The confusion and the mystery that surrounded
same-sex passion gave rise to “public fears,” (Foldy 69) the fear of the other, and the
dangerous, and the unknown. At the time of the Wilde trials, homosexual activity became
a matter of concern in the highest of political circles, hence expedience required that
Wilde be “sacrificed as a substitute for more highly placed quarry in the liberal
government” (Foldy 69). The Wilde trials reflected the public fear of “the other,” and in
order to prevent homosexuality from spreading, not only grave political measures were
taken, but the revitalization and renewal of heterosexism was also a must. The newspaper
accounts of the Wilde trials, including details about Wilde’s sexual acts, his trial
testimonies, and his ideas on art were continually framed by the issue of criminality,
decadence, and degeneration. Degenerate acts were purposely persecuted and placed into
the spotlight in order to convince the public of their anomaly and negativity (Foldy 69).
The analysis of late-Victorian decadent sexual acts leads to a further understanding of
late-Victorian identity. Firstly, let us examine how degeneration and decadence were
correlated.
48
The effect of the moral panic and homophobia that gripped the nation, which stimulated
heterosexist structures of repression and restraint, was “drawn tighter” in British society
by 1895 (Foldy 70). Degeneration was paralleled with decadence, which Wilde
symbolized with perfection. Degeneration was defined as physical and mental
deterioration in a human being, put in other words as “moral backsliding” (Foldy 70).
Michael Foldy notes that Spencer, like Darwin, regarded human societies as human
organisms that are also subjected to birth, decay, and selection, just as individual human
beings. His tenets included ideas that stated that social organisms attain perfection by
taking on good characteristics and purging bad ones. Thus, the social organism makes an
effort to acquire ethical perfection by assimilating to environmental conditions. Spencer’s
ideal was the “survival of the most ethical” (Foldy 70), meaning that the men who adjust
to public morality will be more satisfied than those who do not adhere to it. Spencer
adapted his theories to Christian theology with great success, which advocated that moral
progress “was the natural correlative of material progress” (Foldy 71).
Degeneration was explained by means of scientific theories, namely entropy, “the degree
to which the energy of a system ceases to be available energy” (Nordau 33). Degeneration
was thought to account for diseases like alcoholism, suicide, and perversions. Jonathan
Dollimore similarly notes that degeneration was described as a social regression, an
unhealthy state of the mind (Dollimore, Perversion, 97). Degenerates were conceived as
individuals incapable of acclimatizing themselves to their environment, thus having a
high risk of becoming extinct (Dellamora, Productive Decadence 530-532). Several
symptoms of degeneracy were examined by Augustin Morel, a French psychiatrist, who
supposed that deviant character traits were a result of environmental factors that could be
passed down to other generations. Morel’s theory of inherited criminal characteristics was
applied across the board to explain various forms of deviancy (Shepherd, Garmezy, and
Zangwill 35). The chronically sick, the mentally ill, criminals, and sexual perverts were
all stigmatized as degenerates or abnormal. However, the word degenerate was
specifically popular as a label and signifier of social evils. Thus, it could be applied to
anyone who failed to aspire to bourgeois standards and values.
49
One very renowned advocate of this concept was Max Simon Nordau, who was the
author of Degeneration, which contained an entire chapter dedicated to the Wilde trials.
For Nordau anyone deviating from the status quo was a suspect. His central statement
was that those who were above average were just as dangerous and lethal to society as
those who were below. He believed that society had as much to fear from artists as from
criminals and “cretins” (Nordau 20). Artists were a threat because they were certain that
difference could be a positive virtue and that individualism was the ideal state of self.
Nordau defined this as egoism, moral insanity, and emotionalism (Nordau 20). Wilde’s
impulse was characterized as “an anti-socialistic, ego-maniacal recklessness and
hysterical longing to make a sensation” (Dollimore, Perversion100-102). Nordau
classified Wilde’s works into three decadent leitmotifs, inactivity, immorality, and art; for
Nordau this provided enough evidence for moral insanity and instability. He felt that
Wilde was the epitome of an effeminate, pathological man (Dollimore, Perversion 100102).
Simon Nordau, among others, identified Wilde as a significant representative of the
school of Aestheticism. Aestheticism was considered as a branch of the Decadent
movement. Initially, Wilde was attracted to aestheticism through the mystical poetry of
Byron, Keats,
Shelley, and Wordsworth, in addition, to the proto-decadent works of de Quincey and
Swinburne. His aestheticism was refined via his apprenticeship to Ruskin and Pater at
Oxford University (Ellmann 82). His individual aesthetic works were also improved
during his visits to Paris, where he was “sought out” by the French decadent writers:
Maurice Rollinat, Jean Lorrain, Paul Verlaine and Joris Karl Huysmans (Ellmann 82).
Wilde was responsible for popularizing the ideas of French decadence in Britain, which
came back to haunt him during his oppressive trials. His critical essays, like “The Critic as
Artist” and “The Decay of Lying,” pushed the postulates for decadence to their logical
extreme and were a stimulus in establishing him as the main theoretician of French
decadence (Foldy 100). However, Wilde, through great effort, made it seem as if he
glided freely through every moment. He often avoided the world in order to repudiate his
social obligations whenever possible and to retreat into a secret universe, an artificial
50
paradise of his own design and making. For Wilde the decadent aesthetic had to avoid and
transcend the intolerable reality, which was too rigid, homophobic, and heterosexist.
Thus, his aesthetic decadence served a healing purpose (Foldy 100).
Wilde’s literary treatment in The Picture of Dorian Gray of sin, decadence, corruption,
and crime were subtexts which suggested homoerotic attachments, and had the notoriety
of creating a major literary sensation, sparking a heated public debate on art and morality
that was waged for months afterwards in the press. Wilde’s clever arguments in defense
of the ideas and sentiments expressed in his novel, which he repeated verbatim at his trial
as a testimony, contributed towards linking in the public mind the notions of decadence,
sin, corruption, crime, immortality, and same-sex passion.
Furthermore, Wilde’s antinomian attitude to Christianity caused an uproar, as well. An
antinomian is one who believes that faith alone, and not necessarily obedience to existing
moral laws, is necessary for salvation. Wilde’s use of the term antinomian was even more
liberal and secular in orientation. He substituted a complete and utter faith in God with
faith in oneself and replaced the redemptive goal of eternal salvation with immediate and
worldly goals of pleasure and material success. It was probably not accidental that he
retained the idea of disobedience to existing moral laws (Foldy 100). In essence, Wilde’s
antinomianism signified a militant and egotistical form of radical individualism. As Wilde
understood it, “antinomian” was synonymous with “artist and the artist’s purpose,” (Foldy
100) which was twofold. The artist’s aim was to create beautiful things in order to win
victory over the ugly. Wilde drew a parallel between the criminal and the artist. He
thought that art and crime are the most intense forms of individualism and protest. He
protested against mediocrity and “Philistine hegemony” (Foldy 100). He also saw the
artist as an iconoclast and libertarian whose self-discovery was in the interest of the
freedom of all humanity. He insinuated that the artist must have the prerogative of being
exempt from the rules and moral codes which were accepted by an average citizen (Foldy
100).
51
Even more importantly the artist’s purpose in life was to create “himself” (Foldy 100).
His product and work was secondary to the formation and development of the self. In
Wilde this was reflected in the expression of the “will to power” (Foldy 100) over himself
and the outside world. He believed that the most essential thing is being true to oneself
and acting consistently with one’s beliefs. His understanding of hedonism had a Classical
Greek sense where the goal of hedonism was to realize one’s essence, one’s highest
unrealized potential. Hedonism to him was not only the pursuit of physical pleasures, but
also intellectual (Foldy 100).
Wilde’s secularization was a threat to traditional Christian values. His decadence and his
practice of same-sex passion symbolized alien values and experimentation, and
permissiveness, which endangered the traditional and ascetic attitudes of the Christian
late-Victorian England. Wilde’s true crime was that he could not subordinate himself to
the rules of society and Christianity, which was seen as a failure of his social obligation
and respect towards authority.
Wilde went through great pains in battling and combating tradition, and custom. He was
convinced that adhering to the status quo was a condition of chronic disease, antithetically
the “will to rebel” was a public virtue since it caused change (Foldy 101). Wilde’s
subversive nature prevailed. It was impossible for him to refrain from poking fun at
anything that was meant to be grave and serious. Even his trials were a target for his
subversive instincts, which resulted in his destruction and doom.
The excerpt from the Wilde trials detailed below, which includes a description of the
atmosphere of the rooms of Alfred Taylor (Wilde’s intimate acquaintance) in Little
College Street, somewhat substantiates the aversive decadence that Wilde favoured and
which ultimately caused his tragedy. The “inverted domesticity,” (Schulz 50) depicted,
like perfume burning, dark-lit rooms, and elaborate lush furniture, seem to have appealed
to Wilde’s taste (as it will be shown in Dorian Gray as well), but obviously antagonized
Victorian gender anxiety – just as all of Wilde’s other beliefs, which opposed the values
52
propagated by the moralists as outlined in the previous sub-chapters. The excerpt below
depicts Wilde’s interest in eccentricity:
CARSON: Did his rooms strike you as being peculiar?
WILDE: No, except that he displayed more taste than usual.
CARSON: There was rather elaborate furniture in the rooms, was there not?
WILDE: The rooms were furnished in good taste.
CARSON: Is it true that he never admitted daylight into them?
WILDE: Really! [...] I don't know what you mean. [..]
CARSON: Can you declare specifically that any daylight was ever admitted into
the room? WILDE: Well, I can't say as to that.
CARSON: Were the rooms strongly perfumed?
WILDE: Yes, I have known him to burn perfumes. But I would not say the rooms
were always perfumed. [...] I am in the habit of burning perfumes in my own
rooms. (Hyde, Oscar Wilde: Famous Trials 124)
Obviously, Wilde’s performance as a dandy raised anxiety about homosexuality in
Victorian society, which may be brought into association with Wilde’s attraction to
elaborate furniture, orientalism, sensori-emotional values, and most of all intense-male
bonding, which are all essential elements that are addressed in his works. Overall, the
trials made Wilde out to be a despicable man, who personifies degeneracy, decadence and
monstrous male sexuality.
Wilde’s aestheticism and decadence stimulated a public debate over decadent art and its
influence on public morality. Given the fear and panic about moral degeneracy in public
discourse in the late-Victorian period, the supposed corruption of public morality became
the criminal charge against Wilde. In the June 1895 issue of The Review of Reviews, W.T
Stead wrote an article on the result of the Wilde trials:
[…]The Trial of Oscar Wilde and Taylor at the Old Bailey, resulting in their
conviction and the infliction of what will probably be a capital sentence- for two
years’ hard labour in solitary confinement always breaks up the constitution even
of tough and stalwart men- has forced upon the attention of the public the
existence of a vice of which the most of us happily know nothing. The
heinousness of the crime of Oscar Wilde and his associates does not lie, as is
usually supposed, in its being unnatural. It would be unnatural for seventy-nine
out of eighty persons. It is natural for the abnormal person who is in a minority of
one. If the promptings of our animal nature are to be the only guide, the
53
punishment of Oscar Wilde would savour of persecution, and he might fairly
claim our sympathy as the champion of the individualism against the tyranny of an
intolerant majority. But we are not merely animal. We are human beings living
together in society, whose aim is to render social intercourse as free and happy as
possible. (Foldy 127)6
Stead was hoping that Wilde’s conviction would propel the cleaning out of Protestant
public schools. He recognized similarities between Wilde’s offence and the vices of the
public school boys. In a letter to Reynold’s Newspaper he wrote, “Why doesn’t the Crown
prosecute every boy at a public or private school or half the men in the Universities? In
the latter places pederasty is as common as fornication, and everybody knows it.” (Foldy
130). 7 The Oscar Wilde trials were regarded as a lesson that activated moral exorcism of
homosexuality, masturbation and other degenerate acts. As Sinfield points out, the
Church of England Purity Society waged war against masturbation among schoolboys,
which was considered a great sin. Schoolboy homoeroticism was also prevalent in public
schools, which became a major concern for social-purity activists since it was regarded as
the induction to other same-sex practices (Sinfield, The Wilde Century 65). The middle
class public school system was where manliness was established, where moral ideas were
learnt as a set of imperatives, and where homophobia was instilled into the minds of the
youth, but obviously at times not so successfully. Boy-love is one of the other aspects of
the decadent realities that we turn a blind eye to.
The poetry of boy-love towards the end of the nineteenth century provides evidence of
same-sex love among young boys, in spite of the intense brainwashing. Sinfield writes
that students’ poetry “presents the virtues of same-sex passion as elaborated and
eroticized versions of standard public school virtues- service, physical vigour, heroworship, and personal loyalty” (Sinfield, The Wilde Century 66). He goes into detail and
states that the boy-love writer often yearned to join his friend in schoolboy activities.
Male-bonding and homosocial affiliations that were potentially homoerotic were also
present in educational institutions, although there was a constant attempt at regulating and
6
See also appendix D of Hyde’s The Trials of Oscar Wilde. In addition,
www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/reviews/wilde.php
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combating the thriving unlawful same-sex liaisons. William Johnson Cory was expelled
from Eton in 1872 because of having an intense relationship with his classmates. He liked
watching soldiers and wrote the “Eton Boating Song.”
I cheer the games I cannot play;
As stands a crippled squire
To watch his master through the fray,
Uplifted by desire.
(quoted from Newsome 85-86)
Another example is a poem entitled “Philebus” written by a student named John Leslie
Barford:
Is it unnat’ral that I should joy
To join you in the heart of natural things
To run and swim and ride with you, my boy?
To feel the thrill that sweating effort brings?
To watch with envious love your limbs’ display?
(Smith, Love in Earnest 176)
“Beastliness,” as the erotic friendship amongst boys was termed, like what J. A Symonds
experienced as a young adolescent at Harrow, was combated:
Every boy of good looks had a female name, and was recognized either as a public
prostitute or as some bigger fellow’s bitch. Bitch was the word in common usage
to indicate a boy who yielded his person to a lover. The talk in the dormitories and
studies was incredibly obscene. Here and there one could not avoid seeing acts of
onanism, mutual masturbation, the sports of naked boys in bed together. There
was no refinement, no sentiment, no passion; nothing but animal lust in these
occurrences. (Richards 113)
In 1884 and again in 1885 the Rev J. Robertson, headmaster of Hailebury, sent a
confidential letter to parents urging them to caution their sons against partaking in impure
solicitations. Effete gender performance was also an issue. Certain acts and gestures
performed by students had an erotic appeal. Thus, Rev. J. Robertson also endeavored in
7
See also Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, pp. 280-292; Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp.85-98.
55
suppressing the use of female nicknames among the students and female impersonation as
well (Richards 111). Students’ female impersonations were an indication of their sexual
practice. Their performance transcended traditional gender roles, thereby questioning the
norm. Thus, it became a priority to restrain the same-sex schoolboy subculture, which was
thriving, especially when the Wilde trials had exposed the problem to the general public.
Immediate actions were taken in cases of suspicion, boys were automatically dismissed
without any hesitation when caught, and even more attention was given to surveillance.
Male friendships were under surveillance, everything was suspicious. An eye was kept on
unmarried teachers and the chambers of young boys were monitored. By 1900 many
leading public schools prohibited the association of their male students. Thus, resulting
from the trials, the secretive same-sex relationships were even more likely to be
threatened. There was anxiety over “suspicions of impropriety” (Richards 113)
everywhere.
However, some compassion towards homosexuals was also shown. In the article
mentioned earlier Stead had thought Wilde’s behaviour “unnatural for a normal person,”
but “natural” for an “abnormal person” (Foldy 127). Foldy states that “by describing
sexual relations between people of the same-sex as both ‘unnatural’ and ‘abnormal,’ Stead
had, whether consciously or not, appropriated a pair of ideologically-loaded terms from
the professional discourses of the natural, medical, and social-sciences, and employed
them as the criteria for assessing Wilde’s moral fitness”( Foldy 130). Stead was defining
normality in psychosocial terms and in terms of “adaptness” to a particular environment.
Wilde’s “maladaptation” (Foldy 131) was regarded in terms of sickness. In stating that
Wilde’s behaviour was “natural for an abnormal person” Stead was assessing Wilde’s
character in pathological terms. In many aspects Wilde’s abnormality was the condition of
moral insanity according to medico-psychiatric terms. This was a form of mental
derangement consisting of “morbid perversions of feelings, affections, and active powers”
which “coexisted” with good intellectual ability and manifested itself “as the indulgence
and gratification of every whim, caprice, and passion” (Foldy 131).
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The legal defense of moral insanity was suspicious in the eyes of the courts since
transgression was popularly seen as representing a deficiency in will. Stead’s description
of Wilde as “abnormal” and “morally insane” (Foldy 127) is a process of stigmatization
and marginalization which necessarily caused Wilde’s social death and was unavoidable
as the health of the fabric of society and its people had to be ensured.
Some may say that Stead’s description of Wilde’s behaviour can be understood in terms
of the ideals of the social purity movement, whose aim was to gain public acceptance of
an equal moral standard for men and women (Foldy 131). As has been mentioned before,
their goal was also to diminish vice and substitute it with Christian morals and beliefs.
Wilde was aware of the movement of social purity and abhorred it with all his heart. In
De Profundis, Wilde accused Queensberry of “pos[ing] as a champion of purity” and
upholding the thought that “in the present condition of the British public […] the surest
mode of becoming a heroic figure” was to preach morality and safeguard innocence. This
quote reveals more about the social and intellectual standards of Britain than about the
character of Queensberry (Wilde, De Profundis 69).
Overall, it has been observed that the cultural climate of Oscar Wilde’s trials was
homophobic and heterosexist. Reference has also been made to Nordau’s and Spencer’s
theories on degeneration, and to Nordau’s characterization of Wilde as abnormal. Now
that the repressive moral standards of the late-Victorian age have been discussed, the
Decadence movement which challenged the orthodox Victorian world: through its
idleness, fashion, performance, and effeminacy, also needs to be highlighted. Oscar
Wilde’s notoriously decadent Victorian novel The Picture of Dorian Gray contains rich
strategies of indirection for representing decadence with an emphatic and broad-based
concern for pleasure. Its compelling characters embody desire, evoking sensuality.
Decadent writings such as Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray were centrally concerned
with rescuing the body from asceticism, questioning piety and praising sensoriemotionalism. Before reviewing Wilde’s decadent works, this dissertation will examine
those supposedly effete and flamboyant men whose lives revolved around art, beauty, and
57
gender performance. The so called “dandies” were the “glimmer” (Baudelaire 29) of the
decadent movement and managed to inspire Wilde’s writings on many occasions.
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V. On Dandyism
To have a clearer understanding of dandyism, going back in time to the early dandyist
movement is indispensable. The first dandy was the Englishman George “Beau”
Brummell (1778-1840) whose life coincided with King George IV (1795-1820), the
bosom buddy of Brummell. Brummell was born a common man, but successfully
popularized dandyism in England, France, and in literature as well. His ascendancy was
due to his theatricality and an essay entitled On Dandyism and George Brummell (1843)
written by Barbey d’Aurevilly. Barbey believed that Brummell was unique and
impossible to emulate even though countless dandies imitated him. The complexity of the
root of dandyism is that dandies were historical people and literary heroes at the same
time, just like Beau Brummell, whose life has inspired literature, sartorial elegance, and
“outré behaviour” (Garelick 6). Brummell’s exquisite presence inspired the work of Lord
Byron’s novel Vivian Grey, written in 1826, and Bulwer-Lytton’s Pelham (1828). Pelham
managed to become the “hornbook of dandyism” (Garelick 6) and was implemented as a
manual to attain the essential characteristics of the dandy. Sometimes writers became
dandyist novelists, thus the “cycle” continued, life and literature merged. Du Dandysme et
de George Brummell was not just a biography, it was an “art-movement manifesto”
(Galrelick 9). Du Dandyism was the cornerstone for French decadents like Huysmans and
Baudelaire and later the British dandies of the Victorian era (Garelick 9).
“Dandyism is the assertion of the absolute modernity of Beauty” (Cohen, A. 181). The
dandy, a “self-proclaiming artist,” (Cohen, A. 181) was reintroduced in the late nineteenth
century. In “The Painter of Modern Life” Baudelaire wrote that:
Dandyism is the last glimmer of heroism amid decadence; like the sunset of a
dying star, it is glorious, without heat and full of melancholy. (Baudelaire 29)
The conscious artificiality and the persona of the dandy was a form of rebellion against
Victorian moral codes and mass-produced products. The dandy wished to turn his back to
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rigidity, paucity, and discipline, just as Huysmans’s Des Esseintes did by subjecting
himself to the world of luxury and splendor. The dandy wants to be non-reproducible,
“fixed in a perpetual now” (Garelick 5) that is outside of time, just like Wilde’s Dorian
Gray. Dorian battles time by living like an ageless object. “The dandy is never reducible
to a sum of money, nor is he posed in counterbalance with a woman. In a world of
universal equivalence, he is exchangeable with no one, remaining enclosed in a hermetic,
autoseductive circle of narcissism,” says Garelick (5).
Dandyism shared certain characteristics with Decadence, like the “worship of the
artificial,” (Garelick 3) elegance, grace, and the art of pose or in other word performance.
Long before the start of pop music and film stars, the dandy had made an art form of
“commodifying” personality (Garelick 3). Dandyism is itself a performance, the
performance of a highly stylized, painstakingly constructed self, a solipsistic social icon.
Both the dandyism of England and later the French manifestations of the movement
revered a self-created, carefully controlled man whose goal was to create an effect, bring
about an event, provoke reaction through the suppression of the natural, and articulate
desire, or as how Butler would say, instate gender via performance. Artful manipulation
of posture, social skill, manners, conversation, and dress were essential for the
aestheticization and the performance of the dandy (Garelick 3).
Wilde’s Dorian Gray similarly highlights that dandyism “is an attempt to assert the
absolute modernity of beauty” (Dorian Gray 150). Some of Wilde’s male figures also
successfully play the role of the dandy. Dorian, for example, is described to have one “of
those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but
whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses” (Dorian
Gray 70). Just as a dandy should be, Dorian, is the very “appearance of a new
personality” (Dorian Gray 17). His performance and grace are artful manipulations that
have quite an effect on people: “His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from
time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the
Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in everything that he did, and
tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only half-serious,
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fopperies” (Dorian Gray 150). Dorian is a revolutionized dandy of the late-Victorian era,
whose gender play emulates the graceful appearance of the female sex.
When Dandyism was reintroduced at the latest stage of the Decadent movement in the
final twenty years of the nineteenth century, it turned its attention from the “spectacle of
the self to the spectacle of the other,” (Garelick 3) which was the woman on stage
(exemplified by Wilde’s Salomé, as will be shown). Just like the aesthetes, the dandies
also wore their sexuality with drama. Both indulged in self-conscious gender play: the
dandy “in his sexually ambiguous social polish, the woman in her explicitly staged and
painted erotic charms” (Garelick 3). The dandy performed gender, thereby creating a
complex illusion of it. When the dandy and the woman are placed beside one another
these two figures cast a light on each other’s performances. When these two roles are
fused and melt into each other, an “androgynous star” is born (Garelick 3).
The dandy is not a typical human being, for performance constitutes his reality. He is a
different breed, masquerading in “pinkie rings” and effeminate attire, which provoked a
reaction that “ran against the grain of mainstream culture” (Garelick 4). Attire was the
superficial “expression” of his genius and perhaps even his sexual orientation. His refined
effeminate aesthetic tastes distinguished him from his contemporaries. The dandy’s
exquisite tastes created a separate context (Schwandt 96). He “out-classed” (Garelick 5)
the peers of his society, therefore he was not subject to the same rules and expectation as
the common middle-class. The dandies’ subversive performance reinterpreted the
psychological presuppositions of gender. Their performance destabilized and questioned
the position of the natural and artificial. This means that dandyism and also other forms of
effeminate behavior are transgressive strategies that were influenced by the female sex.
Their form of transgressive performance discontinued traditional gender expressions,
thereby disavowing claims of the innate nature of gender. It may be argued, based on
Butler’s premise that the dandies’ body ceased to be a passive surface upon which gender
meaning is inscribed and instead became a site for “denaturalized performance that
reveals the performative status” (Gender Trouble 146) of the emulated nature of the
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female sex. (The above will be demonstrated by shedding light on the dandified character
of Wilde’s Dorian, Lord Henry, and James’s Roderick.)
The dandy intruded on a space originally reserved for the woman. Paradoxically, women
may very well threaten the concept of dandyism because they are the ultimate
representations of reproduction, but at the same time they also complement dandyism for
women also “reveal the essential device behind dandyism, because their very existence
gives the lie to the dandy’s pose as a double-sex being” (Garelick 5). The woman only
serves the dandy as a “tabula rasa” onto which the dandy projects his own “mustings”
(Garelick 5). But in certain instances the woman may be also a rival as she endangers his
self-containment. Nonetheless, the dandy shows great interest for the female sex since
dandyism endeavors to incorporate into the masculine the gender performance of the
woman. Overall, the dandy’s purpose in life was to proclaim decadence, grace, and
effeminacy (which also characterized the aristocrats, with whom he was often linked,
accordingly), thereby scrutinizing late-Victorian middle-class values.
Dandies and decadents were both associated with effeminacy, immoral pleasures, and
idleness. Therefore, it is crucial to address the relationship of these terms and how they
are applicable to the dandies. According to Sinfield’s treatise, manliness, diligence and
morality were middle-class preoccupations. The powerful and dominant middle-class
“justified itself “by striving for purity, responsibility, associating the leisure class or
aristocrats with effeminate idleness and immorality” (Sinfield, The Wilde Century 65).
Even Thomas Carlyle noted the useless idleness of the aristocrats:
What of the Idle Aristocracy? Again and again, What shall we say of the Idle
Aristocracy, the Owners of the Soil of England; whose recognised function is that
of handsomely consuming the rents of England, shooting the partridges of
England, and as an agreeable amusement (if the purchase-money and other
conveniences serve), dilettante-ing in Parliament and Quarter-Sessions for
England? (Past and Present 122)
Based upon Sedgwick’s and Butler’s findings, addressed in the “Introduction,” it may be
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argued that Wilde and the dandies, in general, adopted the decadent idiosyncrasies of the
aristocrats in order to legalize their transgression, which undoubtedly produced an effect,
arousing desire in males, thus their performance may have even covertly signaled
illegitimate sexual passion. Wilde and the dandies conflated effeminacy with aristocracy,
which also denoted a shift in class identification. Wilde also placed art and aristocracy in
conjunction in order to oppose middle-class moral codes and conventionality, but also to
signify gender and sexual diversity. The ground of this association was the supposed
futility and immorality of both the aristocrat and the dandy. Wilde’s intention was to
make vice seem attractive and refined, which was a lethal blow to late- Victorian morality
and to their crusade against social impurity (Sinfield, Effemiancy 36).
Much of the unease with Wilde’s appearance and behaviour centered upon effeminacy.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary effeminacy is associated with the feminine
and softness and self-indulgence (http://www.askoxford.com). In the Victorian period
effeminacy in men was associated with laxity and weakness and was a way of
stigmatizing deviation from the normal ‘muscular’ Christian male. The effeminate man
was deemed abnormal, the feminine in the conservative and homophobic male aroused
anxiety and irritation that lead to the policing of his sexuality in order to keep it chaste
(Sinfield, The Wilde Century 65).
Exemption of work and idleness were other characteristics that defined the decadent
dandies. Unemployment and abstaining from work was a statement on their part. LateVictorian conservative middle-class society, however, associated immorality with
idleness, so much so that the middle-class males adopted purity in order to “oppose
effeminate philandering” (Sinfield, The Wilde Century 68). Effeminate men symbolized
everything that was immoral in the eyes of the prudish middle-class late-Victorian. Thus,
with regard to work and purity, the wealthy or those posing as wealthy had two options:
one was to comply and appear to look useful and moral, the other was to repudiate and
question middle-class morality and manliness by purposely exhibiting decadent idleness,
gender play, and effeminacy, in other words, being a dandy” (Sinfield, The Wilde Century
68). As the dandy was constructed in opposition to middle-class moral earnestness, he
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symbolized moral laxity and refinement in taste, and encapsulated everything that was in
contradiction to middle-class morals.
In Wilde’s works the dandy plays a salient role. He resurfaces secrets that are sexual in
nature, causing destruction in the domestic realm because the dandy is the “star of the
intrigues of concealment and of revelation” (Gagnier 61). Dorian Gray, for example, is
one exemplary model of this theory; his intrigues include murder, same-sex practices and
opium eating. Dorian’s lack of commitment to a social ideal culminates in his corrupt
acts, hedonistic lifestyle, and keen interest in art and theater. According to Gagnier: “The
late Victorian dandy in Wilde’s works and in his practice is the human equivalent of
aestheticism in art; he is the man removed from life, a living protest against vulgarity and
means-end living” (Gagnier 61). The Decadent movement “crystallized” (Gagnier 61)
certain features of dandyism. The definition of roles, spectacle, gender, performance, and
theatricality were essential. The English and French dandies just loved mondainites: the
theater, the court, and other public spheres. The typical dandy oftentimes went
“slumming” (Garelick 12) and was often seen with actresses, ballet girls, and even
prostitutes. It will be evident that James’s Roderick also behaves similarly. Thus, the
dandy reappeared in the Victorian era with the purpose of attacking the natural order of
things, and it was for this reason that he adored and admired artificial youth, immobility,
and languidness, The later decadent dandy, however, experienced these social encounters
in media spectacles, resulting in the “mechanized representation of the female body”
(Garelick 12), thereby revolutionizing dandyism.
It has been noted that the dandies purposefully repudiated and subverted middle-class
authority by displaying effeminacy and idleness consciously. Wilde took this to the
extreme. Jack and Algy in The Importance of Being Earnest, for instance, are feminine
men, who are idle and show indifference to moral conventions. They are solely
preoccupied with refuting and ridiculing moral conventions “It is awfully hard work
doing nothing” (Wilde, CW 46), Algernon cries, “However, I do not mind hard work
where there is no definite object of any kind” (Wilde, CW 46). Mabel Chiltern in An Ideal
Husband, is speaking tongue in cheek when she states that Lord Goring does not lead an
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idle life; “How can you say such a thing? Why, he rides in the Row at ten o’clock in the
morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a
day, and dines out every night of the season. You don’t call that leading an idle life, do
you?” (Wilde, CW 465). All this, of course, is a blatant satire of the middle-class work
ethic and morality. In addition, Lord Goring perfectly demonstrates subtle effete
refinement, frailty, and grace, just like a proper lady. He emulates the feminized,
embellished, and decorated idiosyncrasies of the aristocrats.
The idea that effeminacy denotes aristocracy started in the late eighteenth century, but by
the same token effeminacy was of course also correlated with the realm of the feminine
that was also suspicious for the middle-class conservative Victorian male (Sedgwick,
Between Men 179). In addition, effeminacy was also suspicious for the middle-class male
because it signified homoeroticism. It was assumed that the dandy is queer due to his
effeminate nature. Manliness was typically a middle-class preoccupation, which the
dandy despised and subverted with non-masculine exquisiteness (Sinfield, Wilde Century
36).
According to Patricia Behrendt, homoeroticism “characterizes” the dandies of the later
comedies, who must be reconsidered in relation to their literary prototypes in Wilde’s
oeuvre. The history of criticism recognizes the dandy’s pivotal role, but it has never really
confronted homosexual orientation in relation to the dandy figure. However, the
personality and seditious gender performance of the dandy has always excited speculation
about his sexual orientation. Behrendt further elaborates that:
Dandyism was a product of ennui, and by its very nature its appeal was bound to
be limited. Leaving aside the dandies’ total lack of commitment to any generous
social ideal, Brummel was noticeably cold toward women. This produced among
the dandies a faintly ridiculous anti-romantic pose, which coupled with their
extreme, fastidiousness over dress, caused many people to link the word dandy
with homosexuality. (Behrendt 121)
Wilde’s literature exemplifies a “critical dialogue between men- which reflect
homosexual desire through the sexual analogues apparent in the language” (Behrendt
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120). The dialogues that reflect a homosexuality in Wilde’s works are carried out by both
dandies and effeminate aesthetes as well. Their witty language, social outsider status, and
air of superiority imply a criticism of the society that alienated them for their eccentricity.
Importantly, Sinfield maintains that before the Wilde trials, the dandy’s refined persona
did not necessarily signal male homosexuality (Wilde Century 36), in fact, Ellen Moers
(334) highlights that the dandy was also a heterosexual philanderer. Despite their
supposed effeminacy, dandy heroes philander with the female sex, thus they cannot be
solely identified with same-sex practices. Moers is certainly right when she points out that
some of Wilde’s dandies show some signs of heterosexual passion. For example, Lord
Darlington, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, tries to persuade Lady Windermere to run away
with him. Lord Augustus, an effeminate dandy, has been married multiple times and is
infatuated with Mrs. Erlynne. However, for the dandy, same-sex passion is not ruled out
either! Heterosexual flirtation in Wilde’s plays and even in Dorian Gray may be a
technique that Wilde and, as we shall see, James also implemented in order to ward off
homosexual suspicion. Since the repudiation of middle-class purpose and purity were in
the forefront for the dandy, decadence, debauchery and homoeroticism may have been
things that the dandy indulged in. Therefore, for the dandy, same-sex passion was not
necessarily ruled out. Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband (1895) has been regarded as a
good candidate for homosexuality. He is greatly attached to Sir Robert Chiltern; even
though in most scenes of the play he flirts with Mabel Chiltern, he really is preoccupied
with his friend’s problems. Lord Goring’s reluctance to marry is a little suspicious to Lord
Goring’s father, Lord Caversham: “Damme, sir, it is your duty to get married […] You
can’t always be living for pleasure. Every man of position is married nowadays.
Bachelors are not fashionable any more. They are a damaged lot. Too much in known
about them” (Wilde, CW 502). Goring’s father’s wish for him to marry is a bourgeois
repudiation of the decadent indulgences of the dandy: “You must get a wife, sir. Look
where your friend Robert Chiltern has got by probity, hard work, and a sensible marriage
with a good woman” (Wilde, CW 506). This is definitely the reflection of middle- class
earnestness, although the statement is voiced by an aristocrat in the play. As we can see,
manly earnestness and purity are competing with effeminate and decadent performance
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and lifestyle. This competition is not resolved in the play, but Wilde, most certainly,
allows “dandiacal” values to stay invincible (Sinfield, Effeminacy 41).
Obviously, Wilde’s dandies are not in favour of heterosexual courtships and marriages.
In fact, in Wilde’s early plays like Vera: Or, The Nihilists (1880) and The Duchess of
Padua (1883), Wilde envisions the destructive nature of heterosexual love. The problem,
according to Wilde, is women’s “inability to employ reason to temper emotion” because
[their] thoughts are “mired” only in emotion, and the “exclusive world” of “bonding”
(Behrendt 120). Antithetically, men manage to reconcile and harmonize the relationship
between passion and reason, thereby achieving spiritual transcendence. Women’s
incapacity to reach spiritual transcendence is rooted in biological instincts, not necessarily
intellectual incompetence. Thus, the female sex is a weak companion, hence unequal,
limited, and unwanted - just like in James’s Roderick Hudson, “The Author of Beltraffio,”
“The Lesson of the Master,” and “The Aspern Papers,” and Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and
Past and Present, where they also endanger the harmonious quality of male-bonding and
in certain cases man’s spiritual development.
These detailed examples not only insinuate society’s preoccupation and insistence on
obligatory heterosexual marriage, but also that the bachelor is considered likely to be
queer. (Importantly, some of Wilde’s and James’s (latent) homosexuals are also
bachelors.) Norton’s research affirms this: he notes that of sixty- five men implicated in
“sodomitical” offences prosecuted at the Old Bailey from 1715 through 1760, a period
when the run of trial records is complete and fairly detailed, nearly two-thirds (63%) were
unmarried and had no connection with women. “Typically they lived alone in singleroom lodgings, or on the premises of their master if they were apprentices or servants”
(Norton 43). Norton refers to records from the eighteenth century, but as we have seen the
bias of correlating dandyism and effeminacy and aristocracy have been a long tradition.
Thus, it is hard to agree with Sinfield, who is convinced that Wilde’s Victorian audience
was unaware of Wilde’s references to homosexual passion, thereby presuming that he had
no dangers to face when alluding to homosexuality (Sinfield, Effeminacy 37).
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Overall, a very essential question is how to interpret the dandy’s performance and role.
For example, when Lady Windermere asks Lord Darlington why he talks so trivially
about life, he responds by stating, “[…] I think that life is far too important a thing ever to
talk seriously about it.” Here, Wilde exploits the meaning of the paradox, making it
impossible for the audience and reader to know in which “half” (Behrendt 122) of the
paradox lies the truth. Each half of the statement undermines the “truth” in the other,
causing the reader/audience to be entrapped. Since the parts cannot be reconciled, the
reader “shifts” his attention back and forth from “one half of the paradox to the other”
(Behrendt 122). This is all futile because, truly, the “meaning lies in the instability of the
activity itself” (Behrendt 122). Therefore, the meaning lies in the instability created by the
juxtaposition of the paradoxical ideas. This problem of uncertainty caused critics to come
to the realization that the dandy is quite a paradoxical figure and thus a mystery. Roditi
states that the “dandy does not necessarily express his own beliefs, if he entertains any.”
According to him, the social commentaries of the dandies are a reflection of Wilde’s
marketing and commercialization (Roditi 24). Roditi`s argument seems convincing. The
dandy’s realm is a world of its own which makes it hard for an outsider to unravel. The
dandies are in a private world in which they are given the opportunity to flirt and criticize
society. For this reason, the instability of the dandy, created by the juxtaposition of the
paradoxical ideas, distracts the readers from noticing the homosexual Eros that
characterizes the dandies of Wilde’s social comedies and other works, as well. Because
the dandy has “stepped from the private world into Wilde’s conventional late nineteenthcentury theatrical plots which revolve around heterosexual relationships and marriages,”
(Behrendt 123) the dandy may also be thought of as a philandering and flirting
heterosexual. However, flirting and the presence of heterosexual marriages in Wilde’s
plays (and also in James’s and Carlyle’s analyzed works) must not distract the reader
from noticing details that insinuate queerness. We must also not forget that when
heterosexual unions are presented, Wilde usually portrays them in a negative light.
Heterosexual conflicts in Wilde’s plays stem from the fact that women and men have
different expectations. Women are incapable to control their emotion, for this reason they
are unqualified to be good companions. Wilde’s dandies’ interest in women is only a
“self-centered game” (Behrendt 146), therefore not a genuine passion or desire. They
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simply use them and emulate them to perfect their effeminate poise and performance. For
example, Lord Darlington’s interest in Lady Windermere is just a game. As Behrendt
notes:
It is actually the presence of Cecil with his forthright repudiation of women and
his possessive status as Lord Darlington’s protégé that illuminates the homosexual
aspect of Lord Darlington’s character, an aspect easily made invisible for most
members of Wilde’s audience by Lord Darlington’s apparent interest in Lady
Windermere. (146)
Lord Darlington is the only social critic in the play who dares to reprimand women and
criticize marriage for the dandy’s experience and understanding is superior to the
knowledge and understanding of the other characters in Wilde’s works. Dandies search
for truth and shed light on fraudulence. Lord Darlington and Cecil also search for the
hidden truth concerning marriage, just like Lord Henry in Dorian Gray. At the end of the
play, the seemingly shallow Cecil and Lord Darlington are victorious as their insight into
the deceitful nature of heterosexual courtships comes true (Behrendt 147). Since the
repudiation of middle-class purpose and purity were in the forefront for the dandy,
undermining heterosexual unions, subverting conservatism and embracing homoeroticism
were necessary acts.
Overall, the negative representation of obligatory heterosexual marriage, the dandies’
emphatic concern for pleasure, and their effeminate exterior and performance establish a
subtle queer subtext. However, the problem of the dandy still remains since they attract
the female and the masculine sex at the same time. Even though same-sex passion may be
characteristic of the dandies, criticism has never really confronted the role of
homosexuality in relation to the dandy.
In the following sub-chapter decadence will be further unraveled as it is an essential
component of dandyism. In addition, some essential aspects of decadence will be
addressed, which will further our understanding of the flourishing late-Victorian
subculture.
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VI. On Decadence
The October 1886 publication of Anatole Baju’s review Le Decadent gives us an idea
about locating decadence in the 1880s and the 1890s. It was during this time interval that
Huysmans’s novel of secret vices entitled À rebours (1884), the “breviary of decadence,”
was published (Calloway 47). Often times Flaubert’s Salammbo (1862) is ignored even
though it depicted decadence as orientalism and theatricality, including themes of
diseased and unnatural sex (Garelick 5).
As Sedgwick mentions, homosexuality was experienced differently by the various
classes (Between Men 83) and even nations. There is a tendency, dating back to the
nineteenth century, which constructs the Orient as a safeguarded region where foreign
men could let loose and submit themselves to homoeroticism freely. The Orient (the Near
and Middle East) “seems still to suggest not only fecundity, but sexual promise” (Said
188). Boone notes that of all the regions of the Near East, Western writers most willingly
correlate ancient and modern Egypt with “the spreading ‘contagion’ of homosexuality”
(Boone 93). Interestingly, Egypt is considered to be a “classical region of all
abominations" (Burton 10: 194). The Orient, especially Egypt, appealed to literary figures
from Gerard de Nerval and Flaubert8 to Lawrence Durrell and André Gide (Boone 93).
Boone notes that nowhere else are the sexual politics of “colonial narrative so explicitly
thematized” (93) as in the voyages to the Near East recorded by Western authors and
travelers. It is often the pursuit of Eros that brought these men to the Orient during the
mid and late nineteenth century. “For such men, the geopolitical realities of the Arabic
Orient become a psychic screen on which to project fantasies of illicit sexuality and
unbridled excess,” (Boone 95) perversions and, as Said notes, "sexual experience
unobtainable in Europe,” in other words, “a different type of sexuality" ( Said 190). The
“sexual promise" that Said attributes to the Orient is for myriads of Western travelers tied
to male homosexual practice (Said 188). Boone mentions that “the number of gay and
8
Flaubert notes that the Orient has "such a bewildering chaos of colours [and sound] that [his] poor imagination is
dazzled as though by continuous fireworks" (Flaubert 79). Flaubert characterizes the exotic Egypt as a source of artistic
inspiration and sexual gratification.
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bisexual male writers and artists who have traveled through North Africa in pursuit of
sexual gratification is legion as well as legend: André Gide lost his virginity on the dunes
of Algeria in 1893 (where Oscar Wilde served as his procurer two years later), and E. M.
Forster on the beaches of Alexandria in 1916. Morocco has also served as a Mecca for the
gay and bisexual literati vacationing in North Africa” (Boone 90). Thus, it is not farfetched to state that the “sexual bounty” (Boone 90) and perceived perversity of the East
engendered a fascination with the homoerotic for the decadent men of late-Victorian
times, the reason being that unbridled, decadent homoerotic passion was dangerous to
experiment with in Victorian England for it was considered to be one of the gravest sins.
Victorian conservatism despised decadence for its infatuation with the perverse and
exotic, its theatricality, and laxity. Andrew Lang, a late-Victorian poet, literary critic, and
contributor to anthropology, similarly, undermined decadence, characterizing and
satirizing it as a violation of Victorian propriety: “’By kicking holes in his boots, crushing
in his hat and avoiding soap, any young man may achieve a comfortable degree of
sordidness, and then, if his verses are immaterial, and his life suicidal, he may regard
himself as a decadent indeed.’” Obviously, Lang mocks and trivializes what Decadents
regarded as essential in art: its autonomy and its laxity in subject (Beckson 32).
Importantly, Voltaire defined decadence much the same way, already in the eighteenth
century. In 1770 he wrote that decadence is the “ease with which we do things and the
sloth that prevents our doing them well, through a surfeit of beauty and a taste for the
bizarre […] we are in every way in a time of the most horrible decadence” (Beckson 32).
For Gautier, however, decadence is an aesthetic vision, not a moral, social, or an artistic
decline. He expresses his conception of art in the prologue of Mademoiselle de Maupin
(1835), in which he states that art cannot serve utilitarian interests like social progress
(Gautier 13-4). This opinion encompasses attitudes that the British were to call
“Aestheticism.”
The use of terminology concerning aestheticism and decadence in the nineteenth century
was not always clear. Confusion exists even today concerning these two terms because
decadence and aestheticism shared common aesthetic attitudes towards art, like l’art pour
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l’art, art having its own laws and creating art for its own sake. Gautier expounds this in
his preface: “Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless, everything useful is ugly, for
it expresses a need and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak
nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory” (Gautier 14). Similarly, Oscar
Wilde also advocated in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) that “all art is
quite useless” (6).
The decadent artist turns to art as his source of inspiration rather than to the outside
world, even sometimes crossing the boundaries from one art to the other, emphasizing
art’s artifice rather than its social or moral content. For example, Gautier entitled one of
his poems “Symphony in White Major” to depict a relationship of poetry, painting, and
music. Towards the end of the century, Wilde wrote the poems “Symphony in Yellow,”
“Symphony in White,” and “Nocturnes.” His aestheticism absorbed similar tendencies to
Gautier’s, like the subversive ideology that critiqued the bourgeois conception of art as
morally good (Gilman 45).
Dandyism similarly absorbed subversive ideologies that rebelled against conservatism.
Baudelaire’s vision of the dandy was also transgressive. His essay “Le Dandy” (1863)
turned away from traditional ideas. The duty of the dandy was to astonish others. For
Baudelaire dandyism was the “last burst of heroism in a period of decadence” (Baudelaire
29). Baudelarian dandyism shared several characteristics with the Decadent movement,
namely the worship of the artificial, elegance, grace, and the art of performance and pose.
Posing signifies assuming a certain attitude like posturing the body deliberately for effect,
in order to arouse desire, and for artistic purposes, undermining naturalness. Ed Cohen’s
definition is similar to Butler’s. He maintains that performance “foregrounds the
imbricated but usually concealed work of representation that (re)produces those mimetic
effects which are habitually disposed as ‘the real’” (Cohen, Posing 40). He further
mentions that Wilde’s performance “was a form of iteration that discloses the aesthetic
shapings of those symbolic positions which congealed in and as the always, already sexed
body” (Cohen, Posing 40).
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The image of the dandy in Wilde’s comedies, and also in his other works embodies this
decadent sensibility as well. In his “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”
he states that “the first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible […] The condition of
perfection is idleness […] To love oneself is the beginning a life-long romance” (Wilde,
CW 99). But most importantly, Wilde’s cult opposed “repression,” denouncing Victorian
moral conventions as a form of mutilation and embracing aesthetics and bodily
indulgences. Wilde as an opposer of this “repression,” (Calloway 34) denounced
Victorian moral conventions as a form of mutilation and embraced aesthetics and bodily
indulgences. The decadent writers’ creed was that taboos and conventions exist in order to
be violated. As we can see, decadence, like dandyism, is always radical in its opposition.
In “Pen, Pencil and Poison,” the life of a painter, convicted forger and a “subtle and secret
poisoner,” Wilde successfully reveals the painter’s artistic and intellectual dandiacal
character, the very essence of the aesthetic and decadent sensibility (which is a selfconscious, “precious and highly fastidious discrimination on both art and life” that was
developed in England in the 1880s and 90s) (Calloway 34). The dandiacal aesthetes of the
fin- de –siècle cultivated their decadent sensibilities (Calloway 34), perfecting their
effeminate pose of exquisiteness, thereby transcending traditional gender performance.
Their ambition was to direct all of their languid energy to developing and ameliorating the
cult of the aesthetic, which operated outside the dictates of conventions and morality and
repudiated the ordinary conceptions of taste (Calloway 38).
Beauty, aestheticism, and the art of fashion was similarly instilled in the ideologies of
the aesthetes, dandies and decadents, enshrining the basic principle of the Dandyism of
Aesthetic Response, which is the “ability to recognize beauty, and to respond to it with a
rare and refined passion [that] carries with it the implicit corollary that one possesses
inherently, a particular beauty of temperament and spirit” (Calloway 44). For Wilde, the
perfect aesthetes had “slim gilt souls” (Calloway 44) with an obsession for form and style
that aided them in displaying artistic connoisseurship and talent to discriminate with
subtlety. These were the central ideas of the English Decadent writers. Their aim was to
“fix the last fine shade, to fix it fleetingly; to be a disembodied voice and yet the voice of
a human soul; that is the ideal of decadence” (Calloway 44).
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The stereotypical image of the male aesthete is a lanky, long-haired man in velveteen
trousers, holding a flower. This image is taken right from George du Maurier’s Punch
cartoons. Scholars of aestheticism defy this image and insist on the aesthetic movement’s
important philosophical development in Ruskin’s and Pater’s work. Schaffer details that
the aesthetic fashion was only the frivolous part of the movement (Schaffer 39). But this
can be argued against. Even Beerbohm notes that costume and performance are in “the
highest degree expressive” (Beerbohm 13). Also, it was the aesthetic fashion that was the
focus of late-Victorian attention because it blatantly displayed the essence of the
movement. Fashion was the means by which seditious notions of gender could be
exhibited. It not only functioned as a criticism, but also as a form of art. In this section the
theoretical rationales for Aesthetic fashion will be discussed, focusing on Wilde and
Beerbohm, with an intention of denoting the essence of costume and its relation to
performance.
Gender concerns shaped the aestheticism and the philosophy of the decadents and the
dandies alike. It must be noted that dandyism, which also embraced effeminacy,
significantly penetrated the decadent and aesthetic movements, thus the issue of gender
concerns, like effeminacy and grace, are equally relevant when speaking about the
aesthetes and the dandies. (The overlapping of aestheticism, dandyism, and decadence
will also be conspicuous in the cases of Dorian, Lord Henry, Cyril Graham, Salomé,
Roderick, and Ambient).
The aesthetes of the Wilde circle were very fascinated by the dandies of the Brummell
era (through the writings of Max Beerbohm that traced the origins of his philosophy) and
his languid self-centredness and amoral “hot-house” (Schaffer 40) culture. The dandies of
the Brummell period had made an art of their lives, they adored effeminacy, which was
resistible for the aesthetes, having a salient effect on the aesthetic freedom that they
practiced. Beerbohm’s ingenious prose and essay entitled “Dandies and Dandies”, first
published in Vanity, a New York magazine, in 1895, highlights the spirit of dandyism. He
establishes the Dandy as a role model par excellence for the sensibility of the fin-de-
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siècle. He writes: “Le Dandysme était surtout l’art de la mise, une hereuse et audacieuse
dictature en fait de toilette et d’élégance extérieure” (Beerbohm 5). Bringing Brummell
back to life, Beerbohm writes: “Mr Brummell was indeed the utmost sense of the word,
an artist[…] In certain congruities of dark cloth , in the rigid perfection of his linen, in the
symmetry of his glove with his hand, lay the secret of Mr Brummell’s miracles […] his
supremacy in the art of costume, and for all he did to gain the recognition of costume as in
itself an art […] he is justly called the Father of Modern Costume” (Beerbohm 15). This
quote signifies a close correlation between the dandyism of effeminate dress and the cult
of aestheticism (as we will also see in Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson). Even after his
death, Brummell was revered and admired by aesthetes for his effeminate performance,
sensitivity, and decadent lifestyle (Schaffer 40).
As has been exemplified in the preceding chapters, the conservative middle class
establishment was extremely hostile both to gender ambiguity and a decadent life style
without work ethic and social responsibility (as it will also be seen in Rowland’s example
of Roderick Hudson and Carlyle’s monks and “Man of Letters”). It has been pointed out
how cross-dressing could even be regarded as a criminal offence. Behind this hostility
was not only a concern about clear-cut gender roles, but also a class issue: the dominant
bourgeoisie was opposed to the aristocracy, which, from mid-eighteenth century, had
been associated with stereotypes of sexual profligacy, conspicuous consumption, immoral
excess, and effeminacy. Oscar Wilde and his cult were not only despised for their
decadent lifestyle, but also for their effeminacy, not because they worked in fields
associated with women, but because they also implemented accessories from women’s
attire, which cultivated and perfected their womanly performance and poise. Throughout
the nineteenth century aesthetes permitted themselves to wear feminized dress. Their
costume reflected their privileged and advantaged class and uniquely ambiguous gender
identity. Effeminacy constituted the male aesthete’s effort to contend with the Victorian
women whose cultural domain they were invading and taking over (Schaffer 40).
The aesthete’s role was to beautify everyday life and to become feminized as much as
possible (see Dorian’s, Roderick’s, and Lord Henry’s example). They took over areas that
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were historically associated with femininity, for example, the decoration of homes and
bodies, thus they not only emulated the female gender via their behaviour, but also
invaded the women’s domestic realm, thereby also taking on their role. This trend
commenced in the 1860s when William Morris and Walter Crane popularized the Arts
and Crafts movement that admired Asian and medieval artifacts, but at the same time,
paradoxically, undermining homemade crafts made by women, like embroidered
tablecloths (Schaffer 41, Schwandt 98). The Arts and Crafts movement believed in the
virtue of handcrafted decorations and demanded that its followers dispose of petty arts
and crafts created by women and replace them with pedigreed objects. The Arts and
Crafts movement established a trend that would dominate Aestheticism. They both
claimed authority and power over fields traditionally associated with the female sex. The
relationship between aestheticism and women is by no means simple and unambiguous.
The aesthetes were trying to differentiate themselves from women, but at the same time
researching and writing on subjects associated with the female sex. They wished to
establish themselves as professional connoisseurs and show their superiority by the same
token. Many aesthetes had contempt for women, just like James’s Rowland and the
narrator in “The Aspern Papers”). Wilde, on the other hand, acknowledged the aesthetic
debt to the female sex (Schaffer 41). In Wilde’s case, connoisseurship involved exalting
women’s topics. This admiration for the female realm manifested itself in Wilde’s and his
fictional characters’ feminized spectacular attire and performance (as will be seen in Cyril
Graham’s, Dorian’s, and Lord Henry’s example).
As it has been said, the aesthetes, both in culture and literature, saw themselves as
reformists. To justify their effeminate behaviour the aesthetes created a visual image
associated with women that affirmed their domination and aesthetic taste for fashion.
They implemented and borrowed colours, fabrics, and accessories from the women’s
world, but “reformulated them in the language of scholarship, insisting that their clothes
were only readable by trained connoisseurs as their artistically assembled attire contained
valuable historical and aesthetic information” (Schaffer 42). In addition, the aesthetes’
fashion followed a dictum, created by Wilde, which declared that “one should either be a
work of art, or wear a work of art” (Schaffer 42). Dorian’s costumes certainly reflect this
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ideology. However, there was one problem: art was supposed to be timeless, unchanging,
and transcendent, while fashion was ephemeral and transitory. This made aesthetes feel
quite anxious. Thus, aesthetes made it their mission to reconnect dress with art and to
“ally the decoration of the body with museums, not modistes” (Schaffer 43). E. F.Benson
reflects upon the aesthetes’ mission to conquer timelessness by the realization of the
aesthetic look:
It became fashionable in cultured circles to be pensive and willowy. Indeed the
aesthetic cult of the eighties was largely derived from the pre-Raphaelites, ladies
drooped and were wilted, and clad themselves in Liberty fabrics (useful also for
the ties of similarly minded males) and let fall over their eyes a tangle of hair,
through which they miserably peered. Punch, week by week, was full of them, but
they were not an invention of the comic papers, and scarcely an exaggeration: they
actually existed in considerable numbers. (Benson 223-224)
Of course, we do not know how many men adopted this manner of dress. But the
caricatures, beauty guides, and fashion illustrations reformulated gender for the twentieth
century. Dress reform was associated with the Aesthetic movement so much so that the
Aesthetic movement of 1894 gave its name to the aesthete’s most vital accessory, which
was The Green Carnation. The green carnation represented the wearer’s interest in art,
aesthetics, effeminate performance, and decadence (Schaffer 43).
Wilde embraced aesthetic femininity on purpose. He challenged the stringent moralist
Victorians. His innovations lingered between women’s culture and men’s art theory. He
adopted the use of flowers and feathers, slightly bigger than what women would use. The
sunflower, lily, and peacock feather brought him even closer to the feminine realm of
fashion. Sunflowers, lilies, and peacock feathers repudiated masculine associations and
gender categorizations and at the same time also freed men from the strict laws of
masculinity. Wilde and his followers wore lilies, furs, and purple satin, insinuating that
men’s and women’s spheres may be melted. His embracement of femininity was a little
risky because of the dangers associated with rebelling against Victorian dress codes and
gender performance. Wilde’s excuse for dressing and acting in an effeminate manner was
to epater le bourgeois, thus art and an aristocratic image became “respectable” covers for
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the lifestyle and fashion of the aesthetes. By the 1890s gender-transgressive decadents
like Wilde and T.C Gotch made this aesthetic fashion a regular day wear with the
intention of challenging the public (Schaffer 45) .
Wilde’s fashion was not only aesthetically effeminate, but also antiquarian: he wore
classical breeches, cloaks, doublets, and wide-brimmed hats. Wilde’s and his fictional
characters’ use of satin, velvet, lavender, and blue were experimental. Wilde wrote series
of letters where he emphasized that men’s clothing has to be inconsistent with history and
without principle (Gilman 95). He modernized antiquarian fashion, which was quite
foreign for the Victorians. When he had his hair in lustrous curls, automatically the
viewer paralleled this with a women’s hairstyle, but Wilde called it a “Neronian coiffure,”
(Schaffer 49) thus correlating his hairstyle with classical knowledge and consciousness, in
order to defend his anomalous androgynous exterior. When he wore jewelry (amethyst
tiepins, jeweled pins) he said it was a “homage” paid to the eighteenth- century dandies.
One record shows that his costume included:
A dark blue sack coat, and knee breeches, black [silk] hose, low shoes with bright
buckles; coat lined with lavender satin, a frill of rich lace at the wrists and for tieends over a low turn-down collar, hair long and parted in the middle[…] a
circular cavalier cloak over the shoulder. (Ellmann 164)
This description definitely reflects female conventions of dress, including ‘feminine’
materials, like satin, silk and lace, and women’s colours: lavender and the flamboyant
colour purple. Apparently, when Wilde dressed up there was hardly any difference
between clothing and costume (Detmers 113), similarly to Dorian Gray. Clothing was the
means of dressing oneself up for a performance for the audience. Wilde was happy to see
that his attire was paralleled with theatrical costumes because for him this was a
recognition that with the help of effeminacy he successfully transformed and transcended
his gender.
Schaffer highlights that fashion became problematic for the aesthetes and “only Wilde
was able to enjoy fashion wholeheartedly, perhaps because Wilde’s alternative sexual
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activities already positioned him so far outside the traditional masculine role that he was
more interested in challenging than in conforming to the rules of Victorian masculine
property” (Schaffer 51). This statement is relevant as Wilde made a space in cultural
consciousness for a new form of gender identity and performance. If we place his attire
into antiquarian times and “feminine registers,” we witness that the realm of women,
which he invaded “apotheosiz[es] into art” (Schaffer 51-52). When strolling down the
street carrying a lily, Wilde was asked how he could have done this. Wilde simply
replied,” to have done it was nothing, but to make people think that one had done it was a
triumph” (Ellmann 135).
When we follow the major developments of Wilde’s tastes, we can see a particularly
important transitional period between 1883/84 and 1889, during which Wilde’s e aesthetic
theory was subjected to a great change, which was something more mysterious, darker
and more decadent. Ellmann, importantly mentions that Wilde’s transition, which was
mirrored in his interest in an immoral artistic sensibility, coincided with his growing
social status, which presented him with the opportunity to explore illicit pleasures, and
subject himself to keener immoral sensations (Ellmann 135-6). Huysmans’s Des Esseintes
was Wilde’s and other decadents’ exemplar “par excellence” (Ellmann 112) due to its
emphasis on the cultivation of the senses and for its superior regard for artifice over
nature and naturalness. Furthermore, Ellmann argues that Wilde reading Huysmans’s
perverse novel during his honeymoon also led to Wilde’s subsequent attraction to antinaturalism, indulgence, and to perverse homosexual practices. The psychological
influence of Huysmans’ work aroused Wilde to perfect “the dandyism of his senses,”
thereby fulfilling the role of the most decadent dandy (Ellmann 112).
Wilde thus began to proclaim the superiority of sensori-emotional values over morals.
Much of his preaching and theory had been adapted from Baudelaire, Gautier and some of
his other French decadent friends. His exposure to the French decadent movement gave
him the chance to meet multiple Parisian hommes de letters, including men like Catulle
Mendes, Rosicrucian, Josephin Peladan, and Baudelaire (Schaffer 43).
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Baudelaire was destined to remain an exemplary and notable figure because of his
“morbid sensitivity,” (Calloway 46) specifically his opium and hashish inspired
hallucinatory experiments. His most renowned work Les fleurs du mal (1857) and the
following meditation on De Quincey and opium eating, Les paradis artificiels, had a
compelling influence on the English Decadents of the nineties, who followed Baudelaire
in his search for perverted kinds of sensations and beauty (Calloway 46). In some aspects
Baudelaire popularized the refinement of the senses to the extent of perversity. Arthur
Symons, who made exceptionally good translations of Baudelaire, wrote that “ Baudelaire
brings every complication of taste, the exasperation of perfumes, the irritant of cruelty,
the very odours and colours of corruption to the creation of a sort of religion in which an
eternal mass is served before a veiled altar”(Holbrook 57). As will be seen, this quotation
perfectly reflects Wilde’s Dorian’s aesthetic interests and Salomé’s as well. Hence, this
sort of new religion can be identified in Wilde’s art, and is reflected in many of his works,
for example, in his essay entitled “The Decay of Lying,” which highlights a complex and
multiform type of beauty. In one of the dialogues of “The Decay of Lying” Wilde puts
forth his admiration for Les fleurs du mal:
and if we grow tired of an antique time, and desire to realize our own age in all its
weariness and sin, are there not books that can make us live more in one, single
hour than life can make us live in a score of shameful years? Close to your hand
lies a little volume, bound in some Nile-green skin that has been powdered with
gilded nenuphars and smoothed with hard ivory. It is the book that Gautier loved,
it is Baudelaire’s masterpiece. (Wilde, Intentions 47-48)
This quote not only reveals Wilde’s admiration of the decadent Baudelaire, but also his
flair for an aesthetic book design: the binding of his choice accentuated his exquisite taste.
The nenuphars, a kind of water lily, can be compared with Wilde’s exquisite cover of The
Picture of Dorian Gray (Calloway 47). Wilde’s aesthetics and refinement confronts us
with the precocious fin-de-siècle decadent sensibility: the symbolic and languidness. This
decadent sensibility may also be found in the French work À rebours (1884), whose main
character, Duc Jean de Floressas des Esseintes, is a feverish connoisseur of aesthetics.
This novel provoked anger and “stupefaction” (Calloway 47) since it is bizarre and
perverse in its embellished detail. Furthermore, it was regarded as the “breviary of
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decadence,” therefore it served as an essential text for the English aesthetes (Calloway
47). Many used it and researched it in detail, making the work a primer for their own art.
The majority of the late-Victorians associated homosexuality with the decadent and
aesthetic subcultures. Finer things of life, like art, music, and poetry, which the aesthetes
and dandies embraced, were considered as the realm of the feminine. The logical
corresponding belief that homosexuals are more feminine than heterosexuals was also
prevalent in late-Victorian culture. Manliness was celebrated as the proper inspiration and
normal condition by the late-Victorian conservative middle-class power structures and
establishments, meanwhile the Decadent movement protested by making art take a
feminine role (Sinfield, Wilde Century 87-8). From the aesthetes’ point of Mathew
Arnold’s phraseology “sweetness and light” versus “philistines and barbarians” could be
used to depict perfectly the two opposing views of the aesthetes and the moralist
Victorians on what art should be. “Philistines and barbarians,” naturally, depicting the
rigid moralist middle-class late-Victorians, whereas “sweetness and light” characterizing
sublime decadence (Sinfield, Wilde Century 88). Charles Kingsley, on the other hand
(who was introduced in a previous chapter as a propagandist of ‘muscular’ Christianity) in
a work entitled “Thoughts on Shelley and Byron (1853), accentuates that the age is
effeminate. He describes Shelley’s performance and exterior as “womanish,” in fact,
pitiful just like a female even when angry (Springhall 65). According to Kingsley, art
should be adventurous, not sensuous and soft. Evidently, writers refuted and rejected
effeminacy, but, in spite of this, a line of nineteenth century late-Victorian decadent
writers purposely cultivated effeteness and softness, often representing exquisite
sensations and experiences, including same-sex love. The cultivation of delicacy and
softness were greatly admired by the poet Rossetti, for example. Wilde also saw a
fantastic prospect in dissidence that encoded “aesthetic effeminacy” (Sinfield, Wilde
Century 89). He was enamored with Keats’s and Swinburne’s effeteness and decadence
(Sinfield, Wilde Century 89).
It has been pointed out that Max Nordau and his work entitled Degeneration (1893) had
also castigated effeminacy and decadence, reflecting middle-class conservative ethics.
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Decadence, he alleges, produces too great a number of individuals unfit for society. An
individual is problematic if he or she is unfit to adapt to society. From the Victorian
middle-class’ perspective degeneration is associated with effeminate performance,
idleness, immorality, aristocracy, and aestheticism, all the things that are encapsulated by
the term decadence. Nordau proposes a relationship between the genius and the morally
insane: according to him, degenerates are not always criminals, but often artists and
writers (Nordau 20, 56).
The crucial problem, again, is men becoming unmanly. In Wilde’s case, he was mainly
criticized for his effeminate performance and attire, which is attacked on the utilitarian
ground that the “proper function of adornment is to attract the opposite sex” (Sinfield,
Effeminacy 35). It was no surprise that Wilde’s flamboyant and eccentric costume
stimulated disapproval. Wilde’s effeminacy was paralleled with the femininity,
degenerateness and the useless activities of the aristocrats.
Sinfield states that the hostile feelings targeted towards aestheticism and decadence were
not “ill founded” (Sinfield, Wilde Century 72). Wilde and his circle succeeded in
developing a cultural centre that challenged the vigorous and industrious man by
advocating and practicing a type of laxity that put art, sensorial values and (homo)sexual
pleasures in the forefront (Sinfield, Wilde Century 72).
Wilde’s effeminate decadence and performance was also reflected on stage. His
theatricality was very mocking and haughty and this mentality was not tolerated by the
conservative late-Victorians, he was very cheeky even on stage. He often made gestures
towards the Decadent and Aesthetic movement in theatre and his daring staging turned
even the audience into an artifice. When Wilde requested his friend W. Graham
Robertson to wear a green flower to the opening of Lady Windermere’s Fan, he
convinced the audience to do the same. One cast member also wore the symbolic green
flower on stage (Garelick 145). When Robertson asked Wilde to explain his intention,
Wilde’s response was the following:
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[The public] likes to be annoyed. A young man on the stage will wear a green
carnation; people will stare at it and wonder. Then they will look round the house
and see every here and there more and more little specks of mystic green. “This
must be some secret symbol” they will say. “What on earth can it mean?”
(Garelick 145)
Wilde involving the audience in wearing a green carnation, the symbolic flower of
decadence, unwillingly forced them into a role performed by feminized dandiacal (gay)
men. This perfectly illustrates how Wilde expanded the realms of aestheticism and
decadence in an ingenious manner. He tried to erase the boundary between the stage and
the audience by creating a great spectacle. Once, Wilde wanted braziers of perfume
throughout the theater (Garelick 145). He managed to create clouds of perfume on stage,
substituting a stage curtain. Such innovative jests, humour, and theatricality not only
recalled decadence, but also orientalism on stage. He envisioned a multi-coloured stage
and flamboyant costumes for his characters. He planned the stage floor for Salomé to be
black to accentuate the “white feet of Salomé” (Behrendt 88). The sky was to be
constructed in an Art Nouveau fashion: turquoise blue with gilded strips of Japanese
matting. These decadent conceptions allowed the audience to get an inside glimpse into
the mysteries of decadence. As the audience inhaled the perfume and saw fragrant clouds,
they themselves became “scented” as they watched the fetishistic dancing feet of Salomé.
(Behrendt 88). Such actions deliberately allowed the audience to experience the
aestheticism and eroticism of the decadent playwright by which they became “purveyors”
(Garelick 148) of illicit desire as they gazed upon Herod and the other characters.
Overall, what is particular about Wilde’s decadence is that he “co-opted” (Garelick 152)
his audience to perform and guided them to enter the world of aesthetic and decadent
illicit desires that transformed the theater into a “decadent interior” (Garelick 152). Using
decadent trappings he exposed the audience to drama, propelling the audience to
contemplate their relationship to the desires depicted on stage. Wilde simply had them
enact his own aestheticized religion. Garelick affirms that “[Wilde] employs a classically
camp device in that it explodes the privatist interior of the dandy, to include everyoneonstage characters, offstage spectators, and even eventually, government officials-in a
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communal expression and performance of transgressive desire, formerly relegated to the
enclosed salons of the fin-de siècle literature” (Garelick 152).
Wilde like the decadent dandies celebrated an anarchic deviance, which manifested itself
in “running foul of the law” (Dollimore 33). This attitude was considered a stimulus for
thought and creation by his supporters. Wilde demonstrates that the terror that men and
women associate with pleasure cannot limit these “passions” and sensations. He states:
“there are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world
calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fiber of the body, as every cell of the brain,
seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the
freedom of their will” (Dorian Gray 210).
Wilde may have wanted to unveil the existence and pleasures of same-sex passion, but
by doing this, he certainly outlawed himself. The Daily Chronicle called Dorian Gray:
a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of
moral and spiritual putrefaction –a gloating study of the moral and physical
corruption of the flesh, fair and golden youth, which might be horrible, and
fascinating but for its effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its theatrical
cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophisings and the contaminating
trail of garish vulgarity, which is all over Mr. Wilde’s Waldour Street aestheticism
and obtrusively cheap scholarship. Dorian Gray defil[es] English society with the
moral pestilence […] (Beckson, Oscar Wilde: the critical heritage 73)
What aroused criticism was that Dorian’s only regret is that “unspeakable vice,”
“luxury” and “art” left “traces of premature age and loathsome sensualness on his pretty
face” the Daily Chronicle (30 June 1890 issue) states further (Beckson, Oscar Wilde: the
critical heritage 739). The critic of the chronicle disliked Dorian’s exterior (on the portrait)
as traces of “unspeakable vice” are reflected on his face. Even Punch describes Dorian as
“Ganymede-like” (Beckson, Oscar Wilde: the critical heritage 73). Wilde is notorious for
writing for marginal noblemen and perverts, says The Scots Observer (Beckson, Oscar
Wilde Encyclopedia 73-76). Especially after the trials Wilde was understood as a man
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who depicted the lives of persons with “sodomitical” tendencies. The Wilde trials
stimulated and created a nexus between effeminate performance, aestheticism, same-sex
passion, and decadence (Beckson, Oscar Wilde: the critical heritage 76). Thus, a potential
queer identity and decadence constituted around Wilde’s novel, Salomé, Poems, and “Mr
W.H.”
This image of the decadent queer was created when the aristocratic, effeminate, dandy
was discovered in same-sex practices. In the witness box Wilde answered the questions
with frivolity and moral laxity as he conveyed his idealism when giving his famous and
notorious speech in defense of the “love that dare not speak its name.” Based on public
perceptions, the decadent leisure class dandy was now the sodomite, the homosexual,
causing panic and anxiety. Similarly to Sedgwick, Beckson also states that the
homosexual “converged upon contemporary anxieties about public schools” (Beckson,
Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia 122). Society was all set to eradicate and put an end to such
practices. The Wilde trials just made homosexuality too conspicuous, therefore Wilde had
to be silenced because society could not tolerate such aberrant behaviour. British society
regarded Wilde as a “posing ________,” (the gap implying homosexuality), a moral and
intellectual corruption. The Daily Telegraph wrote:
Young men at the universities, silly women who lend an ear to any chatter which
is petulant and vivacious, novelists who have sought to imitate that style of
paradox and unreality, poets who have lisped the language of nerveless and
effeminate libertinage- these are the persons who should ponder with themselves
the doctrine and career of the man who has now to undergo the righteous sentence
of the law. (Hyde, Trials 11)
This quote reflects that it was not only the decadent Wilde that was tried, but the whole
body of ideas as well: decadence and all the things that it encapsulated, like aesthetics,
pleasure, subversive performance, effeminacy, and immorality. The Evening News wrote:
[Wilde] was one of the high priests of a school which attacks all the wholesome,
manly, simple ideals of English life, and sets up false gods of decadent culture and
intellectual debauchery. […] these abominable vices, which were the natural
9
Beckson’s Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia and Oscar Wilde: the critical heritage both contain Punch’s and Daily Chronicle’s book
reviews on Wilde’s Dorian Gray. Also, see Wilde’s Letters (pp. 263) for reviews from Punch.
85
outcome of his diseased intellectual condition, will be a salutary warning to the
unhealthy boys who posed as sharers of his culture. (Hyde, Trials 12)
To expurgate Wilde, the late-Victorians literally silenced him and totally eradicated what
he stood for and symbolized. Antithetically, this very injunction reproduced Wilde, and
put him into circulation along with his decadent queer image. The notoriety of Wilde
made it even harder to distinguish between artistic, aesthetic and queer tendencies, thus
the decadent dandified manner became the most plausible queer identity (Ellis 63). As
Ellis said, “the celebrity of Oscar Wilde and the universal publicity given to the facts of
the case by the newspapers may have brought conviction of their perversion to many
inverts who were before only vaguely conscious of their abnormality” (Ellis 63).
Wilde opened the possibility of seeing a connection between effeminacy, feminized
performance, and male homosexual desire that turned out to be a very dangerous
endeavor for Wilde, which eventually led to his demise. Wilde’s works were “doom
ridden” from the beginning: “If one point emerges clearly from so many of Wilde’s sharp
turns of phrase, it is his acute awareness that the dandified man of letters is likely to be
defeated by the puritanical attitudes of late- Victorian England that sought to transmogrify
many a forbidden pleasure into a form of monstrosity” (Bristow, Effeminate England 20).
Oscar Wilde, whose work centered on sensuous eroticism and decadent indulgence,
started a “passive protest against the self-sufficient” (Bristow, Effeminate England 20)
and stern Victorian ethic. Bristow is undoubtedly right when he argues that Wilde’s
decision to criticize and satirize the public’s gaze spelled and brought about his terrible
doom. The Scots Observer in 1890 claimed that Wilde was writing for outlawed
noblemen and the perverted lower class (a proof of class-antagonism which linked the
supposedly immoral aristocracy and the lower class to degeneracy). Wilde’s response to
these remarks were: “For if a work of art is rich, and vital, and complete, those who have
artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly that
aesthetics will see its moral lesson” (Bristow, Effeminate England 21).
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In summary, Wilde and the Decadent movement were the opposers of the repressive
nature of Victorian society. Wilde succeeded in causing a stir, as we can see in the above
remarks of critics. However, Wilde’s doom and subjection to scandal can be understood
more clearly in the light of the homoerotic subject matter which is instilled in his works.
The significance of the relationship between the artist’s personal sexuality and the artistic
expression is often times made by writers like Andre Gide, who noted that it is “the secret
depths of the flesh that prompts, inspires, and decides” (Behrendt 22). The significant
reflections of same-sex passion and eroticism in Wilde’s works (“The Portrait of Mr.
W.H,” Dorian Gray, Poems, and Salomé) will be addressed in the following chapters.
Behrendt notes that similarly to Gide, Wilde also emphasized the necessity of revealing
oneself in one’s work, stating that a true artist must reveal himself so perfectly in his
oeuvre that unless a biographer has something more valuable to give than insignificant
anecdotes, his labour is useless (Behrendt 22). So, if we follow Wilde’s statement about
artistic self-revelation, homoerotic content is sure to be found in his works. Being a
homosexual and an aesthete, Wilde, like his contemporary James, may have felt the need
to unveil his true sexual identity, which we will see in the upcoming chapter entitled
“Textual Interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Works.” In this upcoming chapter homoerotic
desire, homo-aesthetics, and homosocial affiliations will be analyzed in “The Portrait of
Mr. W. H” and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In addition, similarities between Wilde’s
mentioned works and James’s Roderick Hudson and short fiction will also be highlighted.
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Chapter II
Textual Interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Works
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I. Wilde’s Effete and Decadent Characters in “The Portrait of Mr. W.H” and
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde’s problematic masculine types, as has been mentioned before, were the effeminate
and decadent men, who subverted the whole essence of the image of the middle-class lateVictorian proper and traditional male. Wilde’s decadent characters at times resemble the
homosexual ideal of male beauty, despite the fact that they are often depicted as uncanny
philanderers. A smaller work that of Wilde’s, which includes a homophile subtext is “The
Portrait of Mr. W.H,” first published in 1889. Wilde’s short story is known to be the first
work that included a theme of pederasty and still managed to get published. Wilde was
sophisticated enough to manipulate his decadent homoerotic subtext with great care,
making his controversial themes palpable, yet still veiled (Reade 13).
“The Portrait of Mr. W. H” suggests a same-sex decadent subculture surrounding the
novella’s dandiacal aristocrat. This does not necessarily mean that Wilde envisaged a
distinctively queer identity on purpose, Mr. W.H is just better placed into a context with a
queer subculture rather than the context of the average conservative late- Victorian man.
In this novella Wilde’s narrator is shown a portrait by his friend Erskine. The portrait
purports to represent Willie Hughes, a boy actor in Shakespeare’s theatre and the
supposed addressee of Shakespeare’s romantic Sonnets. He “was about seventeen years of
age, and was of quite extraordinary personal beauty, though evidently somewhat
effeminate. Indeed, had it not been for the dress and the closely cropped hair, one would
have said that the face, with its dreamy wistful eyes and its delicate scarlet lips, was the
face of a girl” (Wilde, CW 1150-1). Obviously, Mr. W. H’s sexuality is ambiguous,
which creates the complex illusion of his feminine gender. He seems to have transcended
his masculine gender via the appropriation of effeminacy. Thus, Mr. W. H’s body, like the
dandy’s is the space for a new form of gender identity and even performance.
As it has been addressed in the previous sub-chapters, effeminacy and effeminate gender
performance were always suspicious for the middle-class conservative male as they were
an indication of homoerotic desire, especially in the 1890s (Symonds 107). Mr. W. H is
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lovely to look at just like Dorian Gray and James’s Roderick. Youthful feminine beauty is
the most important constituent of homoeroticism, as it is a boy’s or young man’s
prettiness and exquisite ambiguous gender performance that stimulates the erotically
charged gazes of men. Wilde is quite attentive in noting this. The narrator conspicuously
states that “Shakespeare promised Willie Hughes immortality in a form that appealed to
men’s eyes (Wilde, CW 1169). He later also mentions that Shakespeare “dwelt upon
Willie Hughes’ influence over his audience- the “‘gazers’” (Wilde, CW 1171). Dorian
just like Mr. W.H is also very keen on attracting such sexualized gazes. He knows that
once he loses his good looks and youth, he will not be subjected to the erotic gaze, he
would become superfluous and unloved, and in order to conserve his (sex) appeal and
youthful feminine beauty, he sells his soul to the devil.
“The Portrait of Mr. W. H” has been shown to Erskine by his friend Cyril Graham, to
whom it had appealed, evidently, for he too, was marvelous at performing Shakespearian
girl roles. Thus, Cyril Graham also succeeded in transcending his gender by means of his
poise, effeteness, and subversive performance. He, too, was thought to be handsome,
though “some saw mere prettiness: he was effeminate, I suppose in some things, though
he was a capital rider and a capital fencer” (Wilde, CW 1152). Furthermore, the narrator
notes that “he was the most splendid creature” and “nothing could exceed the grace of his
movements, the charm of his manner” (Wilde, CW 1153). Importantly, he was always
cast for the girls’ parts, which he performed “marvelously” and “it would be impossible to
describe the beauty, the delicacy, the refinement” (Wilde, CW 1153) of his performance.
It has been addressed that late-Victorians regarded the body to be a mirror of character,
including sexuality. Hence, effeminacy was read as a sign of homoerotic desire, especially
in the 1890s. John Addington Symonds writes in Sexual Inversion: “It is the common
belief that all subjects from inverted instinct carry their lusts written in their faces; that
they are pale, languid, scented, effeminate, painted, timid, oblique in expression”
(Symonds 107). This is exactly how Cyril Graham in “Mr. W. H” and Dorian are
depicted. Dorian’s cheeks are, similarly, “pallid” and his eyes are “leaden” (Dorian Gray
124) and Cyril Graham is depicted as very “languid” (Wilde, CW 1152).
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In the end it turns out that the portrait of Willie Hughes is a forgery – Cyril Graham has
made him up. The characters only strive to establish the existence of Willie Hughes, but it
is impossible. The idea of a queer decadent identity is too dangerous and fatal, the story
seems to say yet, “Mr. W.H” still aroused suspicions about Wilde’s decadent nature and
queerness in some quarters (Brown 36). The story suggests the character Cyril Graham’s
interest in discovering a homosexual identity, but also his skepticism about how that may
be done. The story concludes that it is an impossible endeavor, for the existence of Willie
Hughes cannot be substantiated. Indeed, identifying homosexuality may be doom ridden
as consequence of homophobia. Cyril Graham’s quest proves to be fatal. Disappointed by
the failure to convince his friend of his theory, he commits suicide. Thus, “Mr. W. H” not
only enacts the elusiveness of the quest for a queer identity (Brown 36), but also the
possibility of oppression of the homosexual identity initiated by conservative patriarchal
power structures. In a similar way, James’s “The Author of Beltraffio,” “the Lesson of the
Master,” and “The Aspern Papers” communicate that the homosexual identity does not
befit late-Victorian conservative society, and for this reason it is also oppressed either by
death (in “The Author of Beltraffio”) or by drastic censorship, and finally heterosexual
compulsion (in “The Aspern Papers” and “The Lesson of the Master”).
In 1893 Wilde embellished and enlarged this novella by adding more incidental and
blatant evidence, like quotations from the sonnets, historical investigations into boy
actors, and an explanation of the Dark Lady. Furthermore, as Julia Brown notes, worship
of intellectual beauty and “neo-Platonism” was incorporated, overall making the argument
more persuasive (38). With the addendums and corrections, Wilde shifted the story
towards the justification of same-sex passion. Wilde was fascinated with the homosexual
subculture, therefore more inclined to think like his narrator. However, the text still
suggests the nonexistence of Willie Hughes. “Mr. W.H” illustrates that we construct the
identities that we want according to our desires and fantasies and that we derive our
conjectures from aestheticism and art. We invest history with our own fantasies. The fake
portrait also suggests that the proof of sexual truth and gender transcendence lead to
death, brought on by the homophobic late-Victorian society, and that a homoerotic
portrait like the one in the novella must be forged in two senses, it must escape an
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authenticating identity that would allow the state to criminalize it. On the other hand,
unless such homoerotic love gains some recognition and pardon from the public, young
men like Cyril Graham will have to take their lives, and cease living as sinful and
indulging homosexuals.
Sin and indulgences are also a never ending theme in Wilde’s novel and novella, though
not all of them address the problem of homoerotic desire. When Dorian in The Picture of
Dorian Gray wishes to light a cigar, Basil tries to dissuade him, however, Lord Henry
insists on Dorian smoking a cigar. “A cigarette,” he remarks, “is a perfect pleasure. It is
exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied” (Dorian Gray 70). As soon as Lord Henry has
spoken these words, he assures Dorian Gray of the hedonism represented and signified by
the cigarette smoking man. “I represent to you, “he says, “all the sins you have never had
the courage to commit” (Dorian Gray 102). Here Lord Henry is educating the young
Dorian by acquainting him with decadence, the cigarette symbolizing forbidden sexual
pleasures. In James’s Roderick Hudson, Rowland, a moralist late-Victorian, educates
Roderick not on decadence, but Victorian morals, which Roderick lacks. Like Dorian,
Roderick has an insatiable appetite for keen sensations. Mary Garland, Roderick’s
fiancée, characterizes Roderick as a young man who is “corrupted” and infers from
“[Roderick’s] appearance that [he] had become a gilded profligate” (Roderick Hudson
104). Roderick has in fact a “Venetian watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent
Roman intaglio” on his finger (RH 104), a sign of his flair for aestheticism and softness.
In addition, it appears as though he exalts and admires exotic artifacts. Indeed, Roderick
does not conform to the strict moral standards of conservative late-Victorian society. He
consorts with prostitutes, immerses himself in night life and even wants to break his
engagement as he falls in love with someone else, a femme fatale named Christina Light.
Decadence in Wilde’s novel also goes further by flaunting forbidden experiences and
proclaiming the superiority of artifice and sensori-emotional values to nature with the
intent of provocation. Dorian’s object in life is to fully engross himself in art and submit
to pleasure:
It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be the
true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his search for sensations
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that would be at once new and delightful, and possess that element of strangeness
that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that
he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences,
and then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his intellectual
curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a
real ardour of temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain modern
psychologists, is often a condition of it. (152)
Both Roderick and Dorian call attention to the sensatory and the sensual in order to
oppose society’s confines. However, this provocation has its negative effects and proves
fatal in both novels. Traditional late-Victorian society was so rigid that it had zero
tolerance towards anomalous acts of behavior and oppressed men partaking in these acts.
This oppression is symbolized by death in both Wilde’s and James’s texts.
Homosexuality is not blatantly spelt out in either authors’ works, for that would have
been socially lethal, thus subterfuge was implemented in various degrees. James tends to
be more cautious in Roderick Hudson than in his shorter fiction. Both Wilde and James
are not only cautious, but also cautionary or advisory by representing homosexuality and
decadence as fatal to the lives of their heroes.
Homo-aestheticism
Wilde’s decadent discourses, which address homosexuality, similarly to James’s works,
also explore the subjective consequences of homoeroticism. Homoerotic desire is
represented as a vexed idea in most of Wilde’s works, taking several forms. Sometimes it
is represented as virtual physicality, for example in “Mr. WH” and sometimes
homoeroticism is mediated homo-aesthetically through works of art. The narrator of “Mr.
W.H” confirms the essence of homo-aestheticism in Shakespeare’s works:
Mr. W. H’s physical beauty was such that it became the very cornerstone of
Shakespeare’s art, the very source of his inspiration, the very incarnation of
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Shakespeare’s dreams? The art of which Shakespeare talks in the Sonnets is not
the art of the Sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him slight and secret
things-it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding; and to whom
Shakespeare said:
Thou art my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance. (Wilde, CW 1156)
“The Portrait of Mr. W.H,” The Picture of Dorian Gray, Roderick Hudson, and the
analyzed Jamesian short fiction all dramatize an attraction to homoeroticism. Same-sex
passion is portrayed in a sphere of art and leisure in which male friendships assume
primary emotional importance and in which traditional male values are abjured in favour
of the aesthetic. However, at the same time the fear of the terrible consequences of this
illegitimate love is prevalent in the works of art. Hence, these works explore the basis of
homoerotic poetics, the connections between “transgressive desire” and the “transgressive
aesthetic,” as Johnathan Dollimore explains in Sexual Dissidence (29). Wilde’s
“transgressive aesthetic subverted the dominant categories of subjectivity which kept
desire in subjection and subverted the essentialist categories of identity which kept
morality in place” (Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence 68). However, importantly, morality is
always reinforced in homo-aestheticism as a result of the domination of late-Victorian
homophobia and ethics. The visual depictions of same-sex eroticism, for example in
Dorian Gray, allude to the problem of homosexuality and reinstate obligatory
heterosexuality, prescribed by the late-Victorian conservative power structures. Basil’s
portrait underscores the very Victorian moral codes that it attempts to conceal. Basil hides
and censors his homosexuality as a result of his homosexual panic.
In a close reading of Dorian Gray we see that the novel revolves around secret vices of
homoeroticism and decadent desires. However, same-sex passion is continuously closeted
in the novel due to paranoia and fear. The portrait never leaves the confines of a house, it
is always in hiding. Basil Hallward, the painter and admirer of Dorian Gray, explains that
he has not exhibited Dorian’s portrait because “[he has] put too much of [himself] into it”
(Dorian Gray 9), or in other words his painting is the symbolic “displacement of the
erotic onto the aesthetic” (Cohen, Writing Gone Wilde 78). The portrait celebrates the
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beauty of the male sex only visually as it strictly excludes physical intimacy, thus moving
within the boundaries of late-Victorian mores. Clandestinely, Basil’s portrait reflects a
delight in the male body and the admiration for same-sex passion. Basil reaffirms that
“[he has] grown to love secrecy” (Dorian Gray 10). Basil’s secret is reflected in the
portrait depicting Dorian. He states:
I know that as I worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal
my secret. I grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that
I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I
resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. (Dorian Gray 149)
It is Dorian’s presence that generates Basil’s illicit passion and emotions. He resolves this
crisis by taking recourse to art. Basil thus translates his homoeroticism into aestheticism.
After finishing the portrait, the painter is directly confronted with his secret that has
grown out of his homosocial, but potentially homoerotic affiliations with Dorian, and
which eventually transpired onto the portrait. Yet still Basil is nervous over describing
and acknowledging his own homoerotic desire since it reveals too much of his soul and
psyche, as of consequence he feels threatened by the potential oppressive sanctions of
conservative society against degenerates. Thus, his self-deception is linked to the
homophobia he has internalized. Similarly, as we will see in the chapter on James,
Rowland’s unacknowledged (homo)sexual desires are projected onto art. His repressed
and secret homoerotic desire is revealed in his admiration for male nude statues.
Significantly, Basil is not a dandy, nor is he feminine and neither is James’s Rowland,
the devoted patron of Roderick in Roderick Hudson. Basil, like Rowland, manifests the
pre-Wildean conception of the artist: a paranoid latent homosexual, who represses and
sublimates his homoeroticism into art, but at the same time, is passionately attracted to the
company of epicene and attractive young men. It must be noted that in James’s and
Wilde’s late-Victorian selected works, there is an “indistinguishablity” between
homosociality and homosexuality. As Sedgwick also notes, paradoxically, homosexual
panic drives men into homosocial desire due to the “self ignorance” enforced by the
manipulative mechanism of late-Victorian power structures (Sedgwick, The Beast in the
Closet 159). This is how male homoerotic desire is "bound up" in male friendship,
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entitlement, and mentorship (Sedgwick, Between Men 1), just like in the cases of
Rowland and Basil.
Both Basil and Rowland must convince themselves that their homosocial affiliations are
not homoerotically charged. Basil’s excuse is that firstly, Dorian is his “motive in art,”
(Dorian Gray 18) and secondly that Dorian is in need of some positive and moral
influence. Disavowing his ‘sinful’ passion, Basil, like Rowland, is keen on placing his
friend on the right path, begging him to lead a moral life. Such disavowal and repression
convincingly reflect the homosexual panic of the time.
(New England/ late-Victorian) Morals
Basil’s conscience, like Rowland’s is subjected to late-Victorian conservative moral
standards. Since they are deeply rooted in Victorian moral principle they have internalised
the sexual norms and anxieties of the period. Their homophobia compels them to
sublimate their repressed homosexual energy towards the social, spiritual, and aesthetic
components of their lives.
Basil’s and Rowland’s environments, just like Thomas Carlyle’s, as will be noted, are
woman-free, where they sublimate their (homos)sexual drives into productive work,
thereby leading a harmonious life of contemplation and industriousness. Basil leads the
life of an ascetic male, just like Rowland, or Carlyle’s “Man of Letters” and monks
thereby, regulating his innate male sexual energy. The regulation of (homo)sexual
energies is an important focal point for late-Victorian society, for the formation of
Victorian masculinity was along such lines of self-regulation. Basil, similarly to Rowland,
lives by the standards of this society and turns (homo)sexualized male energy to the
production of art. This is the reason why for Basil male homogeneous society becomes
attractive, since it is a distanced locus, where the same-sex passion that Dorian arouses in
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him, via the production of art, is channeled into chaste male homoerotic affection. It
seems that for Basil, just like for Rowland and Carlyle’s monks and ‘Man of Letters,’
(homo)erotic fluid energy empowers his masculinity; however, at the same time Basil is
also aware that this energy could be dangerous, for when his homoerotic desire is not
sublimated he may turn into something that he himself has learned to classify as unclean
and diseased. Thus, for Basil, Rowland, and Carlyle’s monks alike the psyche is their
steam engine that moderates the flow of their homosexual energy and transfers it to
productive purposes, like the creation of art, connoisseurship, and mentorship. For this
reason Basil’s morality is a virtue of necessity that conserves his exalted aims. Overall,
both Basil and Rowland channel their libidinal energy into exalted moral aims that
conform to the late-Victorian moral dogmas outlined in the first chapter.
Basil is an industrious painter, who fully gives himself over to his art. He completely
engrosses himself in his work. His integrity is reflected in the fact that he “paint[s] away
with [a] marvelous bold touch of his, that [has] the true refinement and perfect delicacy
that in art, at any rate, comes only from strength” (Dorian Gray 8). Basil carries his work
out with strength and seriousness. Similarly, Rowland, like Basil, takes art and
mentorship very seriously, with much dedication. Basil becomes absolutely absorbed in
the depiction of Dorian. Upon his first encounter with Dorian, it dawns on Basil that his
homoerotic desire may be channeled into something creative and aesthetic:
I turned halfway round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes
met I felt I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew I
had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating,
that if I allowed it to do so it would absorb my whole nature, my very art itself
[…] Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my
life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and
exquisite sorrows. (Dorian Gray 13)
Basil’s wording suggests that he has apprehensions about giving himself over to sexual
perversion. Therefore, it may be argued that the incentive behind the channeling of
homoerotic passion is not only one’s appreciation for work and its product, but also
homophobia, the fear and panic that a conservative and morally ‘upright’ late-Victorian
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latent homosexual may suffer from. Basil lucidly recalls his panic the moment that he
acquaints Dorian, who successfully charms Basil and kindles his homoeroticism:
I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian
Gray. Then--but I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell
me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that
fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and
turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of
cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape. (Dorian Gray 13-4)
Basil’s conscience dictates that the passion that Dorian has kindled in him is immoral, so
his first impulse is to escape in order to avoid the moral conflict, however, he is stopped
by Lady Brandon, so Basil remains in the company of Dorian, thereby realizing that his
illegitimate desire may be transferred into creating something aesthetic. Thus, as Lord
Henry notes, as a result of his late-Victorian conservative “principles” and “common
sense,” Basil puts “everything” in his art which is “charming” (Dorian Gray 68).
Basil successfully sublimates his homoerotic passion, stimulated by his muse, Dorian.
When Basil “looked at the gracious and comely form he had skillfully mirrored in his art,
a smile of pleasure passed across his face […]” (Dorian Gray 4). Lord Henry also takes
notice of this:” It is your best work, Basil, the best you have ever done” (8). Of course, it
is his best, since Basil has “put too much of [himself] into it” (8), meaning, he channeled
his homoerotic desire right onto the painting. Unlike Basil, Lord Henry, Dorian’s mentor
on decadence, represents leisure-class hedonism. Contrary to Basil, Lord Henry channels
his homoerotic desire into educating Dorian on decadence and is gratified once he
succeeds in possessing Dorian’s mind in lieu of his body.
Rowland of Roderick Hudson is similarly a man of the arts, a “genius, half finished”
(RH 53). However, he is not an artist, but rather a connoisseur, just like Lord Henry. His
“need for expression remains” (RH 53). Since Rowland, similarly to Lord Henry, cannot
sublimate his energies into creating art like Basil, he contents himself with the admiration
of art, rendering moral and aesthetic judgments of Roderick’s actions and acting as an
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exemplary role model/patron, thereby, providing a standard of taste and moral
uprightness, even in the domain of art for his new artist friend, Roderick. Thus, Rowland
sublimates his homoeroticism into appreciating and evaluating art, similarly to Lord
Henry, who would rather be a critic, for he is “too fond of reading books to care to write
them” (Dorian Gray 52). Thus, Rowland and Lord Henry alike are art admirers and
connoisseurs, who channel their homoerotic passion by rendering aesthetic judgments and
influencing their admired youth for the better/worse.
However, Rowland, Roderick’s advisor and mentor lacks one of Lord Henry’s assets,
which is, importantly, charm. Lord Henry literally charms Dorian with his dandified
exterior and effeminate performance. The narrator makes mention of the fact that Dorian
“could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. There was
something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white,
flower-like hands, even had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and
seemed to have a language of their own […]” (28). In this passage, the gaze is reversed,
from being the object of the eroticized gaze of Basil and Lord Henry to Dorian being the
gazer. His appraisal of Lord Henry’s person not only reveals the aristocrat to be a typical
aesthete, who turns his outward appearance into a performance, but also indicates a
reciprocal homosexual longing on Dorian’s part, insinuated by his fascination with the
seductive “low, languid voice” (a charming voice being a typical ingredient of seduction
narratives), his “graceful” body (again a typical feature normally attributed to women),
the “white, flower-like hands” so reminiscent of a woman, which seem to speak “a
language of their own” – indicating homosexual passion, which cannot be verbalized, but
can only be revealed covertly. Lord Henry’s feminized poise and pose “disclosed to him
[Dorian] life’s mystery,” which successfully “altered him” (29). Although nowhere in the
passage is homosexual passion explicitly named, the narration only hints at a “curious”
charming, which is sexual in nature.
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Decadence and Homo-aestheticism
It is Dorian who contributes to the novel what Wilde was proposing, thanks to Lord
Henry’s example and instruction on the subjects of aesthetics and leisure-insouciance.
Dorian successfully merges art and leisure. It is Dorian who states that “the canons of
good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential
to it” (Dorian Gray 142). Lord Henry also highlights that “Life has been [Dorian’s] art.
[He has] set [him]self to music. [His] days are [his] sonnets” (Dorian Gray 217). Dorian
was the “type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the
grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the world” (Dorian Gray 129). It
is evident that Dorian is the follower of the Decadent and the Aesthetic movements, for
his refined effeminate aesthetic tastes distinguished him from his contemporaries,
similarly to James’s Roderick Hudson. The parallels of the description of James’s
protagonist, Roderick, are certainly noteworthy, especially considering the hostility that
Jamesian works imbue towards decadence. Similarly to Dorian, Roderick’s life has also
been his art. His life also revolves around aesthetics, for he has a great “relish” for
exquisite “accessories” (RH 64). Art penetrates every single aspect of Roderick’s
character. The artful manipulation of his speech is “florid” and “sonorous,” and in
“conversation he [is] a colourist” (RH 65). Roderick reiterates Lord Henry’s and Dorian’s
dictums when he states that the “senses” must be “free to roam” and some things in life
must not be denied that “feed the imagination” (RH 192). Furthermore, James’s narrator
also notes that Roderick is “one of the newer lights of the Roman art world,” who is
“passionately fond of art” (RH 145-46). Roderick, similarly to Dorian, immerses himself
in scholarly work. His “preference for the pleasures of study,” (RH 139) specifically
cultural studies, which he conducts in Rome signifies that Roderick completely immerses
himself in aestheticism, just like Dorian, he combines the culture of the scholar with art
and leisure. In Florence “Roderick seemed to have won back […] his preference for the
pleasures of study” (RH 139) and “passed a fortnight looking at pictures and exploring for
out of the way fragments of fresco and carving” (RH 139). Thus, Roderick’s
“appreciation” (RH 139) for art and aestheticism is just as adamant as Dorian’s. Like
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Roderick, Dorian seeks to make himself perfect by worshipping “beauty” (149). Dorian
also seems to be a follower of the Arts and Crafts movement that exalted luxurious,
antique, and exotic art. His Renaissance tapestries, olive-satin curtains (Dorian Gray
109), and luxuriously cushioned couch (Dorian Gray 111) mirror his new-born feeling for
luxury (Dorian Gray 105) and artistry. Dorian’s admiration of artifacts and jewels are not
the only things that are indications of his fascination for aestheticism, but also his
dandified dress and performance:
On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume ball as
Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered with five hundred and
sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years, and, indeed, may be said never to
have left him. He would often spend a whole day settling and resettling in their
cases the various stones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl
that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wire like line of silver, the
pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery
scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame-red cinnamon-stones, orange and
violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He
loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the
broken rainbow of the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of
extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille roche
that was the envy of all the connoisseurs. (Dorian Gray 156)
Dorian and Roderick both invade the realm of women, which they apotheosize into art.
This description of Dorian definitely reflects female conventions of dress, his attire and
flair for jewels may be placed into feminine registers. Similarly to Wilde, when Dorian
dresses up there is hardly any difference between clothing and costume. For a dandy,
clothing was the means of dressing oneself up for a performance for the audience.
Similarly to Wilde and the dandies, Dorian’s dress may be paralleled with embellished
theatrical costumes, thus with the help of effeminacy Dorian not only attract the
homoerotic gazes of men, but also successfully transforms and transcends his gender.
Dorian is manipulated by Lord Henry to take on hedonism. However, arguably his
troubles do not arise from the hedonistic life he leads, but from his sentiments, his sense
of right and wrong, and want of self-control. His guilt, implanted in him owing to lateVictorian conservative ethics, panic, and homophobia, is projected onto the painting,
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preventing the guilt from showing on his body. Even though Dorian rejects the moral
teachings of Basil, he has a conscience. Dorian remains sensitive to the conservative
moral codes of his time and is doomed at the end of the novel because he remains under
the sway of the moral principles sanctioned by society. The moment that Dorian realizes
his queer identity “there [is] a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook
the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling” (Dorian Gray 28). Dorian’s confrontation
with the “secret” of his “life” (28) scares him, causing him to panic, as a result of his
homophobia. Owing to the conservative late-Victorian constrictions, Dorian, an active
homosexual, is deemed to be sinful and degenerate.
Dorian also entertains “fashionable young men of his own rank who were his chief
companions” and “astound[s] the country by the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of
his mode of life” (Dorian Gray 162). In chapter eleven, Dorian is closely correlated with
Huysmans’s debauched protagonist in À rebours, a reference which indirectly indicates
his homosexual identity. Like Huysmans’s protagonist Dorian is also charged with
ruining the lives and reputation of multiple women and corrupting youthful men. Thus,
Dorian is depicted as bisexual, signifying his sexual excess. As has been established in
earlier chapters, heterosexual philandering is not necessarily ruled out for decadent
dandies, however, Dorian’s heterosexual revelries may simply serve the purpose of
directing attention away from his homosexuality. The narrator notes that “eternal youth,
infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins-he was to have all
these things” (Dorian Gray 123). Wilde thus introduces the theme of secrets and “wild
sins,” referencing homosexual indulgences.
Another abominable vice to late-Victorian moralists that fits Dorian’s picture perfectly is
masturbation. It is written that his sins “mar his beauty, and eat away its grace. They
would defile it, make it shameful” (Dorian Gray 119). The self-polluting act of
masturbation was described exactly in the same way in Victorian pamphlets and scientific
publications: “the face loses its frank and manly expression” as a consequence of
masturbation, notes Alex Comfort in his research on sex and its social context (85). In
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addition, it was believed that the “true joys” of youth are lost when indulging in such acts
and that men take on negative attributes such as cowardliness, sloth, and shame (Comfort
85). Basil is flabbergasted when he hears of the rumors about Dorian because:
sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed. People
talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a
vice, it shows itself in the lines of the mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the molding
of his hands even. (Dorian Gray 149)
But such signs are not apparent on Dorian. These symptoms are projected onto the
painting, of course. It is the evidence that “bears the burden of his shame” (Dorian Gray
123). Comfort further emphasizes that persons succumbing to masturbation become:
sullen, silent, and indisposed to converse at all; but if they do enter into
conversation, they reveal delusions of a suspicious or obscure nature. They believe
themselves subjected to strange influences, especially in the night, and sometimes
that unnatural offences are practiced upon them. Their minds seem to dwell much
on such disgusting subjects […] the body is usually much emaciated,
notwithstanding they eat well. (Comfort 85)
The portrait of Dorian similarly bears the signs of “wild sins.” The cheeks of Dorian’s
portrait are “hollow” and “flaccid” and “yellow crow’s feet creep round the fading eyes,”
in addition his mouth is “drooped,” his throat is “wrinkled” and his body is “twisted”
(Dorian Gray 142). Dorian’s image is thus transfigured, bearing the signs of corporal
pleasures. Its aging and disfigurement, as a result of moral degeneracy, insinuate male
same-sex passion. Significantly, the mutilation of the picture and its figure is in
accordance with the dominant codes of society which excluded homosexuality as
intolerable.
The passages which were mentioned above are not the only sections in the novel in
which same-sex passion is further addressed. It is quite intriguing how Lord Henry is
fascinated with Basil’s admiration of Dorian: “how strange it was! He remembered
something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analyzed
it? Was it not Buonarroti who had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet sequence?
But in our own century it was strange” (Dorian Gray 102). Without a doubt, Wilde poses
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the question quite insidiously to the audience. Lord Henry here is fantasizing about a
novel of sensorial values, the mysterious yellow book, which he gives to Dorian to read
later in the novel. Furthermore, Lord Henry’s references to antiquarian philosophy on
same-sex love, which Wilde himself used at his trials, endeavor to justify homosexuality.
Via such subtleties, The Picture of Dorian Gray certainly induces a queer image in our
minds.
Same-sex passion is almost on the verge of being articulated in the novel. Homoerotic
passion is significant since it is the most hedonistic indulgence of the decadent and
debauched leisurely dandies, but it is the one vice that could not be explicitly described in
a Victorian novel. Neil Barlett in Who was that Man even says: “In the course of his
[Dorian’s] evil career he is proved guilty of adultery, debauchery, luxury, greed, vanity,
murder, and opium addiction. Only one of his vices is hidden, only one sin cannot be
named” (Barlett 93-94). It is noteworthy that The Picture of Dorian Gray addresses
deviant concerns while never explicitly violating the expected norms for heterosexuality.
Wilde encodes signs of same sex desire tacitly. This novel, an aesthetic representation of
the male form foregrounds representation with an eroticized milieu, inscribing the “male
body within circuits of male desire” (Cohen, Writing 76). Let us examine how this
opposition works.
Dorian Gray is built up around three major characters, who are introduced right at the
beginning of the novel: Lord Henry Wotton, Basil Hallward, and Dorian Gray. They all
subvert the typical late-Victorian standard of the male role and male sexuality. All three
are liberated from the responsibilities and activities that took the time and consumed the
energy of the standard late-Victorian male. They go about and mingle with ease in the
realm of aesthetics, which they determine and define for themselves. In spite of being
members of this decadent subculture, they continue using conventional clichés and a
language that is not necessarily particular in form, meaning their language does not
represent their interesting non-conservative involvements (Cohen, Writing 76). Although,
this dissertation will prove otherwise especially when, shedding light on Basil’s emotive
language and Lord Henry’s subversive remarks to Dorian on heterosexual relationships,
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decadence, art, and life in general. However, it is a fact that these characters have to create
new discursive strategies in order to express their homoerotic feelings more liberally
which, of course, cannot be voiced blatantly in their dominant culture. Ed Cohen claims
that by “producing these strategies” the novel unveils its moral and aesthetic interests
(Cohen, Writing 76). He further mentions that “by projecting the revelation, growth, and
demise of Dorian’s ‘personality’ onto an aesthetic consideration of artistic creation, Wilde
demonstrates how the psychosexual development of an individual gives rise to the
‘double consciousness’ of a marginalized group “(Cohen, Writing 76). Dorian Gray is the
conjunction between Basil’s “visual embodiment” of his sexual desire and yearning for
Dorian and Lord Henry’s “verbal sublimation” of such passion. The discursive strategies
employed in James' novel Roderick Hudson in order to voice illegitimate feelings are, in
fact, surprisingly similar: Rowland’s homoeroticism is projected onto Roderick’s artistic
creations, thereby revealing his subconscious sexual desire for the young artist.
Thus, it may be argued that Dorian Gray- like Roderick Hudson - is an image, a “blank
space” onto which male sexual desire is projected from the very first moment he is
introduced in the novel to the very last moment that he dies. Wilde makes Dorian kill
himself in order to let Dorian unite and blend in with art. The characters, Basil and Lord
Henry, project their own representations onto Dorian: Dorian is the body onto whom Lord
Henry’s and Basil’s passions and desires are recorded. From the beginning of the novel,
Dorian is a “template of desire” (Cohen, Writing 79) that thematizes the connection
between the inspiration from Dorian’s personality and the actual aesthetic product. In
Roderick Hudson it is Roderick’s art and at times Roderick himself, as will be noted in the
later chapters, that act as “templates of desire.” Rowland, at times, projects his own
representations on either Roderick, in order to record his homoerotic passion, or onto
Roderick’s statuettes.
Dorian is the ideal beauty for Basil because he inspires a new manner and style in art.
Dorian’s presence and existence allow Basil to represent emotions and sensitivities that he
could not articulate through customary forms and methods. He says: “I see things
differently now. I think of them differently. I can recreate life in a way that was hidden
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from me before“(Dorian Gray 17). Dorian mesmerized Basil, first stimulating a physical
response and then a psychic one, and finally a verbal response. Since Basil is an artist, the
natural thing to do is to transform this magical and inspirational experience into a
representation. His fascination, as has been noted before, has an erotic connotation. He
says so himself, “We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again” (Wilde,
Dorian Gray 147). Dorian is “absolutely necessary” to Basil, he is “[his] art,” his
“medium” for art (Dorian Gray 16-7). By stressing Dorian's function as his muse and
inspiration, Basil legitimizes his feelings by making a reference to aesthetic ideals. In
Roderick Hudson Rowland is not an artist, only an art connoisseur, but he, too, seeks to
insert himself into the sculptor's artistic production. He wants to inspire Roderick’s
creations and control all aspects of the young sculptor’s art and artistry in order to
establish a close-knit and intimate relationship with Roderick.
Similarly, Rowland also legitimizes his strong ties to Roderick on the grounds of
mentorship and also art since Rowland is a “connoisseur” (RH 63). Rowland even
legitimizes his homosexuality on the grounds of aesthetic appreciation. He notes: “Your
statuette seems to me very good […] It has given me extreme pleasure” (RH 63).
Rowland wants to be Roderick’s protégé because he is not only overwhelmed by
Roderick’s handsomeness, but also his art: “Rowland took a fancy to [Roderick]” (RH 68)
not only to his “personal charm,” but to his “probable genius” too (RH 68).
Thus, painting/sculpture in both Roderick Hudson and The Picture of Dorian Gray are
repositories for an illegitimate sexuality. In Wilde’s and James’s novels and smaller
literary works, homoerotic passion is mediated homo- aesthetically through artistic
creations. The suppression of the sexual instinct is a condition of artistic practice, which is
“finer and higher” especially for homosexuals, who are atoning for their “proscribed
desires” (Freud 48, 267). Thus, Rowland’s and Basil’s sublimation of sexual desire is
transferred to the appreciation of the aesthetic.
Basil, similarly to Rowland and the authors in James’s “The Author of Beltraffio” and
“The Lesson of the Master” displaces the erotic onto the aesthetic since homoerotic desire
cannot be vocalized. However, portraits and writings decode the representation of the
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obscene. The portraits and texts act as “tableau[x]” (Cohen, Writing 77) for they record
transgressive desires, also satisfying the homosexual appetite of the artist/writer. In
Dorian Gray, the eroticized gaze of Basil gives him absolute sexual pleasure. “The
portrait provides the space within which, in contemporary psychoanalytic terminology,
the phallic activity of the gaze encroaches on the dominant linguistic unrepresentability of
male same-sex eroticism. Thus, the picture’s absent presence interrupts the novel’s overt
representational limits by introducing a visual, extraverbal component of male same-sex
desire” (Cohen, Writing 77).
Wilde similarly to James uses art as an expression of intimacy. Basil’s and Dorian’s
secret imbues itself in the picture with passion. Cohen goes into more depth and expounds
that this secret does not lie in the work of art itself, but is stimulated by Basil’s emotional
involvement with Dorian Gray (Cohen, Writing 77). Basil says so himself:
From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary
influence over me. I was dominated soul, brain, and power by you. You became to
me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like
an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of everyone to whom you
spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you.
When you were way from me you were still present in my art. (Dorian Gray 26768)
This quotation depicts the passionate emotional intensity of Basil. Wilde uses the
language traditionally employed for heterosexual love to depict Basil’s homoerotic love
for Dorian. When Wilde displaces Basil’s erotic passion onto a portrait, which Basil
insists on not exhibiting, this means to communicate that male homoerotic desire cannot
be made visible publicly as it is unacceptable. Nevertheless Basil’s work is a reference
point “for a mode of representation that admits the visible, erotic presence of the male
body” (Cohen, Writing 78).
Similarly, Roderick’s art studio contains busts and statuettes that deploy homoeroticism:
One was a colossal head of a negro tossed back, defiant […] Besides these there
were rough studies of the nude and two or three figures of a fanciful kind. The
most noticeable (and it had singular beauty) was a small modeled design […]
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evidently of Stephen Hudson. The young soldier lay sleeping eternally with his
hand on his sword […] (RH 72)
Here, too, homoerotic passion is displaced onto art: the depicted sculptures reference
Rowland’s invisible and unacceptable homoerotic passion for Roderick. James, like
Wilde, also uses art as an expression of intimacy. The erotic male statues generate a “light
of admiration in Rowland’s eyes” (RH 73). Overcome with delight, all that Rowland can
say is that they “seem to me very good” (RH 63). These nudes are the very tableaux that
reflect Rowland’s transgressive desire.
Homosexuality and Art and Mentorship in the Realm of the Homosocial
Homosociality in Dorian Gray is very conducive to art and mentorship, just like in
Carlyle’s writings, and James’s Roderick Hudson and short fiction. Significantly, Dorian
realizes his true queer nature because of the homoerotic charge of his same-sex
environment, moreover Lord Henry’s bad influence and mentorship, and Basil’s
emotional affiliation with the effete young man, which stimulated the production of the
portrait. However, a great distinction is made between Basil’s selfless and emotional
involvement with Dorian and Lord Henry’s ironic and educational/or rather corrupting
role. Basil has surrendered his whole self for the interest of Dorian, antithetically Lord
Henry is only reaping the fruits that Basil has sowed. Lord Henry first shows interest in
Dorian when Basil is recalling a story about their very first meeting with great passion. As
a decadent aesthete, Lord Henry derives his pleasure through “mediated representations,”
not directly, but by “separating one’s own soul” from “the passions of one’s friends”
(Dorian Gray 153).
Also, it is discernible that Lord Henry distances himself from his homoerotic passion by
performing cynically. Basil makes note of this: "I believe that you are really a very good
husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an
extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your
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cynicism is simply a pose" (Dorian Gray 11). Lord Henry is too resistant and timid to act
his passions out, instead he channels his homoerotic sexual energy into acting as Dorian’s
mentor on decadence, thus initiating and influencing him to live his true queer self. By
means of Dorian, Lord Henry vicariously lives the hedonistic life of the homosexual.
While Dorian transforms into a degenerate and morally crumbles away, Lord Henry
keenly adheres to the morals standards of his conservative society by being a good
husband. He steers himself away from homoerotic sexual pleasures, but at the same time
he is dissatisfied with his life, for like many other closeted homosexuals he submits to
society’s restrictions, in order to prevent himself from being persecuted. Basil notes this
when he says: “I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry” (11). Lord Henry’s
heterosexual identity is simply a pose. His life is a performance and a pose. Lord Henry
states so himself: “being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know”
(11). Lord Henry only gives a dandified and effete performance in homosocial circles,
outside of this circle he is an exemplary late-Victorian male, who lives in a ‘happy’
heterosexual marriage.
Wilde does not condone Lord Henry’s self-objectifying attitude, but favours Basil’s
intense and genuine love for Dorian, so much so that Basil creates a “spatialized tableau”
(Cohen, Writing 77, 79) that reflects his and Dorian’s desires and passion. Basil codes his
pleasures onto art, meanwhile Lord Henry keeps a pose and detaches himself from his
own passions. He never commits a wrong because he is outside of living reality, just like
Rowland.
Cohen makes an important observation by stating that Lord Henry’s
“discursive maneuver,” does not say one moral thing, it “collapses the physical plenitude
of bodily reality into abstract conceptualization,” therefore interrupting the “visual
inscription” of Basil’s painting and at the same time opening a space from which Dorian
Gray is born (Cohen, Writing 79).
Dorian’s birth and emergence is paralleled with Basil’s and Lord Henry’s duel for
Dorian’s love. Basil tries to keep himself from introducing Dorian to Lord Henry because
he fears that his secret (same-sex passion) may be revealed. He begs Lord Henry not to
take Dorian away from him because “he is the one person who gives [Basil’s] art
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whatever charm it possesses” (Dorian Gray 84). This quotation provides evidence of the
rivalry of Basil and Lord Henry for Dorian’s love.
Similarly, Rowland also fights battles to win Roderick’s love. He is jealous of Miss
Light, whom Roderick adores immensely. Rowland often has outbursts during which he
degrades Christina by calling her a “coquette.” Christina and Rowland compete for
Roderick. Rowland asks Christina to leave Roderick alone because an artist does not need
the “stimulus” of strong “passion,” “he is better without it” (RH 231), but Christina
cannot be deterred, she notes :”I have fought my own battles before and I have never lost
courage; and I don’t see why I should break down now” (RH 306). Rowland’s and Basil’s
reason for the rivalry is not vocalized, it is kept secret. However, in Wilde’s Dorian Gray
something is unveiled at Dorian’s last sitting. The scene takes place in Basil’s studio,
where the conflict plays itself out as a seduction. The reader can sense Lord Henry
endeavoring to seduce Dorian. He woos Dorian away from Basil’s loving gaze in order to
introduce him to a new symbolic order of passion and decadence that is “at the very heart
of the narrative” (Cohen, Writing 78-79).
Lord Henry responds to Dorian, criticizing Basil for not talking when painting. While
Basil makes the last amendments to the portrait, Lord Henry puts on his charm, once
again, and tries to seduce Dorian by contemplating on morality. Lord Henry, like James’s
Rowland, philosophizes on conventional mores, the only difference is that Lord Henry is
its opposer and Rowland is its advocate. Lord Henry notes:
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what
each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves nowadays. They have
forgotten the highest of all duties is the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course
they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their souls
starve and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really
had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, and the terror of God,
which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us. (158)
Lord Henry’s words open Dorian’s eyes and enlighten him on the moral conventionalities
and prejudices of their society. As has been noted, Lord Henry’s “low, musical voice”
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(Dorian Gray 25) charms Dorian and seduces him, just like how the sirens charm the men
at sea. Dorian is thus transfigured and changed completely, which the reader witnesses.
[Dorian] was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within
him […] the few words that Basil’s friend had said to him- words spoken by
chance, no doubt, and with willful paradox in them – had touched some secret
chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and
throbbing to curious pulses. (Dorian Gray 26)
Lord Henry speaks of sensual decadence resisting the limitations of society and aiding
self-development, hence having a cathartic effect on Dorian. Following this, Lord Henry
notes that “nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but
the soul” (Dorian Gray 28). Although Lord Henry only emphasizes sensual possibilities,
his influence is more than that. Lord Henry creates a new reality for Dorian, and Basil’s
canvas records this change. The competition between Lord Henry and Basil for Dorian
animates the surface of Basil’s canvas, thus causing Basil to create with an erotic charge.
As the erotic depiction of Dorian becomes the object of the erotic gazes of Basil and Lord
Henry, Dorian’s identity and conception of his very being is transformed- he is “revealed
to himself” (Brown 95). Thus, the portrait echoes the aesthetic image of Dorian and the
representations of homoerotic desire, the ultimate form of decadence.
Dorian’s transformation is due to Lord Henry’s verbal and Basil’s visual representations
(Brown 84). Dorian stimulates Lord Henry and Basil to new ways of expression by
modifying images through which Basil and Lord Henry can see themselves. Thus, “the
development of Dorian’s ‘perfect nature’ underscores the disjunction between male
homoerotic experience and the historical means of expressing it, so that his strategic
mediation between them enables desire to enter the novel” (Cohen, Writing 79).
Lord Henry continued his speech on decadence, while Basil is at work, develops
Dorian’s queer nature:
The body sins once and has done with sin, for action is a mode of purification.
Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul
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grows sick with longing for those things it has forbidden to itself with desire for
what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. (Dorian Gray 159)
We can conclude from this quote that temptation resisted gives rise to the image of a
desired and forbidden object. This representation mediates between the “active body” and
the “reflective mind,” which forbids those desires that the soul’s “monstrous laws” have
proscribed (Cohen, Writing 79). In other words the social representations of self-denial, as
Cohen puts it, divide the body into sources of indulgence/pleasure or sin. By denying self
indulgence and decadence, society inhibits the body from experiencing sensuality and
“circumscribes” feelings within moral codes (Cohen, Writing 79).
Dorian now sees his body as something separate from his soul, dividing his self-image
into two parts, one being Basil’s visual representation and the other being Lord Henry’s
verbal portrait. This transition manifests itself in physical experience: “As he thought of it
[his body deteriorating] a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made
each delicate fiber of his nature quiver” (Dorian Gray 167).
To prevent himself from aging, Dorian swaps the imaginary with the real, thus seeing
the disjunction between the image and his physical body as a form of envy:
How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will
always remain young. It will never be older than this particular day of June […] if
it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the
picture that was to grow old! For that –for that- I would give everything. Yes there
is nothing in the world I would not give! I would give my soul for that. (Dorian
Gray 168)
In verbalizing this, his body removed itself from the realm of time. Dorian gives his soul
for maintaining his physical beauty. Wilde makes the motive quite clear, which is that
Dorian fears that time will strip him of his beauty and youth, the very things that make
him the object of male desire:
’Yes’, he continued, ‘I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver faun.
You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first
wrinkle, I suppose I know now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever
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they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that.’” (Wilde,
Dorian Gray 168-69)
Describing Dorian’s identity, which is the product of aesthetic and erotic images, Wilde
problematizes homoerotic desire (Ericksen 117). His main characters meet each other at
the boundaries of heterosexual form, which they eventually reject, causing them to
articulate their male homoerotic desire and eroticism insidiously. Instead of voicing these
homoerotic desires bluntly Wilde posits multiple mysterious secrets, for example, Basil’s
“secret”, Dorian’s “secrets”, and Lord Henry’s words of wisdom on decadence and the
secrets of life. The secrets that Wilde displaces culminate in Dorian’s prayer for eternal
youth (Cohen, Writing 84). To maintain his identity as the object of another man’s desire,
he prays to exchange the temporality of his existence for the stasis of an erotically
charged visual representation. As far as Basil’s secret is concerned -‘his worship is far
more romantic than a man usually gives a friend’ (www.authorama.com/the-picture-ofdorian-gray-7.html). 10
When Dorian says “I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel that […]”
(Dorian Gray 36) he communicates that his new self-image signifies a passion for
homoerotic desire. Moreover, the narrator also comments on Dorian’s new self image:
when [Dorian] saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A
look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time (Dorian
Gray 33).
Critics might argue that the homoerotic desire is denied and is irrelevant because of the
introduction of the feminine into the world of the novel. However, it may also be argued
that it is the female sex that is denied just like in James’s Roderick Hudson, “The Aspern
Papers,” “The Lesson of the Master,” and Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and Past and Present,
for the women violate homosocial affiliations. In Dorian Gray, Sybil recognizes that she
is expendable, as her last name “Vane” symbolizes, so she takes her own life. Dorian’s
attraction to Sybil Vane desecrates the male-identified world in which Basil and Lord
10
This edition of Dorian Gray was purposely used, for it specifically contains the words “romance” and “romantic” unlike other
editions.
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Henry have helped Dorian to unveil his true queer self. However, Sibyl’s presence and
existence does not really interrupt anything because she only exists on-stage and in
drama, meaning in the realm of theatricality:
“Tonight she is Imogen,” [Dorian] answered, “and tomorrow she will be Juliet.”
“When is she Sibyl Vane?” [asks Lord Henry] “Never.” [answers Dorian] (Dorian
Gray 200)
When Dorian seals Sybil Vane’s lips with a kiss, off-stage, Sybil fails to ignite Dorian’s
passion because she is simply the on-stage lover of Dorian. Sybil does not succeed in
rendering the aesthetic expectations of Dorian. She is unable to sustain his interest
therefore Dorian abandons her, which also leads to Sybil Vane’s death. Their heterosexual
relationship simply serves the purpose of satisfying the prescribed expectations of lateVictorian society, namely heterosexual courtship and marriage, which is essential because
of Dorian’s paranoia of being accused as a homosexual. Thus, his heterosexual
compulsion may well have grown out of homosexual panic. When Dorian rejects her, he
symbolically rejects obligatory heterosexuality. Offstage, Dorian’s preference is for the
male sex and the passion of a voyeur who manages to distance himself from heterosexual
physical contact.
The Abomination of Heterosexual Courtship
Heterosexual courtships and marriages are not reflected in a positive light, just like in the
Jamesian and Carlylean texts selected for analysis, for they reflect the detested
heterosexual compulsions of the traditional late-Victorian era. Lord Henry notes to
Dorian:
If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched. Of course, you would
have treated her kindly. One can always be kind to people about whom one cares
nothing. But she would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent
to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes
dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband
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has to pay for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been
abject--which, of course, I would not have allowed--but I assure you that in any
case the whole thing would have been an absolute failure. (Dorian Gray 116)
“Indifferent” is an important word that Lord Henry uses. Obviously, Dorian is indifferent
to the opposite sex. Lord Henry also claims that marriage is a “social mistake,” which
clearly reflects his unorthodox views on obligatory heterosexual marriage. Antithetically,
Basil thinks otherwise. Basil is the type of latent and repressed homosexual who does not
wish to cause a stir. He is a mentor who resembles Rowland, for he too is sensitive to the
traditional late-Victorian virtues and mores. Basil wants to safeguard Dorian and prevent
his doom, therefore wishing to pressure him to abide late-Victorian compulsions, like
heterosexual marriage, and to marry a wholesome girl, just like Rowland. He states:
Don't pay any attention to him [Lord Henry], Dorian," said the painter. "I
understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love must be
marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must be fine and noble
[…] If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can
create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she
can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their
own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.
This marriage is quite right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods
made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete. (Dorian
Gray 96)
Basil says what an ideal and ‘muscular’ Christian would hold important. Obviously,
Basil believes, similarly to Rowland, that living a morally pure and virtuous life, which is
devoid of homosexual pleasure, serves one well. However, overall, this is not what
Wilde’s, James’s, and Carlyle’s works communicate. In the texts selected for analysis,
marriages are depicted very pejoratively and usually end on a negative note. Either the
husbands suffer and die, or the women. In Dorian Gray Dorian’s mother’s marriage also
goes raw and even ends tragically:
She [Margaret Devereux, Dorian’s mother] was an extraordinarily beautiful girl,
Margaret Devereux […] made all the men frantic by running away with a
penniless young fellow--a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or
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something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it happened
yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few months after the
marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said Kelso got some rascally
adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to
do it, paid him--and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The
thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time
afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she never
spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died, too, died within
a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that. What sort of boy is he? If he
is like his mother, he must be a good-looking chap." (42)
There is no such thing as a happy marriage even when there is love between the husband
and wife. Dorian Gray and the other works analyzed steer the audience away from the
very idea of marriage. As Lord Henry says, marriage and heterosexuality are just
“mediaeval emotions [that] are out of date” (Dorian Gray 93).
Dorian saves himself from committing something against his nature just in time. His
heterosexual marriage with Sybil would have been solely a cover that stemmed from
homosexual panic. As has been mentioned, Dorian’s passion is really for the male sex. It
is not a coincidence that Dorian notes Sybil’s utmost beauty when she is wearing male
clothes. Dorian states:
When she came on in her boy's clothes, she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a
moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered
hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a
hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She
had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio,
Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. (89)
Dorian notes that Sybil regarded him “merely as a person in a play” (Dorian Gray 65).
So, it is plausible that Sybil was aware of the fact that Dorian only considered marrying
her out of fear and panic.
After Dorian abandons Sybil, she instantaneously commits suicide. After going home,
Dorian finds that the portrait bears the first marks: “lines of cruelty around his mouth as
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clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing”
(Dorian Gray 240). He then realizes that the portrait holds the secret of his life, recording
his wanton secret vices and his closeted homosexuality. From now on the portrait acts as a
mirror that reflects Dorian’s conscience, which assimilates to late-Victorian conservative
mores. Thus, the portrait highlights the homophobic tendency of Dorian and his
conservative society. Once Dorian is confronted with his sins, his homosexual panic
causes him to experience psychological vulnerability to the social pressures of
homophobic blackmail. The portrait/mirror turns Dorian into a spectator of life,
specifically, the spectator of his own consciousness. In addition, upon Dorian’s death, the
restoration of the painting highlights society’s thoughts on how one is better off living in
the traditional conservative way rather than in a degenerate manner.
Closing Thoughts
The moment that Dorian notices the division between self-representation and self-image,
he turns into a degenerate and overly decadent young man. He transgresses into a world
of destruction and self-abuse. The grotesque condition of the portrait intimidates and
scares Dorian, so he yearns to liberate himself from the images that recorded his
destruction. Hence, Dorian murders his best friend who created the painting and finally
destroys the portrait. Dorian avenges himself and stabs the painting, a lethal act that
perfectly reflects his innate homophobia. As Dorian stabs the portrait that reveals his
secret, the complex configuration of the images, which also reflect his corruption, are
erased and Dorian breaks free. Dorian symbolically kills corruption and thus the portrait
is resurrected: “They found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as
they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty” (Dorian
Gray 253). By dying, Dorian escapes the hindrances that society imposed on him;
furthermore, he breaks free from the representations that Lord Henry and Basil have
projected onto his body (Ericksen 120). At the same time, Basil’s reputation is restored
as an artist, for he has always been good and compassionate, and thus transcends the
social context of his time.
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Overall, aesthetes and ‘degenerate’ writers like Wilde started to articulate the experience
of homoerotic desire. Since these men were writing for a conventional culture and society
that persecuted such embodiments, they were compelled to use subtle expressions. While
a pornographic work like Teleny explicitly describes homoerotic practices between men,
in a canonized work like Dorian Gray the mediations are a little more difficult to notice.
Wilde’s novel clearly displaces homoerotic desire and thematizes it through aesthetic
production, similarly to James. In Dorian Gray, Wilde defines male homoerotic passion
as unnamable, since Dorian’s uncontrollable drive for passion runs parallel with Britain’s
political demand that these drives be abolished from the public’s consciousness (Lane,
Framing Fears 938). Dorian Gray’s proximity between pleasure and crime is political
since many of the text’s pleasures hold the status of a crime. Dorian Gray embodies what
late-Victorian culture considered most civilized when repressed (indulgence) and most
abhorrent and degenerate when immoderate. As Lord Henry states, “civilization is not by
any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which, man can reach it.
One is by being cultured, and other by being corrupt” (Dorian Gray 232). It seems as
though corruption precedes and exceeds civilization’s limits, it is both integral and
extraneous to cultural laws (Lane, Framing Fears 938). In spite of the uproar that lateVictorian society caused concerning excessive drives, Wilde’s Dorian Gray demonstrates
that this angst and rigidity on society’s part cannot limit the passions and sensations in
men and women.
In the following sub-chapter this unnamable homoerotic passion will be analyzed in
Wilde’s Poems. It will be demonstrated how Wilde in these texts, too, implemented
subtleties in order to describe the illegitimate desire of homoeroticism. Furthermore, also
focusing on the homoerotic, fetishistic, and dandiacal content of Salomé, and depicting
how Wilde’s tragic play successfully merges the dandy with the female performer.
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II. Homoeroticism and Fetishism in Poems and Salomé
Many critics have developed complicated and intricate interpretations of the homosexual
and fetishistic content of Poems and Salomé, which may be correlated with this
dissertation’s analysis of homosexual and fetishistic references in Wilde’s texts.
It is evident that Wilde is frequently preoccupied with the relationships between the
body and spirit, eroticism and self-knowledge, and between homosexual desire and selfabsorbed intellectual exchange. In addition, it is also clearly noticeable that he
demonstrates an interest in the Classical image of Eros throughout his oeuvre. Early
religions associated Eros (who was significantly both female and male) with sexuality and
the life force, thus, Eros symbolized a very serious erotic passion and androgynous
gender. Wilde’s aesthetics and writings reveal that the focus of his work is the very
exploration of complex sexual themes and subversive gender performance brought into
correlation with the Classical meaning of Eros. Hence, the “spirit of Eros” (Behrendt 119)
marks Wilde’s examination of the mergence of male and female sexualities.
In “The Burden of Itys” Wilde alludes to and praises ancient Greek mythological deities
and figures like Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Salmacis who are either androgynous or
have homosexual inclinations:
On the clear river’s merge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis
Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth […]
(Wilde, CW 739)
Wilde’s choice of mythological figures is of essence, for they all have homoerotic
inclinations. When Narcissus sees his reflection in the pond for the first time in his life he
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falls in love with the beautiful boy he is looking at, not realizing it is himself. Moreover,
Hermaphroditos or Hermaphroditus, the child of Aphrodite and Hermes, is a minor deity
of bisexuality and effeminacy. He merged bodies with Salmacis, a water nymph,
becoming a creature of both sexes. Importantly, Hermaphroditus, had long been a symbol
of bisexuality or effeminacy, and was portrayed in Greco-Roman art as a female figure
with
male
genitals
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphroditus).
The
narrator’s
imaginary homoerotic gaze cruises over Narcisuss’ impeccable body, emphasizing his
aesthetic attributes, like his hair and eyes. The specific word usage like, “Wooing,” sexual
“excess” and “loth” passion is suggestive of an aberrant sexuality, which is homoerotic.
Another of Wilde’s erotic poems, “Wasted Days,” was first published in 1877 in
Kottabos, a Dublin University magazine. It is assumed that the original poem was
probably the author’s first writing on same-sex passion, for by 1881, in the collection of
Poems, Wilde had edited the “fair slim boy” into a “Lily-girl” (Behrendt 25). “Wasted
Days” displays the beauty of a “fair slim boy” whose “hair of gold” and “longing eyes”
that are like “bluest water” lure the reader’s admiration and sparks his interest. His “pale
cheeks whereon no kiss hath left its stain” and “white throat” is very much comparable
with Beltraffio’s son, Dolcino, who had an “innocent” “smile,” a “white” complexion,
and a “face of an angel.” The narrator similarly alludes to Dolcino’s “hair,” “eyes,”
“white face,” and innocence. Thus, Wilde’s and James’s narrators not only find
uncorrupted youth extraordinarily beautiful, but also insinuate that children are not
without desire and in fact are sexually aware. Hence, their sexed charm renders a screen
for the projection of homoerotic desire.
The conclusion to Wilde’s poem entitled “Helas” is an excellent example of the
articulateness and eloquence of a complex sexual theme, namely same-sex passion:
[…] with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romanceAnd must I lose a soul’s inheritance? (Wilde, CW 709)
Wilde probably placed “Helas” at the very beginning of Poems (1882) because it
foreshadowed the “sentiments conveyed in the poems which followed” (Behrendt 20).
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The homoerotic connotations that are pertaining to “the little rod” that “touched the honey
of romance” are quite erotically suggestive. The fact that Wilde’s poem is specifically
homoerotic rather than just erotic is quite blatant and relevant here. The very last lines of
“Helas” that have been quoted are based on the Book of Samuel, specifically the part
where Jonathan defied an order given by Saul not to eat before the battle. He says, “I did
but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo! I must die”
(http://skepticsannotatedbible.com, I Samuel 14:43). Wilde, as we can see, changes the
line slightly by adding the word “romance.” This addition is essential in our analysis
because it eroticizes the ambiance of the poem. Furthermore, knowing the history of
“Helas” makes one recognize the full homoerotic connotations beyond those which derive
from the knowledge about Wilde’s sexual orientation. This broader knowledge is based
on an acquaintance with myth, religion, and history that the reader must bring to the
poem. It must be added that Wilde encouraged the reader to experience art in terms of
personal knowledge and life-experience, something that he advocated in many of his
works, for example, “The Critic as Artist.” But the reader of the twenty-first century fails
to see that Wilde wanted his readers to be aware of the Classical allusions that he makes
in his work (Behrendt 20-21).
The biblical relationship of Jonathan and David is very intimate, which is even described
in the Book of Samuel as a type of love that involves the “passing the love of women”
(http://skepticsannotatedbible.com, 2 Samuel I:25-26). Alluding to Jonathan and David
was quite a typical nineteenth-century tool for representing same-sex love. Wilde
regarded the love between Jonathan and David as the epitome of the perfect and ideal love
between men when making his defense at the trials: “‘the love that dare not speak its
name’ in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was
between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy” (Hyde,
Trials 61).
Overall, there is no doubt that Wilde’s subtle references to the ‘love that dare not speak
its name’ require knowledge in Classical studies. Wilde’s camouflaged references to
same-sex passion are indicative of the need for secrecy. These allusions reveal Wilde to
be an artist who has to produce work under great restraint, compelling himself to
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implement innuendos to reveal his secret. Wilde was certainly aware of the expectations,
like obligatory heterosexuality, of the conservative late-Victorian society. Thus, he
consciously edited some of his works that may have been just too blatant. Importantly,
Wilde transformed the poem entitled “Wasted Days,” which concerns the story of a
beautiful young boy, as has been pointed out, into a poem called “Madonna Mia” which
“extols the idealized untouchable beauty” of a young female given the name “Lily-girl”
(Behrendt 25). Wilde apparently made these changes in order to please the heterosexual
audience and to satisfy middle-class mores. Interestingly, the title of the magazine
Kottabos has some significance considering the subject matter of the original poem
entitled “Wasted Days.” Kottabos is an ancient Greek game played solely by men that
involved kissing as part of the game. Clearly, the publishers of the magazine wanted to
classicize the magazine with a purpose. Those that had a greater understanding of the term
shared a “bond of mutual understanding” (Behrendt 26). Thus, most likely, Wilde edited
his poem in order to enlarge his audience and popularize his work and thought that his
subtle and classicist allusions would reach his intended audience anyway (Behrendt 25).
Although Wilde submitted to the mores of his time to please the heterosexual audience
and his heterosexist society, he made no secrets about depicting women and heterosexual
courtships depreciatively, similarly to his contemporaries like James and Carlyle. His
poem entitled “The Sphinx” highlights a negative criticism of women. The word sphinx
comes from a Greek verb, meaning "to strangle." This name may derive from the fact that
the hunters for a pride of lions are the lionesses, and kill their prey by strangulation, biting
the throat of the prey and holding them down until they die. Also, in Greek mythology the
sphinx is a demon of destruction and bad luck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx).
Obviously, the title of Wilde’s poem is not a coincidence. Wilde, intentionally wanted to
evoke a beastly image of the female sex, just like Carlyle, who also compared women to a
demon of destruction reflected in the image of the sphinx in Past and Present. Wilde
molds the Sphinx into a prostitute, who not only consorts with the biblical degenerates of
Ammon, but is also a diabolical sorceress:
How subtle-secret is your smile! Did you
love none then? Nay, I know
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Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with
you beside the Nile!
You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame:
you made the horned god your own:
You stood behind him on his throne: you called
him by his secret name.
You whispered monstrous oracles into the
caverns of his ears:
With blood of goats and blood of steers you
taught him monstrous miracles. (Wilde, CW 836-7)
The narrator also unveils her predator like nature, depicting how she preys on the men,
who are unaware of her vicious character:
Couch by his side upon the grass and set your
white teeth in his throat
And when you hear his dying note lash your
long flanks of polished brass […]
And toy with him in amorous jests, and when
he turns, and snarls, and gnaws,
O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise
him with your agate breasts! (Wilde, CW 840)
The narrator directly addresses the Sphinx at the end of the poem, cursing her for
awakening his sexual desire. Just like James’s Rowland and Carlyle’s religious monks, as
will be shown, the speaker of “The Sphinx” overcomes his arousal and sexual yearning,
and represses it, and channels it into leading a religious life:
You make me creed a barren sham, you wake foul
dreams of sensual life,
And Atys with his blood- stained knife were better
than the thing I am
False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx
old Charon, leaning on his oar,
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Waits for my coin. Go thou before, and leave
me to my crucifix, (Wilde, CW 842)
Wilde’s last poem of Poems (1881) specifically emphasizes the conflict between man
and woman about their different views on the nature of love. Unlike the dominant
discourses of Victorian society, Wilde reveals a pessimistic attitude by depicting the dark
side of heterosexual partnerships and relationships. Wilde’s narrator of the last poem also
sees heterosexual relationships to be an unsuccessful affair. Marriage is described as:
The travail of the hungry years,
A father grey with grief and tears,
A mother weeping all alone. (Wilde, CW 860)
The speaker solely sees wisdom in sublimating sexual passion into religious pursuits, an
ideology, which may be perfectly linked with Carlyle’s and Rowland’s doctrine on
leading a life dedicated to spirituality (in a woman free environment) and the conservation
of male sexual energy. The narrator decides to worship the Creator and thus “builds
ladders to be nearer God” (Wilde, CW 860), a choice which clearly demonstrates the
exaltation of a religious and chaste life and the repudiation of heterosexual intimacy. This
rebellious denial of heterosexual relationships in Wilde’s texts – not only signifies
homoeroticism in certain cases, but also an aversion towards the constrictions and
limitations of late-Victorian patriarchal structures.
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Salomé
Wilde’s decadence was also individualistic in his plays since it generated disobedience
by incorporating a male’s gender performance with a female’s. The dandy is transfigured
when Oscar Wilde’s Salomé heralds the arrival of a new “camp personality” (Garelick 13)
that evolved from the merging of the dandy and the female performer. His images of
sexually androgynous figures represented new identity types in fin de siècle culture. Thus,
consequently Wilde’s decadent dandy metamorphosed into an “overtly gay figure,”
revolutionizing itself (Garelick 13).
Brian Reade, the author of Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature
from 1850 to 1900 states that references to, or hints at, homoerotic entanglements can be
found in Salomé and in The Picture of Dorian Gray (Reade 13). Salomé was written in a
decade when male homosexual identity and constituencies were first being formed in
European cultures. The whole play is suffused with homoeroticism that Wilde luxuriated
in the jeweled, orientalist prose of the French decadents he so admired. He announced his
reinterpretation and remake of their aesthetic and laid bare the relationship between
aestheticized fetishism and same-sex desire (Garelick 13).
Importantly, the Orient is alluded to in both Wilde’s tragedy and James’s “The Author of
Beltraffio.” It has been mentioned that the East was thought to be a utopian place where
one’s homosexuality could be unleashed, and consequently Orientals were thought to be
sexually liberal. The three deaths in Wilde’s tragic play evoke aestheticized fetishism that
shed light on same-sex passion. When hearing Salomé’s declaration of desire for
Jokanaan, a young Syrian named Narraboth commits suicide and his body falls right
between Salomé and the Baptist. Even though Narraboth commits suicide out of jealousy
for Salomé, his fallen body and his oriental origin signify another kind of love. When
seeing his companion die, Herodias’s page reveals that the love between them was
romantic:
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The Page: The young Syrian has slain himself […] I gave him a little box of
perfumes and ear-rings wrought in silver, and now he has killed himself! [...] He
was nearer to me than a brother. I gave him a little box full of perfumes and a ring
of agate that he always wore on his hand. In the evening we used to walk by the
river…and he would tell me of the things of his country…also he had much joy to
gaze at himself in the river. I used to reproach him for that. (Wilde, CW 564-565)
The homosexual love and the grief of the Page is unnoticed by the other characters, it is
seen but not acknowledged because the Page’s “lament plays beneath the main story of
the text, a countermelody in the background” (Garelick 141). Yet, the homosexual love is
still revealed among all the violence, and at the moment when Salomé announces her own
desire. Exactly when Salomé says, “I will kiss thy mouth,” Narraboth dies. He dies
instantaneously when Salomé states that she will establish physical and intimate contact
with the Syrian.
The Page mourns for his deceased lover. He enumerates a list of gifts that he recalls
having given to him: the perfumes, rings, and other offerings, all signifying effeminacy,
an indication of an erotic connection between the two men, which is intensified even more
so by the Page’s gaze: the “alliance” of same-sex passion. This object world and erotic
gaze is frequent in both Wilde’s and James’s works, and quite evident in The Picture of
Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson, as well. Dorian’s and Rowland’s secret world of
objects also reveal their true identity. Likewise, in Salomé, the fetishistic objects also
generate the plot. “The entire plot is generated by the characters’ fetishistic declaration of
one another’s bodies as they share dialogue, action, and stolen gazes, so they are all
implicated in the alliance of transgressive desire with lists of
fetishized treasures”
(Garelick 142). Narraboth’s death parallels Salomé’s “blazon” of Jokanaan (Garelick
142). Importantly, the Syrian’s suicide takes place while erotic desire takes on the form of
fetishism. Salomé links Jokanaan’s body to riches that are very refined, just like a
woman’s body, for example, an ivory statue, vermillion, etc. She states: “He is like a thin
ivory statue. He is like an image of silver. I am sure he is chaste as the moon is […] his
flesh must be cool like ivory” (Wilde, CW 558). Herod does the same. His desire also
manifests itself via fetishization. He also reveres parts of Salomé’s body, asking her to
bite into a fruit so that he can admire the marks of her teeth. Similarly in James’s “The
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Author of Beltraffio” the narrator intensely gazes at his admired idol, Ambient, the writer.
He is so swept away by Ambient’s appearance that he stares at him, sizing up his features
very carefully, thereby fetishizing the visual image of the desired object, which satisfies
the narrator’s homosexual drive.
Herod is also a figure whom we should not neglect. Herod’s yearning for Salomé echoes
the Syrian’s for Salomé and Salomé’s for Jokanaan. Herod’s longing for Salomé is
complicated by his homoerotic desire for the Syrian. This is no surprise as Wilde has
already shown Herod’s sexual and aesthetic admiration for the male sex. When
Narraboth’s death is found out by the tetrarch, he states “I am sorry he has slain himself, I
am very sorry; for he was fair to look upon. He was very fair. He had very languorous
eyes. I remember that I saw that he looked languorously at Salomé” (Wilde, CW 567).
Once again, Wilde accentuates feminized poise and gender performance.
We can see a mutual desire for the male body by both Herod and Salomé. Even though
the same-sex passion between the two soldiers is unperceived by the characters, it is felt
due to the recitative quality of the play, “inscribed into Wilde’s use of the Salomé legend
of forbidden desire, and the aesthetic reification of the body” (Garelick 143). Herod’s
redundant lines reiterate the words “sorry,” “fair,” and “languorous,” all mirroring a
desire and yearning that continuously reappears melodically throughout the play. For
Wilde, homosexual culture was an attempt to give beauty a “privileged status” rather than
just beauty having an arranged appearance in museums and fashion magazines, says
Whitaker (38). Furthermore, he notes that the unusual exposure and appreciation of
beauty in all of its various manifestations bestow a kind of blessing upon a person, which
in its oldest meaning is good fortune, both in time and in terms of vitality and energy
(Whitaker 38).
Musical repetition in “inclusive circles” (Apter 109) and fetishization did not satisfy
Wilde enough. He wished to expand this circle. When the Syrian complies to bring
Jokanaan to Salomé, she promises to be grateful: “Thou wilt do this thing for me,
Narraboth, and tomorrow when I pass in my litter beneath the gateway of the idol-sellers,
I will let fall for thee a little flower, a little green flower” (Wilde, CW 560). This present
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bears significance in the work and outside the confines of the play itself. As has been
already elaborated, the green carnation was the symbol of the Aesthetic movement, and
the decadent dandies; likewise, it was also a signifier of homosexuality in Paris.
Promising a green flower as a symbol of gratitude, Salomé “allies” herself with the
dandies and homosexuals. Salomé’s symbol of gratitude, the green carnation, and her
orientalism reinforce gay androgynous performance. Emily Apter notes that orientalist
scenarios are a “good value” in homosexual dramas because the over-acted androgynous
performance signifies a nonconformist sexuality by the subversion of traditional models
(Apter 109).
Wilde’s Salomé is a symbolist and decadent hero(ine). Wilde’s major alternation of
Salomé was that he focused the entire play on the princess and her oriental dance. Her
play with the veil in the Dance of the Seven Veils functions as a space to write male
homoerotic desire, another “textual support” for reading Salomé in terms of its encoding
of gay desire (Fembach 200-01). Similarly, the portrait in Dorian Gray and the writers’
homoerotic texts in James’s “The Aspern Papers,” “The Author of Beltraffio,” and “The
Lesson of the Master” are all blank spaces (or tableaux) onto which men’s homosexual
desire are projected.
It is essential to note that Wilde presented Beardsley, an illustrator, with a copy of
Salomé in which he had written “for the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the
dance of the seven veils is, and can see that invisible dance” (Schweik 16). The Dance of
the Seven Veils is a unique oriental performance and dance of gender and yearning
(Fembach 201). Amanda Fembach notes that Salomé’s veil “becomes a prop to fantasize
Salomé as a male transvestite” (201). Her dance and performance signify the gender
undecidability of the dandies, which subsequently “allo[w] for the masked expression of
gay erotics, as the body of a potentially male Salomé is eroticized through the sexually
charged [effeminate] dance” (Fembach 201). Salomé’s fetishistic dance has the power to
seduce only until a last veil remains (Fembach 201). Significantly, as will be noted, in
James’s “The Author of Beltraffio,” Dolcino, Ambient’s, the writer’s son, charms the
short story’s speaker not only with his innocence, but also with his androgynous exterior.
Rowland is similarly swept off his feet by Roderick’s grace and delicacy. Effete young
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men/boys whose gender is indistinguishable have quite an appeal, attracting the
homoerotic gazes of mature men.
Salomé’s dance also echoes the Medusa image. The mythological Medusa had no power
over women, and in decadent works of literature, she is conventionally depicted in
conflicts with male characters. This leads Finney to assume that “on a disguised, symbolic
level” Salomé is a man (62). As a male transvestite Salomé reviles what she had
previously praised because she fails to possess her love-object (Jokanaan) who is
“forbidden” (Fembach 201) to her, and for this reason Salomé subjects Jokanaan’s
admired body to a fetishistic mutilation. Salomé’s love for the prophet is unrequited for
Jokanaan is disgusted with Salomé, the “Daughter of Sodom” (Wilde, CW 558). The
prophet is vile and despicable with the Princess when he says: “Daughter of Sodom, come
not near me! But cover thy face with a veil, and scatter ashes upon thy head, and get thee
to the desert [...]” (Wilde, CW 558). Jokanaan is a holy man who lacks (homo)sexual
desire and is repelled by anyone that is unclean and immoral. Hence, one could also
parallel Jokanaan’s image with Victorian prudishness and the moralists’ proclivity for
purity. Thus, he may very well be the symbol of Victorian ethics and the law, namely the
Labouchere Amendment of the 1885 Criminal Law Act sanctioned by the conservative
stringent power structures that forbid homosexual activity and persecute homosexuals.
Importantly, it is not a coincidence that the young Syrian is keen on preventing Salomé
from seeing Jokanaan. He fears that the debauched Salomé’s wellbeing may be
endangered by the prudish and stern prophet, who obviously abhors degeneracy. The
Syrian implores the Princess to leave Jokanaan’s sight: “Do not stay here, Princess. I pray
you do not stay here” (Wilde, CW 558). Likewise the moral women in James’s “The
Author of Beltraffio” and “The Aspern Papers” are symbolically representatives of lateVictorian mores. They are similarly disgusted by immorality and censure the closeted
homosexual men’s texts that are filled profusely with homoerotic content. Jokanaan and
James’s moral women threaten the dispersion of perverse sexuality, for they either try to
interfere with or censure homosexual activity.
It is very likely that Wilde’s gay audience identified with Salomé, who not only forms a
“perverse” (Fembach 202) attachment to a beautiful man, but is also repeatedly referred to
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as the “Daughter of Sodom” (Wilde, CW 558). The Medusa imagery in the play refers to
homoeroticism as the head/penis on the platter is, as Richard Dellamora argues, a “fantasy
of impending homosexual fellatio” (Dellamora, Traversing 253) with Salomé as a male,
who performs the woman, or in other words, a male transvestite. In Aubrey Beardsley’s
illustration, “The Climax,” the spike lying beneath Jokanaan’s head is suggestive of a
phallus (Beardsley 62-3). In addition, the kiss that Salomé yearns for is referred to as an
“ivory knife cutting the pomegranate” and a “scarlet band on a tower of ivory.” (Wilde,
CW 559) These are thus images that are also suggestive of anal penetration. Fembach
mentions that there was a tradition of performing the role of Wilde’s Salomé in drag, as
requested by Wilde himself (204). Fembach’s theory can be further confirmed as
Ellmann’s biography of Wilde contains a photograph of an actor/actress in the role of
Salomé whose gender is unpredictable and indecipherable (Ellmann 402). In fact, Salomé
in this photograph is so androgynous that Ellmann makes a rash judgment by stating that
the Salomé reflected in the picture is Wilde himself dressed in costume (Ellmann 402).
Salomé describes the prophet “like a moonbeam, like a shaft of silver” (Wilde, CW 558).
Women and their biorhythms were thought to have been subjected to moon cycles and by
Salomé correlating Jokanaan to the moon, she is endowing him with female
characteristics and roles, thus effeminizing him, similarly to the narrator in James’s “The
Author of Beltraffio” who places great emphasis on Dolcino’s angel-like face. “Salomé
also feminizes Jokanaan by inverting the traditional male celebration of female anatomy”
(Fembach 209). Antithetically, Salomé’s imagery is sometimes made masculine by the
implementation of phallic fetishes. Fembach articulates that “Salomé combines in her
own person male signifiers” especially when her hair is ornamented with phallic
protuberances (209). James’s “The Author of Beltraffio” is similarly embellished with
phallic imagery. According to Person the protagonist’s, Ambient’s artistic ego is
sexualized and is “phallocentric”(130), for Ambient and the narrator relate to one another
across the “sign of this phallus-in- progress and thereby mark off the bounds of an all
male literary” (Person 130), which is strictly homoerotic. These male gender signifiers
play an important role in homoerotically charging the characters’ writing or performance,
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permitting them to displace and sublimate their homoeroticism, a process which even
satisfies their homosexual appetite.
Just like the decadents and dandies, Salomé also indulges in sensual and sensatorial
pleasures. It is no surprise that Salomé is punished by death as she articulates a desire
which transgresses order and the late-Victorian norm. Salomé is not satisfied with just
articulating fetishistic desires, she also wants to touch and feel Jokanaan’s body, which is
outside the boundary of Victorian ethics and morals.
To recapitulate, Wilde’s works embrace decadence that avows same-sex passion,
indulgences like fetishism, effeminate performance and aestheticism. His characters do
not hesitate, they indulge and suffer the consequences. As has been noted, the Victorian
moralist attitude gave no leeway for such acts, it made sure that indulging degenerates
suffer and pay their dues. We will see in the next chapter that just like in Wilde’s texts,
homoerotic passion and fetishism also penetrate James’s Roderick Hudson, “The Aspern
Papers,” and “The Author of Beltraffio.” In spite of Jamesian texts advocating repression
and morality, his above mentioned works exhibit surprising similarities with Wilde’s so
called “degenerate” decadent novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray and even Salomé.
Rowland’s veneration of Roderick is very much comparable with Basil’s for Dorian.
Basil’s and Rowland’s secrets alike are represented in art. Painting/art in both Roderick
Hudson and the Picture of Dorian Gray are repositories for information that is
inadmissible. In both instances, homoerotic passion goes unavowed. Rowland is a
homophobic man of principle like Basil, who. is subjected to the moralist conservatism
that dominated the late-Victorian England, which abhorred decadent debauched acts and
decreed sexual repression, sexual purity and ‘muscular’ Christianity. Rowland strives for
a higher good, which is transcendental in nature and that satisfies the soul, not the body,
as it will be argued in the next chapter. However, there is one distinguishing factor
between Wilde’s and James’s novels. Wilde preaches sexual indulgence and embraces
sensori-emotional values that he communicates with more alacrity via the main characters
of his novel, Dorian and Lord Henry. Antithetically, James’s novel rejects and preaches
against the decadent dogmas of the late-Victorian counter-culture much more
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conspicuously through Rowland. In the final section, firstly repression will be introduced
in order to contextualize James’s moralizations and to show that repression and moral
dictums, which were believed to lead to total spiritual fulfillment, ran parallel to the
productive Decadent movement.
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Chapter III
Textual Interpretation of Henry James’s Works
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I. Repression and Sublimation
It is plausible to assume, on the basis of the late-Victorian contextual and cultural
analysis conducted in the earlier chapters that homosexual repression stems from the
homophobic nature of the late-Victorian middle class climate which instituted repressive
moral policies that rendered (homo)sexuality a cardinal sin. Homophobia is the result of
moral convictions which when put into practice, lead to the repression of (homo)sexual
drives, which, as a result, were often projected onto religious/spiritual practices or art and
aestheticism. Fear of condemnation and moral degeneration may have given rise to
paranoia in the homosexual or even in the immoral heterosexual. It has been proven that
expressions of sexuality, in late-Victorian times, did not seem to be a private affair, but a
moral and social obligation. Thus, sexual purity was linked to spirituality and to morality.
Based on religious premises, some moralists even seem to suggest that (homo)sexuality is
superfluous if one attains perfect spiritual bliss by practicing and cultivating religious
discipline.
The late-Victorians moralists affirmed that repression, control and morality are
indispensable. Morality was seen as a type of conformity and assimilation to a set of
expectations and standards, a conception which viewed morality as a “principle of
harmony and the integration of all interests,” the expression of the deepest self and “the
most comprehensive nature of the individual” (Rathbun 225). It was regarded as an all
“inclusive activity” that leads to total fulfillment (Rathbun 225). Henry James similarly
affirms this, for he underlines in Roderick Hudson through the figure of Rowland that the
function of morality is to construct an ideal that is desirable for one’s entire life. The
purpose of morality, then, is to develop values and spirituality and to provide solutions to
the “conflicting claims” of the self (Rathbun 225) – including (homo)sexuality.
In order to understand some of James’ and Wilde’s repressed homosexual fictional
characters, it is necessary to analyze a conservative attitude towards repression and
sublimation in more detail. Psychologist, Constance Rathbun, has written a scholarly
work in the 1930s, which sums up, with precision, beliefs on repression and morality that
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reiterate late-Victorian dogmas and ideas on this subject. Thus, she verbalizes a typical
Victorian attitude to morality and sexual ethics. She emphasizes in “The Place of
Repression in Morality” that “to be moral is simply to be intelligent” (227). Morality is
also an art because it is self-conscious living, it is knowing what to do, when to do it, and
requires an analysis of one’s motives and actions, hence, it is thoughtful intelligence, an
“expression of action” (Rathbun 227) stimulated by contemplative thinking. It proceeds to
enjoy life, not by indulging in intimate sex or homosexual practices, but by intelligence
and reflective thinking (Rathbun 227). As we have seen, the concept that sexuality is a
hindrance to intellectual attainment had already been formulated in the Victorian period –
for instance in the 1840s the Tractarians, a group of Anglican academics and clergymen,
established celibate male religious communities and banished human sexuality. Their
chaste community provided rich and available “metaphorics” (Sussmann 2) through
which male anxieties could be registered. Similar thoughts can be found in the writings of
Thomas Carlyle, who recommended a chaste male environment, where men sublimate
their (homo)sexual drives into productive work and art and are in complete segregation
from the outside world, leading a harmonious life of contemplation and industriousness.
Carlyle embraced and “heroicized” such a lifestyle as manly and spiritual (Sussman 2) as will be illustrated in the next chapter.
According to Rathbun and late-Victorian ethics as well, the development of morality is
achieved when the good of the whole is in focus. In contrast, evil and sin (like degenerate
sexual acts) occur when one rejects the wider will in favour of the will of the self. The
moral self is always in opposition with the impulsive and egotistic self, from which
unreasonable and self blinding desires arise. There should always be reason present in
passion and desire because that is the only way that (homoerotic) passion can be purified.
Knowing and willing are two virtues that go hand in hand when practicing morality
(Rathbun 228).
One major issue pertaining to morality is volitional conflict, which may be anything that
endangers one’s moral integrity. Intelligence, knowledge, and also will-power are
required to solve these conflicts. To recapitulate, the late-Victorian moralists regarded
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sinners and ‘moral degenerates’ as lacking exactly in this will-power, refusing to fight
their degradation. According to psychological theories, there are two ways of facing
discordances, one being “dissociation” and the other “integration” (Rathbun 231).
Repression and sublimation are the most common forms of dissociation. Rathbun defines
the term repression as a process where certain states of mind are kept out of consciousness
by the utilization of energy (Rathbun 231). She claims that:
when we encounter something that is unpleasant or causes anxiety, we tend to
push it out of consciousness by the defense mechanisms of emotional repression.
Unfortunately, for our peace of mind the unwanted ideas or emotions do not die a
natural death , but continue to absorb and generate energy at a subliminal level,
and the conflict continues merrily on without the conscious self being explicitly
aware of what is going on. The unconscious for the psychoanalysts is not a
substantial entity in which repressed states reside, but is itself just that loose
collection of repressed thoughts , desires, and emotions so that the beginnings of
repression coincide with the beginnings of the unconscious. (231)
Psychoanalysts do not necessarily condone repression because it may lead to neurosis
and psychoses, especially in the case when one refuses to see that the thing being
repressed uses up the energy that may be directed to “socially acceptable ends” (Rathbun
232). MacDougal, a psychologist of the 1920s, states that the subject may be aware of the
conflicts resulting from repression, but not necessarily of the desires that are undergoing
the repression (MacDougal 222). The larger and more regulated the society (like lateVictorian England), the more the limitations and conflicts, and the constituent elements of
conflicts are always desire and reality. Pleasure and desire lead to the path of least
resistance, demanding less effort. Desire and bodily pleasures cater to emotions and
physicality rather than the soul and intellect– a dualistic view which is also typical of lateVictorian thought. The demands of reality, especially in Victorian times, ordered control
and discipline, which resulted in many cases in a withdrawal from reality via repression or
the substitution of “fiction for fact” (Rathbun 233). Contrary to late-Victorian thought,
Rathbun notes that repression is inadequate because it does not satisfy the two
“oppositional desires” (234) and does not synthesize these forces. It dries up the forces of
life and makes living painful, it is a “defense of the mind” from the “fear-ridden world”
(234). Repression means the satisfaction of one desire (the moral desire of perhaps
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homophobic homosexuals), leading only to dissociation from the desire of pleasure rather
than to integration. This premise radically differs from Nordau’s, who thought the
opposite. It seems that Rathbun invests more faith in sublimation, which is more
satisfying, since it harmonizes the ego and (homo)sexual desire.
However, repression has a social significance and plays an important role in sublimation.
Civilized society would be in turmoil if individual repression was not practiced. A lateVictorian homophobe may have also thought that repression is an “instrument of “safety,”
(Rathbun 235) postponing the (sexual) indulgence to the future. Of course, its danger is in
reaching a state that causes neurosis or wires a condition that does not even admit
fundamental desires like intercourse or even love (James’s Rowland and Wilde’s Basil are
ideal exemplary figures of this). Repression is most definitely voluntary, meaning that the
subject is aware of his/her control. This, however, is debatable; even Freud argues that
people are unaware of what they are repressing (Freud 48), though, it is true that this
repressed sexual desire or passion can be directed to useful purpose through the transfer
of the energy (propelled by the conflict) to something that is co-terminal with society (see
Rowland’s and Basil’s example as moral exemplars and mentors). This is sublimation,
which means utilizing repression in a positive way. Sublimation is to provide a “balanced
control” (Rathbun 235) of our instincts and when it is perfectly carried out, man
completely adapts to his environment. Perfect “integration” of one’s desires is the goal
and also an attainment of moral goodness (Rathbun 235). Repression is an important
factor in sublimation directly and indirectly. Indirectly, because “the states which have
been repressed in the past are the constituent elements in the unconscious from which
comes the emotional energy essential to sublimation” (Rathbun 235). Man’s analysis of
his unconscious state of mind results in a judgment of merits in relation to his
(homo)sexual desires, revealing the conflict, thus formulating an action that will be
morally good. By doing so he is putting integration in effect. This process can only be
achieved by sublimation since desires cannot be satisfied without any alterations.
Sublimated desires seek a higher level. For example, (same-sex) intercourse, which is the
most frequently repressed desire, becomes a powerful energy in art and religion, as we
will also see in Carlyle’s example. Rathbun sees this as an effective mode of integration
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where the repressed energy is redirected towards the social, ethical, moral, and lastly,
spiritual component of the self (236).
Geoffrey G. Harpham, cultural and literary theorist, believes that asceticism(homo)sexual renunciation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism) plays a major role in
shaping Western ideas, for the “ascetic is the cultural element in culture” (Harpham, The
Ascetic Imperative 103). Significantly, his theories on Christian philosophy are in
alignment with late-Victorian Christian mores on sexuality. Again, his findings
concerning the themes of Christian morality, and asceticism harmonize perfectly with
Carlyle’s theory of the hydraulic body, the process of channeling sexuality into productive
usefulness, like art making. Harpham, similarly, notes the significance of repression in the
process of sublimation. He argues that while repression is static, meaning that it does not
implement integration, sublimation directs this repressed energy towards something
useful. Conflicts must not be deemed useless because conflict and harmony are not
opposed to one another, in fact they are both an essential part of integration and are
sources of value in moral goodness. Sublimation, by implementing repression, deploys
the mechanism of desire and converts it into other things, like morality, ethics, and art.
Desires sublimated into art liberate the mind from the tyranny of the real and sets it free in
the realm of symbols (Harpham, Ascetics 96-7).
The insight that asceticism and the aesthetic hold a common, yet complex relation to
sexual passion and desire elucidates why the creation and reception of art has been so
instrumental to sublimation and asceticism. Harpham details that art often emerges at the
“expense of the artist, who suffers privation in order to prepare himself for creation; who
mutilates himself in the act of creation; who surrenders himself in the execution; and who
cuts himself off from selfhood in sending the work out into the world” (Harpham,
Ascetics 97). Harpham was not the only one who had this standpoint: in fact, it was a
widely held view already in the nineteenth century. Nietzsche, Carlyle, Gide, Flaubert,
James, and Kant made this connection as well. Self-negation, self-transcendence, and selfalienation are requisites to achieving a “pure presentness” because art is the “mastery of
purity,” an ascetic virtue (Harpham, Ascetics 97). Thus, these aesthetic practices can only
emerge within a religious context (Harpham, Ascetics 97). This may be a little far-
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fetched; aesthetic practices may also emerge outside of a religious context, if we consider
Basil’s example. Rowland of Roderick Hudson, on the other hand, similarly, places art
into a religious context, as he continuously pressures Roderick to read works that have
religious content in order to stimulate Roderick’s inspiration.
Asceticism and repression of one’s homosexuality, as a result of homophobia, are
structures of compensation. This simply means that something is granted, the “treasure of
heaven,” in return for giving up or abstaining from something (sexuality) (Luke 18:22).
Aesthetics/art compensates for the pain of the surrender of physical pleasure and sexual
appetite by providing imaginative gratification. This sublimation is achieved, as it has
been already outlined, by the rerouting of transgressive energies along socially acceptable
lines. The most salient element is not the asceticism or the abstinence itself, but the
principle of reward and sacrifice.
Desire and decadence, which are the sinful and “guilty” (Harpham, Ascetics 106)
components of transgression, may be ‘enlisted’ in the service of the other and directed to
self-denial rather than self-gratification. Harpham writes that “desire must fold back upon
itself in a spirit of apparent antagonism and actual realization; it must choose objects of
desire that are not, in the old sense, desirable at all, and find its fulfillment there”
(Harpham, Ascetics 106). From a Christian aspect the negation of our (homo)sexual
desires can only be achieved by humility since “Christ is buried in us as in a tomb […]
and rises again, and raises us with himself” (Wimbush 344). Harpham, similarly notes
that ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ bears the “burden of love generally in an
ascetic context, the burden of non-recognition, invisibility, denial” (Harpham, Ascetics
107). He further adds that the banishment of human sexuality is indispensable in order to
nourish an intimate relationship with Christ. However, this surrender of physical pleasure
and sexual appetite provides imaginative gratification in art (Harpham, Ascetics 107) just
like in Dorian Gray, Roderick Hudson, and “The Lesson of the Master.”
The negation of a desire does not necessarily depress the instinct, in fact, it may be an
expansive source for creativity and art (see Rowland’s example in Roderick Hudson, and
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Paul Overt’s in “The Lesson of the Master,” and Basil’s in Dorian Gray). However,
Freud’s description of repression is a little different. When Freud describes the struggle of
repression he refers to multiple cases of neurosis. Freud explains that asceticism exhibits
“’pangs of conscience, or self-reproaches’” and an “’untiring impulsion towards further
perfection’”(Freud, “Resistance and Repression” 114). Antithetically, Harpham, almost a
century later, states that “pangs of pain” actually do not arise when repression is
practiced, but the moment “ when the desire conflicts with a consciously held value or
moral ethic. At this point repression of one’s homosexuality, stemming out of
homophobia and homosexual panic becomes desirable “as a way of concealing
[homosexual] gratification” (Harpham, Signs 52). For Harpham, the perfect repression is
the “obliteration” of all impulses and the complete closure of the self. Harpham is
convinced that this process has no negative effects, like neurosis (Harpham, Signs 54).
In the modern world, repression and the practice of celibacy appear strange and
somewhat out of date; modern man assumes that the denial of desire leads to immobility
and even death. Antithetically, in the late-Victorian homophobic society it was exactly the
practice of homosexuality and other consummated “degenerate” acts that were believed to
lead to one’s death and doom. Yet, desire and temptation are essential to the practice of
virtue and the conceptualization of an ethical way of living. Temptation plays a vital role
in man’s morality. “Between fallibility and fault, between innocence and guilt, lies
temptation. Between human beings and the objects of their desire lies temptation
(Harpham, Signs 46). Temptation mediates among the opposition of transgression and
ethics. “From the ethical point of view, the experience of temptation is perpetually
resolving into decisions-or guesses-that are thematised as either gratification or denial of
desire from the experience of temptation, desire lies about on all sides” (Bataille 65). The
ethical essence of temptation is choosing and resisting transgression and this is where
repression comes in. After all, repression and asceticism are a meditation on desire and
decadence. Repression is “hospitable” to verbal representation, to narratives in particular,
as narratives are the ascetical form of discourse (Harpham, Signs 45). In addition, it may
be an expansive source for creativity and art production.
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Given such views, homoeroticism, a form of desire that is most often repressed, can also
serve as an expansive source for creativity. From the point of view of asceticism and a
late-Victorian homophobic attitude, (homo)sexual desire and other perversities
undoubtedly inhibit human perfection. However, asceticism does not exclude desire,
though it complicates it extremely. It is hard for our soul not to love something. Our mind
must give way to some kind of affection. In asceticism, the love of physicality and the
flesh is substituted by the love of the spirit and the love for work, just like Carlyle
recommended for his monks, and just as we have seen in Basil’s and Rowland’s case.
Thus, the desire for the flesh is quenched by the desire for the spirit and the desire for
work by which (homo)erotic and decadent pleasures are substituted and attenuated by the
spiritual satisfaction of one’s character and by one’s love for one’s work. Thus,
transgressive desires may be overcome (Harpham, Signs 105).
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II. Carlyle and Victorian Asceticism
Thomas Carlyle, was a Victorian moralist writer whose thoughts on morals, homosocial
communities (the antithesis of heterosexual compulsion), sublimation of (homo)sexual
desire, and ethics run parallel to James’s and at times Wilde’s. In addition Carlyle’s
writings, similarly to James’s and Wilde’s works mentioned, exhibit homosocial/erotic
undertones and a strong antagonism towards women, which not only shows Carlyle’s
opposition to Victorian heterosexual compulsion, but also his contempt for women’s
intellectual and spiritual potential. Carlyle’s preferred an ideal environment which was
woman free and chaste, where men could sublimate their (homo)sexual drives into
productive work, thereby leading a harmonious life of contemplation and industriousness
(corresponding to Harpham’s view of sublimation). Carlyle, similarly to James and
Wilde, suggests a possible tension between creative men and demanding, draining
women. Women seem in these texts to become the greatest threat to the endurance of art
itself. In addition, the Carlylian works analyzed, similarly to the Wildean and Jamesian
texts examined, depict a correlation between homosociality and homosexuality. The
"homosocial" will be treated largely in terms of the more fundamental "homosexual" for,
as has been noted, there is an “indistinguishability” between homosociality and
homosexuality, as both Sedgwick and Freud point out (Sedgwick, Between Men 90-93).
In a homosocial environment, the characterization of male bonding as repressed
homosexuality is discernable, and by close reading one is able to discover repressed
homosexuality throughout the depiction of the homosocial.
Since Carlyle’s preference for men and animosity towards women is so acute, he may be
regarded as a predecessor of homoerotic writing, and thus seen in relation to works such
as Roderick Hudson, “The Author of Beltraffio,” “The Aspern Papers,” “The Lesson of
the Master,” Dorian Gray, and Salomé. In the following, the themes of homosocial
affiliations, asceticism, Carlyle’s dislike of women, celibacy, and the regulation of the
innate male energy will be analyzed in greater detail.
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The celibate, ascetic young male and his regulation of the innate male energy became the
focal point for Carlyle and late-Victorian conservative society. The formation of the ideal
Victorian masculinity, specifically for students and young bachelors, was along the lines
of self-regulation and self-negation of which the monk became the exemplar, in the case
of adult men, who lived in a heterosexual marriage, a moderate sexual appetite was
prescribed, which was recommended to be regulated by certain tools, as has been pointed
out. A valuing of monkish celibacy is also reflected in Carlyle’s works, importantly for
young males and adult males alike. For Carlyle, James’s Rowland, and Wilde’s Basil the
monk exemplifies the relation of (homo)erotic energy and purity to artistic potency. In the
1840s and 1850s a psycho- sexual theory was developed that argued for the management
of sexuality whose “touchstone” was medieval monastic art (Sussmann 4). Carlyle
heroicizes (homo)sexual abstinence and “desexualizes” desire (Sussmann 4). He idealizes
the monastic artist, as well as the methods he implements for turning sexualized male
energy to the production of art and work. Thus, for Carlyle art is based on the regulation
and sublimation of sexualized energy and desire.
Carlyle abhorred marriage and women as the female sex opens up the floodgates of male
sexual energy (Sussmann 21), thereby inhibiting man from leading a chaste homosocial
life, where man can focus on his work. Similarly in Wilde’s Dorian Gray women are
regarded to be too emotional and not sufficiently rational and wise, thereby inhibiting
man’s intellectual and spiritual development. James, too, presents heterosexual relations
in a negative light as distracting men from their true calling. Overall, Carlyle, Wilde and
James suggest that women are a threat to art and individualism, therefore they need to be
sacrificed. As the writer St. George states in James’s “The Lesson of the Master,” the
women “themselves are the sacrifice,” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898h.htm) giving way to the circulation of the homo-aesthetic amongst the close knit male
bonds. Carlyle, like Wilde and James, notes the dangers of heterosexual courtships, which
not only inhibit sublimation, but also the circulation of the homo-aesthetic. Carlyle
stresses in Sartor Resartus that Teufelsdröckh was not only a man” who would never
wed, but who would never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and St. Martin’s
Summer of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the Professor,
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women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed; which celestial pieces he
glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of purchasing”(104). Thus, women’s
stimulation of eroticism and lack of intellectual capacity devalue man and his work and
prevent homo-aestheticism. Similarly, in Sartor Resartus, Roderick Hudson, “The Lesson
of the Master,” and Dorian Gray the woman is shed, allowing males participating in
homosocial spheres to sublimate their homosexual energies and sexualize their aesthetic
experiences.11
Furthermore, Carlyle compares women to a sphinx and criticizes them to be “dark” and
“infernal,” just as how Christina Light is characterized by Rowland and how Wilde
characterizes and even names his heroine, a diabolic woman prostitute in his poem
entitled “The Sphinx.” In the beginning of the second chapter of Past and Present, he
states:
How true, for example, is that other old Fable of the Sphinx, who sat by the
wayside, propounding her riddle to the passengers, which if they could not answer
she destroyed them! Such a Sphinx is this Life of ours, to all men and societies of
men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness;
the face and bosom of a goddess, but ending in claws and the body of a lioness.
There is in her a celestial beauty,—which means celestial order, pliancy to
wisdom; but there is also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are infernal. (10)
The threat to the disuse of male fluid is the woman. By sexually arousing man, she
emasculates the male sex. For this reason, Carlyle developed a masculine poetic with the
aim of popularizing psychic regulation and the sexually chaste bonds between men
(Sussmann 21).
The sublimation practiced by Carlyle’s Abbot Samson in the twelfth century provides a
model for contemporary artists and is to be practiced also by the “Man of Letters” in the
nineteenth century. Male homogeneous society becomes attractive since it is a distanced
locus from the environment, allowing the production of work and chaste male affection.
Conversely, marriage and sexuality are hindrances to spiritual development, and
11
See the section entitled “The Abomination of Heterosexual Courtships” in Repression and Homoeroticism in Roderick Hudson for
more details concerning the animosity towards women in “The Lesson of the Master “ and Dorian Gray.
144
furthermore endanger the homosocial utopian society composed of male-bonding.
However, in a woman free environment the temptation of homoerotic desire may of
course also be a threat –though Carlyle never even refers to it specifically. However, he
insinuates that through industriousness and the production of art (homo)sexual desire may
be sublimated. Carlyle keenly depicts that segregation from society and (homo)sexual
abstinence, paired up with industriousness, lead to a harmonious and blissful life. Carlyle
notes in Sartor Resartus the beauty of the solitary life of monks:
For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new Sect, display courage
and perseverance, and what force there is in man’s nature, though never so
enslaved. They affect great purity and separatism; distinguish themselves by a
particular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this
Volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some
broken Lingua-franca, or English-French); and, on the whole, strive to maintain a
true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world. ‘They
have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands in their
metropolis. (208)
Carlyle saw beauty in living a solitary life. Isolation was a way to keep oneself unspotted
and pure. Carlyle also comments with admiration on Teufelsdröckh’s solitary life in the
sublime surroundings of wild nature:
Mountains were not new to him [Teufelsdröckh]; but rarely are Mountains seen in
such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called
Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a
rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a
singular airiness of form, and softness of environment: in a climate favorable to
vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots up through a garment
of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the
everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur: you ride
through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high
walls of rock; now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now
suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself
into a Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had
established herself in the bosom of Strength. (Carlyle, Past and Present Book II,
Chapter II)
145
Not only Carlyle’s Past and Present and Sartor Resartus depict the lives of monks or
spiritual men, putting an emphasis on the immaculate quality of nature in the Victorian
era. Similarly, Walter Pater's short story "Apollo in Picardy" (1893) is also set at a
fictional monastery, which is isolated from society. The characters, Hyacinth, a young
novice and Prior Saint- Jean go to the monastery to “improve” their “body’s health”
(http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html). It is described that from the
tower of the monastery one could see “the green breadth of Normandy and Picardy,” and
feel “on your face the free air of a still wider realm beyond what was seen”
(http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html). The “unspoiled” air and the
monastery’s homosocial environment set the scene for a “veritable paradise.” It is detailed
that Prior Saint-Jean “began to feel his bodily health to be a positive quality or force, the
presence near him [Apollyon] of that singular being having surely something to do with
this result”(http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html). It is further addded
that “the reviving scent of [the air], the mere sight of the flowers brought thence, of the
country produce at the convent gate, stirred the ordinary monkish soul with desires,
sometimes
with
efforts
to
be
sent
on
duty
there”
(http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html). This quote not only echoes
Carlyle’s theory of the hydraulic body, but also evidences the Prior channeling his sexual
energy.
Thus,
Pater,
like
Carlyle
couples
the
theme
of
homosociality of
monks/contemplative men with the theme of nature, symbolizing liberation and the states
of wholesomeness and sterility.
The above themes are also evident in De Profundis (1897), Wilde, similarly finds a fair
dwelling in nature, he is convinced that "nature […] will have clefts in the rocks where I
may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed" (Wilde, CW 955).
Apart from the emotional appeal of wildlife, nature and isolation also represent peace and
strength for Carlyle, providing a protective shield against temptation and sin. Similarly,
Rowland has a strong conviction that an “artist is better for leading a quiet life” (RH 81).
He further states “that is what I shall preach to my protégé […] by example as well as by
precept” (RH 81).
146
The monk came to represent for Carlyle the sense of passivity that became a model for a
novel manhood for the man of letters, the mill-owner, and the worker. Sartor Resartus
(1833-1834), and “The Hero as Man of Letters” (1841) are texts that debate the condition
of manliness. Interestingly, the Carlylean hero figured within a monastic discourse is in
“antithesis” (Sussmann 4) with the Victorian hegemonic model of manliness. There is a
difference between chastity before marriage, that is, the avoidance of pre-marital sex and
celibacy for life. His characters, like Samson in the “Man of Letters,” go against the
bourgeois way of achieving manhood through heterosexual fulfillment in the institution of
marriage. Instead of marriage, Carlyle, similarly to Basil and Rowland, favoured a
homosocial environment, which may well have been homoerotic, but via hard work one
resisted and overcame homoerotic desire. In Book II of Past and Present, Landlord
Edmund is depicted as someone too lovable for a landlord. The below quote may
insinuate same-sex love.
For his tenants, it would appear, did not in the least complain of him; his
labourers did not think of burning his wheatstacks, breaking into his gamepreserves; very far the reverse of all that […] on the contrary, they honoured,
loved, admired this ancient Landlord to a quite astonishing degree,--and indeed
at last to an immeasurable and inexpressible degree; for, finding no limits or
utterable words for their sense of his worth, they took to beatifying and adoring
him!'Infinite admiration,' we are taught, 'means worship.' (Carlyle, Past and
Present Book II, Chapter III)
In the beginning of the paragraph, it looks as though Edmund is a paternalistic kind of
landlord. But in the second sentence, it appears that the wording is distinctly chosen and is
emotionalized. Landlord Edmund is “honoured,” “loved,” and “admired” to an
“astonishing” and “immeasurable” “degree” are words that do not depict a kindly
landlord, but rather a love relationship.
Moreover, in Book II, the Abbot’s zealous interest in the sacred body of St. Edmund is
very homoerotic. His erotic gaze intensely cruises St. Edmund’s body. Religious rituals
are eroticized in this passage, similarly to the religious rituals denoted in Dorian Gray and
Roderick Hudson, as it will be shown. Importantly, the religio-Christian context of the
funeral legitimizes the Abbot touching St. Edmund’s beautiful white body:
147
But the Abbot, looking close, found now a silk cloth veiling the whole Body, and
then a linen cloth of wondrous whiteness; and upon the head was spread a small
linen cloth, and then another small and most fine silk cloth, as if it were the veil of
a nun. These coverings being lifted off, they found now the Sacred Body all wrapt
in linen […] But here the Abbot stopped; saying he durst not proceed farther, or
look at the sacred flesh naked. Taking the head between his hands, he thus spake
groaning: "Glorious Martyr, holy Edmund, blessed be the hour when thou wert
born. Glorious Martyr, turn it not to my perdition that I have so dared to touch
thee, I miserable and sinful; thou knowest my devout love, and the intention of my
mind." And proceeding, he touched the eyes; and the nose, which was very
massive and prominent […] and then he touched the breast and arms; and raising
the left arm he touched the fingers, and placed his own fingers between the sacred
fingers [...] and he touched the toes. (Carlyle, Past and Present Book II, Chapter
XVI)
Significantly, the Abbot’s adamant desire to touch and look at St Edmund’s, a holy man’s
corpse, is very much comparable with Salomé’s unyielding sexual passion for Jokanaan’s
“ivory” like, pure, and sacred body. As has been depicted, Salomé correlates Prophet
Jokanaan with the feminine, similarly to the Abbot in Past and Present. The fine silks and
linen covering St Edmund’s body are associated with the female sex, for their appearance
is very effeminate. It is of significance that these are textiles that decadent and effete
dandies and aesthetes would also consider wearing.
Comparably, Pater’s Prior Saint-Jean’s homoerotic gaze lingers on the impeccable body
of Apollyon, the monastery’s janitor. The young man’s exquisite features and grace are
adamantly emphasized similarly to St Edmund’s holy remains and Salomé’s sacred body,
thereby exhibiting homosocial/erotic undertones. The narrator writes that “Prior SaintJean seemed to be looking for the first time on the human form, on the old Adam fresh
from his Maker’s hand. A servant of the house, or farm- labourer, perhaps!–fallen asleep
there by chance on the fleeces heaped like golden stuff high in all the corners of the
place” (http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html). The Prior notices that
Apollyon is “lordly,” or “godlike rather in the posture.” The janitor’s grace and
effeminacy are also highlighted: “Could one fancy a single curve bettered in the rich,
warm, white limbs; in the haughty features of the face, with the golden hair, tied in a
148
mystic
knot,
fallen
down
across
the
inspired
brow?”
(http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html). The Prior’s homoerotic gaze
cruises the youthful man, observing him meticulously, hence noting the “gentle
sweetness” in “the natural movement of the bosom, the throat, the lips, of the sleeper”
(http://www.authorama.com/miscellaneous-studies-9.html).
In addition, it is essential to mention that the homoeroticism in these works is not only
placed in a religious context, but also in a homosocial environment. Carlyle, similarly to
Pater, James and Wilde, notes the pleasure in living in a community of men, he notes
Abbot Samson’s admiration for his brethrens: “it was hard to say for whom Abbot
Samson had much favour. He loved his kindred well, and tenderly enough acknowledged
the poor part of them; with the rich part, who in old days had never acknowledged him”
(Past and Present 117).
For Carlyle, it is ideal for the male author to take his place within a perpetual priesthood,
an all male environment since it provides resolutions to the problematic male identity.
Obviously, from the below passage homosocial relationships are appreciated. The narrator
mentions how a homosocial environment, with good guidance, reforms man:
How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the kiss of fatherhood in the
St. Edmundsbury chapterhouse, proceeded with cautious energy to set about
reforming their disjointed distracted way of life; how he managed with his Fifty
rough Milites (Feudal Knights), with his lazy Farmers, remiss refractory Monks,
with Pope's Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings; how on all sides he laid about
him like a man, and putting consequence on premise, and everywhere the saddle
on the right horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic method out of lazily
fermenting wreck,—the careful reader will discern, not without true interest, in
these pages of Jocelin Boswell. In most antiquarian quaint costume, not of
garments alone, but of thought, word, action, outlook and position, the substantial
figure of a man with eminent nose, bushy brows and clear-flashing eyes, his russet
beard growing daily grayer, is visible, engaged in true governing of men. (Past
and Present 112)
149
Abbot Samson, like Basil in Wilde’s work and Rowland in James’s novel, gives guidance
and moral support to his male subjects in the monastery, lecturing them on the distractions
of life.
Sexual intimacy and other bodily pleasures may also negatively effect these men’s
equilibrium, but not if it is controlled by excluding and erasing the female from man’s
life. In the case of both Carlyle’s monks and James’s Rowland it is the woman who is a
threat to sexual purity, as well as intellectual capacity, and spiritual development. Virility
does not concern sexual potency, but on the contrary, is divorced from sexuality. This
supposedly dangerous sexual energy is channeled into work. Also, letting go of the
individual ego through the submission to a stronger male in the brotherhood is a good
resolution. A true individual can find the means to raise himself. This process frees one
from egotism (Sussmann 21).
James similarly notes in an article on the correspondence between Carlyle and Emerson
that “everyone [has] a kingdom within himself- [a] potential sovereign, by divine right,
over a multitude of inspirations and virtues” (Leon 245)12. For Carlyle and Emerson man
is always exemplary. James’s Roderick Hudson also advocates Carlyle’s and Emerson’s
thought through the mouth of his character Rowland.
When reading Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and “The Hero of the Man of Letters”
it is blatant that the interior space of the male body and the male self is composed of
unstable fluidity or in other words sexual fluids. Carlyle sees psychic action in hydraulic
images. The inward of man is “foam itself” (Past and Present 128), a “free-flowing
channel” (Past and Present 129) that may make “instead of pestilential swamp, a green
fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream” (Past and Present 197). The fluid, which is
really the seminal energy from man’s semen, is the “life fountain within you” (Past and
Present 29). Carlyle notes in detail:
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a
work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free-flowing
channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's
12
Also in The Writing of William James. Ed. John J. McDermott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1977.
150
existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows;—draining-off the
sour festering water, gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making,
instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing
stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or
small! Labour is Life: from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his god-given
Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from
his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness,—to all knowledge, 'selfknowledge' and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge? The
knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself
accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what
thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to
be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till
we try it and fix it. 'Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone.
(Carlyle, Past and Present 246)
Carlyle saw that this fluid energy empowers masculinity, but at the same time it is
dangerous because this source of male identity can be unclean and diseased, for example,
in the case of same-sex practices. His symbolization of the male body in hydraulic terms,
the occupation with flood and constraint, insinuates anxieties about masturbation and
“spermatorrhea,” (Sussmann 20, 22) the unproductive discharge of seminal fluid that
produced male sexual panic. Carlyle’s sense of the male body is a plane under which lies
a “pestilential swamp” (Carlyle 197). Carlyle advocates repression and sublimation in
order to control the flow of the interior fluids of (homo)sexual energy into productive
work: the prolific power of stream. Thus, man must channel his “central heat” into
constructive work, making this dangerous fluid (semen) benefit man by simply just
channeling it.
The self in Carlyle’s steam engine acts as a governor that regulates the energy of
maleness, in other words (homo)sexual desire. In Past and Present the figure of the ideal
male psyche is the steam engine that moderates the flow of (sexual) energy and transfers
it to a productive purpose. Again, Carlyle’s image may be read in (homo)sexual terms. He
writes:
To repress and hold-in such sudden anger he was continually careful,’ and
succeeded well:- right, Samson; that it may become in thee as noble central heat,
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fruitful, strong, beneficent; not blaze out, or the seldomest possible blaze out, as
wasteful volcanoism to scorch and consume! (Past and Present 114)
“Central heat” is man’s seminal fluid, which needs to be conserved and “not blaze out.”
“Blaze out” and “volcanoism” are words that reference impure sexuality. Thus, the
blazing out (ejaculation) of seminal fluid is naturally a waste, for once it is released it
cannot be channeled into productive work, like art making.
Overall, Abbot Samson, in Past and Present is an exemplary figure, who transfers the
desire from the temptations of (homo)sexuality to productive work within the realm of
monasticism. It must be taken into account that for Carlyle celibacy does not mean
enervation, nor a psychic distortion, as for the Pre-Raphaelites, but something liberating
and heroic (Sussmann 27). Turning the unproductive use of man’s fluid energy into
something useful is greatly valorized and is a “virtuoso religious practice” (Sussmann 27).
Leading a life with sexual pleasure dissolves the self and limits the masculine plot. For
Carlyle, the virtuoso man is the one that can exercise productive repression (like Abbot
Samson and James’s Rowland Mallet, and Wilde’s Basil, who practice repression and
exemplify manliness and moral living). This of course raises an important question: what
is manliness? Based on Carlyle’s assertion, manliness is not essence, but a “process”
(Sussmann 28) in which psychic and spiritual equilibrium is achieved. Carlyle’s fantasy
of a male chaste environment linked the moral virtue of work with the sacred. The
provision of this secure base for the male brings about intense wholesome relationships
that are a help in the process of creation.
J. H. Kellogg, “an American drawing primarily on British sources” (Nelson 528), also
argues in 1877 that "restraint, self-control, and moderation in the exercise of the sexual
instinct, are in the highest degree beneficial to man, as well as to woman, and are
necessary for his highest development"; women's insistence that men attain feminine
standards of virtue will thus prove to be the means by which "society shall rise to higher
levels" (Nelson 528) Also, for the Edinburgh-educated American James Foster Scott
celibate men attain genius through preserving their energies for their work (Nelson 528),
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and even within marriage "the proper subjugation of the sexual impulses, and the
conservation of the complex seminal fluid, with its wonderfully invigorating influence,
develops that is best and noblest in men” (Nelson 528). As we can see, a sizable number
of the late-Victorians concur with the theories on the importance of self-control and the
sublimation of the internal fluids. In addition, Kellogg and James Foster Scott make it
even more obvious that Carlyle’s “sudden anger” is indeed the sexual instinct of man. The
only difference is that Kellogg and James Foster Scott explicitly use the phrases “sexual
instinct” and “sexual impulse.”
In order to save man from the disuse of his male fluid, Carlyle, like Rowland counsels
men to participate in male social spheres, where one engrosses oneself in the production
of work. Carlyle believed that a young man must leave his mother, reject domestic life
and enter a male community where he is presented with masculine wisdom. The female
sex must be rejected and a surrogate father must be accepted. Abbot Samson does this
exactly. The young writer, Paul Overt of “The Lesson of the Master,” similarly submits
himself to the education of an older and wiser male author St. George. In addition, Dorian
does the same when he commences to follow Lord Henry’s teachings. Self eviction from
domesticity is a necessity because monks also cast off the feminized self by submitting
themselves to a stronger male or father, by which a communal manhood is achieved.
Communal manhood is advised because it calls for the loss of the ego (Sussmann 27).
In summary, it has been established based on Carlyle’s addressed literary works that
morality is self conscious living and that sublimating desire brings about a higher level of
consciousness, where man’s thoughts and actions are directed towards the social, artistic,
ethical, or moral spheres, all leading to liberation. The most commonly repressed desire is
of a (homo)sexual nature; religious figures, ascetics, and repressed homosexuals were of
the opinion that celibacy, the surrender of physical pleasure, is necessary to nourish the
relationship with Christ. Carlyle sees this in a similar way as he valorizes the controlled
flow of innate fluids into productivity. Importantly, this utopian communal manhood
contradicts the hegemonic imperatives of compulsory heterosexuality. Also, the
transformation of the sexual energy into creative work is a type of process where the
153
aesthetic remains in opposition to conventional and normative masculinity. Thus, the
material researched above is of essence for it convincingly reflects a kind of digression
from the traditional late-Victorian norm. But at the same time Carlyle’s thoughts also
adhere to the principles of the late-Victorian conservative moral standards, for he also
sees value and essence in abstinence and spirituality. Significantly, both Rowland and
Basil seem to follow and practice these moralist Victorian principles. Dorian Gray and
Roderick Hudson also depict homosocial environments, and are infused with homosexual
subtexts, similarly to Carlyle’s writing, despite its emphasis on “spotless” morals.
Similarly to Carlyle’s works, in the novels both Basil’s and Rowland’s homoerotic
passion go unavowed, they do not indulge like Dorian, because Rowland and Basil strive
for a higher good, like Carlyle’s monks and “The Man of Letters.” Rowland and Basil are
aware that asceticism is transcendental in nature and that it satisfies the soul. Rowland
represses and sublimates his homoerotic passion for the good of Roderick, and Basil for
the good of Dorian. In the works of Carlyle, James – and even some figures in Wilde’s
works analyzed – the characters are subjected to the moralist conservatism that dominated
late-Victorian England, which abhorred decadent debauched acts and decreed sexual
repression, asceticism, purity and muscular Christianity.
154
II. Repression and Homoeroticism in Roderick Hudson
Painting/art in both Roderick Hudson and the Picture of Dorian Gray are repositories for
a type of sexuality, which is illicit. In both instances, homoerotic passion goes unavowed
for the characters suffer from homophobia and homosexual repression. It will be argued
that Basil is a man of principle like Rowland, who musters too much of the late-Victorian
conservative ethics to give himself over to decadent desires like same-sex passion. He
strives for a higher good, which is transcendental in nature and that satisfies the soul, not
the body. Rowland’s moral conservatism, which largely reflects the attitudes of the lateVictorian conservative middle-class establishments, abhors decadent debauched acts and
decrees homosexual repression, sexual purity and muscular Christianity, whereas Wilde’s
decadent dandy, Dorian, lacks the conventional attributes all together and subverts it on
purpose. Dorian being a bachelor and a decadent dandy offer a liberated space where
alternative and different masculinities can be tested.
The presence of homoeroticism in James’s work makes Roderick Hudson an ideal text to
read closely and compare with Wilde’s Dorian Gray. There are, for instance, analogous
descriptions of homoerotic passion, fetishism and aestheticism. However, the analysis of
Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson will also demonstrate the different ways that
homoeroticism can be approached. Wilde advocates this via Lord Henry whose hedonistic
dictums and teachings are the focal point of the novel. This makes Wilde a representative
writer of decadence, unlike James, who also addresses homoeroticism, but puts moral
uprightness in the forefront.
It is important to note that in spite of the fact that homoerotic attachments are closed off,
homosexuality in Roderick Hudson and also in James’s short fiction is reflected, above
all, in the erotically charged gazes, the abomination of the institution of marriage, and in
the deep homosocial affiliations, just like in Wilde’s selected texts. Once again, the
"homosocial" will be treated largely in terms of the more fundamental "homosexual," for
there is an “indistinguishability” of homosociality and homosexuality (Sedgwick, Between
155
Men 90-93). Studying the exchange of gazes in the homosocial environment of Roderick
Hudson and Dorian Gray unveils a subtext that clearly points to homosexuality.
Similarly to James and Wilde, Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance
(1873) exhibited his celebration of same-sex desire visually. Pater’s location of the desire
is in the gaze, which was “reinscribed” in James’s theory of “impression-reception”
(Savoy 13). In feminist theory the “gaze” has frequently been interpreted as a sign of
visual mastery and power of a voyeuristic (male) spectator, explorer, directed against an
objectified ‘other’ (a female, a foreign ethnicity) that in turn is disempowered by this
classifying visual appraisal and deprived of subjectivity and agency. However, it is
important to remember that the gaze not only constitutes a masculine desire for power, but
also negotiates physical contact within the same-sex subculture. The homosexual male
proposes a sexual invitation through his gaze. The subtle gaze signals interest, openness,
and the fear of rejection as well.
Eric Savoy maintains that in his works between the 1870s and 1880s James highlighted
the visual experiences between his characters, which he did with great tact in order not to
be detected. Hence spotting inferences of homosexuality is always a difficulty because
James, like other Victorian writers, had to write across his own panic. As has been shown,
there was indeed some reason for such panic, as the anti-decadent and homophobic
sentiment and hysteria of heterosexuals occasioned legal proceedings against
homosexuals. As a result of the increasing control of the bonds between men that were
outlined in the sub-chapters on late-Victorian society, both hetero-and homosexual men
were manipulated into homophobic positions (Sedgwick, Epistemology 196), thus leaving
only the visual experiences, homo-aestheticism, a hatred towards heterosexuality, and
deep homosocial affiliations as signs of same-sex passion.
For Savoy “the subtle play of glances through the mask of repression is the essential
mode of the homotext, the operation by which the writer may [be] said to cruise the reader
and thus to construct his receptive community” (Savoy 20). The availability of the male
body to the male gaze is quite striking in Dorian Gray, Salomé, Roderick Hudson and
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“The Author of Beltraffio” – which indicates that James’s works selected for discussion
are not asexual but contain a homosexual subtext that relates him to Wilde.
Homosocial Affiliations and Homo-aesthetics
James in the texts chosen for analysis depicts the possibility of homoerotic attachment
between men, but closes it off in favour of a moral centric plot. In Roderick Hudson,
James makes an effort to keep same-sex desire at bay by developing a love triangle
through the presence of a woman. James aroused Rowland’s sense of gender and
sexuality by placing him in an intimate relationship with Roderick. Rowland’s yearning
for Roderick is the cause of his asexual relationship with Mary Garland. Rowland Mallet
fails to meet the masculine norm because “he cannot muster sufficient heterosexual
passion for Mary” (Cannon 9). Roderick also observes on multiple occasions that
Christina Light “took a fancy to [Rowland]” (RH 374). However, Rowland is indifferent.
Roderick is troubled by Rowland “being an abnormal being” (RH 378), thus he brings it
to Rowland’s awareness that “the way [he] treated Christina Light [was] grossly obtuse”
(RH 374). Roderick senses something unnatural in Rowland. Obviously, Rowland is
much too engrossed with his (suppressed) homoeroticism to establish a sexual
relationship with a woman. His passion is obviously homoerotic in nature, however, he
represses it in favour of his moral wellbeing.
Rowland’s homosexual panic (similarly to Basil’s in Dorian Gray) is responsible for his
male homosexual desire to be sublimated into homosocial relationships and be “bound up
in male friendship and mentorship” (Between Men 88). The narration accentuates
Rowland’s sudden “intimate” relations with Roderick despite having known him “only
three days” (Roderick Hudson 84). Having used the power of patronage to remove
Roderick from his mother and his fiancée Mary Garland (note that Carlyle also advised
young men to be removed from their domestic home by a surrogate father), Rowland
leaves Mount Holyoake only to walk into an “elaborately-devised trick which had lured
him out into mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a
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singularly sympathetic comrade, and then […] turned and delivered him a thumping blow
in mid-chest” (RH, 102). Rowland’s first blow, which is Roderick’s announcement that he
is engaged to Miss Garland, is received before he reaches Rome: “Rowland listened to all
this [the announcement] with a feeling that fortune had played him an elaborately-devised
trick” (RH 102). Lying to himself that he is melancholic because of his own affection for
Mary, this self-delusion becomes a pretext for Rowland to remain with the young artist in
order to watch over him on Mary’s behalf. This helps him to “account for the emotions he
feels observing Roderick’s amatory entanglements” (Stevens 77). Rowland pretends he is
anxious on Mary’s behalf, but is in fact jealous of the young man’s heterosexual love
relations. It is essential to note that Rowland is unconcerned or even gratified at the sight
of Roderick’s disappointing and unsuccessful love affairs: “when those who loved him
were in tears, there was something in all this unspotted comeliness that seemed to lend a
mockery to the causes of their sorrow” (RH 114).
Basil is similarly sensitive to Dorian’s love affair with the actress Sybil Vane. He is
taken aback when he hears of Dorian’s engagement:
‘Dorian is engaged to be married,’ said Lord Henry, watching him as he spoke.
Hallward started and then frowned. ‘Dorian engaged to be married!’ he cried.
‘Impossible!’ (Dorian Gray 86)
Both in Rowland’s and Basil’s case the yearning for their object of desire and the jealousy
of those who have a claim on that object hints at a homosexual identity.
Furthermore, Rowland’s and Basil’s secret same-sex passion is represented in art. Basil
is overwhelmed by the way Dorian motivates him in his art. He is practically addicted to
the sight of Dorian, who is his only motivation, and confides: “I couldn’t be happy if I
didn’t see him [Dorian] every day. He is absolutely necessary to me […] he is all my art
to me now” (Dorian Gray 16). Rowland’s admiration for Roderick resembles Basil’s for
Dorian. Rowland’s veneration of Roderick reaches such a pitch that he has to confess at
Roderick’s death “how exclusively, for two years, Roderick had filled his life” (RH 387),
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that “there was no possible music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick’s
voice” (RH 383). Importantly, both Basil’s and Rowland’s careful choice of words,
signify same-sex love and passionate obsession. Basil and Rowland are subjected to the
tides of passion, which they cannot fully and perhaps liberally express in language, and
thus turn to art and aesthetics to articulate their homoeroticism. Christina Light
automatically notices Rowland’s flair for aesthetics. She comments: “I am rather intrigued
[…] you are very artistic and yet you are very prosaic” (RH 156). Basil’s and Rowland’s
cultural sublimation is more than an elective defense against illicit passion
(homoeroticism); their adoration for art is a way of shunning sexual excitation, and by the
same token also the guarantee of a valuable pleasure uninhibited by late-Victorian sexual
morality. As Leo Bersani sees it, sublimation may be understood as the extension of
desire (37). Furthermore, in Basil’s and Rowland’s case sublimation seeks a higher level,
for it becomes their powerful energy in art/aestheticism and principle. Both characters’
conscience is attuned to late-Victorian conservative moral standards and thus submit to
the Victorian regulation and manipulation of desire. Their homophobia compels them to
integrate their repressed homosexual energy into the social, spiritual, and aesthetic
components of their lives.
In Wilde’s and James’s novels, homoerotic passion is mediated homo- aesthetically
through artistic creations. The suppression of the sexual instinct is a condition of artistic
practice, which is “finer and higher” especially for homosexuals, who are atoning for
their” proscribed desires” (Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” 138). Rowland’s
sublimation of sexual desire is transferred, as Bersani notes, in the appreciation of the
aesthetic. James writes in his Notebooks, for example, that work is “the real solution of
the pressing question of life […] It’s the anodyne, the escape, the boundlessly beneficent
resort” (Edel, The Complete 84). Rowland chooses a modest life as a man and embraces
renunciation, fencing himself against personal adventures and experiences like same-sex
passion in order to preserve his morality. In rejecting heterosexual love for a closely tied
male bond, he wishes to play the role of the bachelor for life, which allows him to
sublimate his desires and energies towards the appreciation of Roderick’s art. But James
also explores homoeroticism through aesthetic appreciation of the male form, much like
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Wilde does in Dorian Gray. Rowland’s affections are clearly directed towards men, so
much so that even his interest in sculptures is for male nudes. In the first part of the novel,
James creates an artistic realm of male nudes only (Cannon 12). Rowland first stumbles
upon Roderick’s male nude sculptures in the studio with Cecilia, Rowland’s cousin, who
remarks, “If I refused last night to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show you a pretty
boy” (RH 59). Rowland sees a sculpture of a naked man drinking from a gourd. This
statue, which denotes physical vigour and masculinity, arrests Rowland and is
suggestively described as follows:
The man had his feet planted on the ground, with his legs apart and his head
thrown back and his hands were raised to support the cup with the word “thirst”
engraved in Greek on the pedestal. (RH 59)
The appearance of the statue denoting physical strength and masculinity kindles
Rowland’s homoerotic desire.
Rowland’s fondness for male nudes is further demonstrated when he becomes better
acquainted with Roderick. He comes to know more sculptures, including “a colossal head
of a negro tossed back, defiant, with distended nostrils,” a young man resembling
Roderick’s deceased brother, the figure of a lawyer, and a young soldier “sleeping
eternally with his hand on his sword” (RH 72). Rowland is impressed by these artifacts
and declares them to be works of a genius. Rowland’s incessant admiration for these male
nudes reflects his unrequited desires of same-sex sexual passion. Also, as Cannon points
out, the exclusively male statues are a metaphor for Rowland’s fantasy of living in a
world without women: “Rowland’s fondness for the male form, founded in his aesthetic
sense,” stimulates his affection for Roderick (Cannon 92-3). Like Basil’s desire for
Dorian, Rowland’s passion for Roderick is aesthetic, yet homoerotic at the same time,
surpassing mere “masculine tutelage” (Lane, Impossibility 747). Rowland is seduced by
the art of Roderick while examining his sculptures. Roderick, too, seems to be unaware of
the homoeroticism his statues express and confides that the “young water drinker” is
“thirsty” for “knowledge,” “pleasure,” and “experience” (RH 66). It is also interesting that
Roderick is depicted as androgynous in outward appearance, his figure and voice showing
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signs of femininity. Christopher Lane ascertains that “Roderick’s sculpture seems to
displace Rowland’s palpable interest in Roderick’s body and voice ‘a soft and not
altogether masculine organ’” (Lane, Impossibility 748-9). “The relation of tutelage
overflows, meanings creating a metonymic surplus that is either ambiguously erotic in
content or diffused by an aesthetic ideal that cancels the
opportunity for physical
intimacy” (Lane, Impossibility 747). It is Rowland’s sexual attraction to Roderick that
motivates his wish to live in a homosocial environment: “Rowland took a great fancy to
him, to his personal charm and his probable genius. He had an indefinable attraction-to
something tender and divine unspotted, exuberant, confident youth” (RH 68). Rowland
wishes to be intimate with Roderick, although their intimacy is restricted only to sharing
same residences and ideas, sexual consummation is absolutely denied to these characters:
“They talked on these occasions of everything conceivable, and had the air of having no
secrets from each other […] [Roderick’s] unfailing impulse to share every emotion and
impression with his friend […] made comradeship a high felicity, and interfused with a
deeper amenity the wanderings and contemplations that beguiled their pilgrimage to
Rome” (RH 101, 107).
On some occasions Rowland recognizes his discomfited position. He confides to Cecilia,
“I want to care for something or for somebody. And I want to care with a certain ardour,
even, if you can believe it, with a certain passion” (RH 53). Here Rowland is referring to
Roderick. His greatest wish is to care for his new artist friend. Rowland has an undying
passion to guide Roderick and be by his side. James constructs Rowland’s marginality
with precision from the very beginning. Rowland’s childhood foretells his marginality
when we are told that as a boy Rowland lacked the aggression associated with
masculinity. He is described as “passive” and “pliable” (RH 56).
Similarly to Rowland, Basil is exceeding the “basic erotics of masculine tutelage” (Lane,
Impossibility 747). Basil’s attraction to homoeroticism is portrayed in a sphere of art and
leisure in which male friendships assume primary emotional importance and in which
traditional male values are abjured in favour of the aesthetic. Basil says so himself: “every
portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter […] it is not
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he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas,
reveals himself […] I am afraid that I have shown in it [the portrait] the secret of my own
soul” (Dorian Gray 12).
Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson both address deviant concerns while never explicitly
violating the expected norms, like heterosexuality. Wilde, like James, encodes signs of
same sex desire tacitly. This novel “formally opposes an aesthetic representation of the
male body and the material [….] Dorian Gray juxtaposes an aesthetic ideology that
foregrounds representation with an eroticized milieu that inscribes the male body within
circuits of male desire” (Cohen, Writing 76). Homo- aesthetic relationships in Roderick
Hudson and Dorian Gray eroticize male homosocial relationships by the establishment of
an exclusive male to male circuit of desire that is secretive and covert. In both cases,
homoerotic desire is successfully closed up and veiled. Only the “immediate experience
of the reader” discloses this covert homoerotic desire (Person 133). Lord Henry even says
that Basil “puts everything that is charming into his art” (Dorian Gray 68). Similarly,
Rowland’s great pleasure is in observing Roderick’s works of art, so he continuously
beseeches his friend to create and stimulates Roderick to start producing: “If you have
work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it” (RH 197).
Rowland, like Carlyle’s Abbot Samson, sees great importance in work. Rowland’s advice
does not simply communicate a late-Victorian work ethic, significantly Rowland is also
motivated by the homoerotic stimulation that Roderick’s statues occasion in him. The
relationship of mentor and mentee is somewhat reversed in both Dorian Gray and
Roderick Hudson. Rowland is Roderick’s stimulus and Dorian is Basil’s. In both cases the
work of art is a repository for the secret information of the ‘love that dare not speak its
name.’
Dorian is the stimulus for Basil’s covert homoerotic desire and by the same token his
inspiration in art, therefore Basil is determined to keep Dorian to himself. As has been
mentioned before, he not only insists on not introducing Dorian to Lord Henry, but even
wishes to keep Dorian’s name a secret. Basil expounds, “when I like people immensely I
never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to
love secrecy” (Dorian Gray 38). Dorian personifies Basil’s secret of queerness, hence
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Basil adamantly endeavors to hide him from the world, as a result of his homophobia and
paranoia, Basil is terrified of being found out. On the other hand, he also wishes to keep
the object of his desire to himself, unwilling to share him with any other admirer. Basil
even begs Dorian one night not to leave him, “Don’t go to the theater to-night, Dorian
[…] stop and dine with me.” Basil is immensely disappointed when Dorian rejects his
invitation. He is devastated and asks Dorian desperately, “Why? [...] I beg you not to go”
(Dorian Gray 38). At one point in the novel, Basil confesses his feelings to Dorian,
confiding that from the moment that he met Dorian, his personality had “the most
extraordinary influence” over him. Basil was “dominated, soul, brain, and power” (132)
by Dorian. This is clearly the language which denotes same-sex passion, which in
Western culture is often expressed by means of metaphors figuring love as an
overpowering force. He further states to Dorian, “you became to me the visible
incarnation of the unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I
worshipped you, I grew jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all
to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me you
were still present in my art” (Dorian Gray 132- italics added). Again, Basil expresses
himself in terms that clearly indicate a passionate same-sex love rather than mere
satisfaction about a handsome model. Basil is mesmerized by the way Dorian motivates
him in his art and the emotions that Dorian ignites in him. He is practically addicted to the
aesthetic sight of Dorian.
Rowland accompanies and escorts Roderick to Europe in the hope of ameliorating his
artistic career and giving him guidance. Mary Garland personally asks him to watch over
Roderick. Thus, Rowland’s excuse to get close to Roderick is also art. He invests all of
his energy in guaranteeing the artistic development of Roderick, whom he immensely
admires. Rowland expects more from the friendship than Roderick can offer. He similarly
confesses his feelings to Roderick when he says, “my affection was always stronger than
my resentment” (RH 376). Indeed, Rowland is so attached to the artist that he does not
want to separate from him. Like Basil, he wants to keep his new friend all to himself,
following him wherever he goes. Roderick pleads with him at one point, asking Rowland
not to stifle him to death: “if you want a bird to sing, you must not cover up its cage […]
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let them live on their own terms and according to their own inexorable needs!” (RH 192).
Initially, Roderick is pleased by Rowland’s care, but later he questions Rowland’s
motives. Rowland at one point in the novel makes mention of his abnormality: “All I
wished to do was to rebut your charge that I am an abnormal being” (RH 378). Roderick
finds it abnormal and extremely awkward that Rowland knows nothing about women and
observes that he does not muster any passion for them. Roderick even emphasizes:
“Women for you, by what I can make out, mean nothing!” (RH 373) Rowland is caught
off guard, he replies with anxiety: “That’s a serious charge!” (RH 373). Later in the novel,
Roderick emphasizes further that “there are certain things,” such as women and love “that
you know nothing about.” Roderick continues, “you have no imagination-no sensibility,
nothing to be touched” (RH 373). Roderick is suspicious of the fact that Rowland has
been obtuse towards Christina when she had taken fancy to him:
There is something monstrous in a man’s pretending to lay down the law to a sort
of emotion with which he is quite unacquainted- in his asking a fellow to give up a
lovely woman for conscience’ sake when he has never had the impulse to strike a
blow for one’s passion’s![... ]If you can’t understand it, take it on trust and let a
poor visionary devil live his life as he can! (RH 374)
Indeed, Roderick suspects homosexuality. Roderick’s discontent suggests that Rowland
wants something more than friendship as Rowland expects a deep and abiding
commitment, whereas Roderick sees the friendship as relatively insignificant (Cannon
10), responding simply with the phrase “‘you have been a great fool to believe in me’”
(RH 190).
Roderick wants to part from Rowland hours before his demise, but Rowland pleads: “I
should like to go with you,” and Roderick responds by simply saying, “I am fit only to be
alone” (RH 379). This is Roderick’s homophobic and paranoid reaction to Rowland’s
unusual clinginess, for he is aware of Rowland’s “abnormal” (RH 378) nature. However,
despite this, Rowland does not want to let Roderick go.
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May Garland is also incredulous about Rowland’s eagerness to be the moral guide for
Roderick and advises him: “You ought at any rate, to do something for yourself” (RH
275). She is also suspicious of Rowland’s same-sex love for Roderick, thus she dismisses
Rowland. Mary inflicts Rowland with wounds when she says that “if you were to tell me
you intended to leave us tomorrow, I am afraid that I should not venture to ask you to
stay” (RH 357). Rowland is now found to be superfluous and unwelcome, a condition
reflecting Rowland’s unrequited homosexual love, which he does not dare confess to
himself.
Overall, Rowland’s obsessive attachment to Roderick and his continuous closeness gives
rise to Roderick’s homophobia, thereby driving Roderick away. His attachment to his
friend exemplifies an atypical masculine behaviour – that of a closeted homosexual. He is
a marginalized male, who lacks interest in women and whose only preoccupation is
Roderick. Similarly, Basil is also an atypical male who is just too concerned about his
friend, Dorian.
Rowland’s lack of passion for women is contrasted with Roderick’s “fervor” (Cannon
11). Rowland believes that sexual passion is dispensable for an artist, whose entire
attention should be focused on his creation and work. Rowland says to Christina Light
that Roderick, as an artist, does not need “strong emotion” and “passion” (RH, 231). This
philosophy is in correlation with Carlyle’s theory, as it has been detailed earlier.
However, secretly Rowland admires Roderick for the very thing that he despises and
takes great effort to repress. He admires the “perfect exclusiveness” of Roderick (RH 325)
and his passion. He desires Roderick in a way that he has never desired a woman. “He
ha[s] Roderick to please now” (RH 95), therefore he does not need anybody else.
It is obvious that both Basil and Rowland want their adored male friends in their
vicinity. It may be argued that Dorian and Roderick are their temptation. According to
Harpham’s premise, temptation plays an essential role in choosing or resisting
(homo)sexual transgression. Rowland manages to choose right and so does Basil. They
both manage to control and regulate their homosexual drives. Rowland notes to a Catholic
brother that he has seen the Devil in a garden and was tempted, but “[he] drove him out”
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(RH 252). Rowland emphatically and with pride reassures the brother that he has
“conquered” and “resisted” the temptation (RH 252-3) - which presumably was
homosexuality. As both Rowland and Basil are moral men who suffer from homosexual
panic, repression and sublimation (mediations on homosexual desire) gain importance at
moments of homosexual temptation.
Repression and sublimation are “hospitable” to Rowland and Basil’s expansive source
for not only creativity, art production, and flair for aestheticism, but also mentorship.
Their love of homosexual physicality and the flesh is substituted by the love of the spirit,
mentorship, work and art. Thus, the desire for the male flesh is quenched by the desire for
the spirit and the desire for art and mentorship by which (homo)erotic and decadent
pleasures are substituted and attenuated by the spiritual satisfaction of one’s character.
Thus, in a way Rowland and Basil successfully overcome their desire for homosexual
consummation.
(New England/ late-Victorian) Morals
Donna Przybylowicz characterizes Rowland as an “artistic middle-aged male” who is
incapable of acting “aggressively or sexually” (Przybylowitcz 4). For example, he does
not admire Mary for her beauty, but her ardour for moral and virtuous living. To him she
is an “anchor against the corrupting forces of Europe” (Cannon 9). She is a preventative
against the degeneration and decadence of Roderick Hudson: “’Was it not in itself a
guarantee against folly [for Roderick] to be engaged to Mary Garland?’” (RH 54). Even
when Roderick is out of the way, he does not fall into the embracing arms of Mary, the
supposed love of his life, because his great love was and will always be Roderick, to
whom he has dedicated his time, freedom and fortune. He offers his life to Roderick by
guiding and caring for him. Rowland’s invested energy in the guidance and the moral
education of Roderick reflects his love. Rowland, like Basil, cannot and could not ever
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indulge in a same-sex sexual relationship because he has too high motives and he is too
moral. Instead he sublimates his desire into being Roderick’s moral example.
Rowland is the product of the New England ethics: long suffering, with immensely high
motives and a great aptitude for morality and self-negation (Cannon 10). His name is a
combination of two Puritan surnames, for
[…] He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think
much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures
[…]His father was a chip of the primal Puritan block, a man with an icy smile and
a stony frown. He had always bestowed on his son, on principle, more frown than
smiles, and if the lad had not been turned to stone himself it was because nature
had blessed him inwardly […] (RH 54)
Basil is also of moral “stock,” whose purpose in life, as has been indicated, is to be near
Dorian and uphold late-Victorian morals. Lord Henry says so himself: “[…] [Basil] has
nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense” (Dorian
Gray 68). Basil exemplifies the virtues of a true Christian. His love for Dorian is constant,
selfless and unconditional. Even though Dorian deserts him for Lord Henry, Basil
remains, a loyal devotee to Dorian. “As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will
dominate me. You [speaking to Lord Henry] can’t feel what I feel. You change too often”
(Dorian Gray 20). Basil upholds virtue and value, like Rowland, he wants his youthful
friend to marry someone of moral aptitude, “I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to
see Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect”
(Dorian Gray 87). Similarly, Rowland finds the upright Mary much more suitable for
Roderick than Miss Light, whom James depicts as a vile creature. Rowland urges
Roderick to marry a woman of virtue, so he fervently tries to convince the young artist not
to fall into the arms of the breathtaking Miss Light. Roderick is appalled at Rowland’s
wish: “do you really urge my marrying a woman who would bore me to death?” (RH
279). Rowland is disappointed by Roderick’s insensitivity to goodness and virtue, noting
that Roderick is “blind” and “deaf” (RH 280) for failing to choose a woman of high merit
and virtue.
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Rowland’s insistence on a life of moral activity conflicts with Roderick’s energetic
lifestyle. This conflict is so intense that it leads to a state of paralysis in which the urges
are so strong that neither action nor passivity are permitted (Cannon 12). Unfortunately,
only wandering and wavering take place that fail to please Rowland’s “awkward mixture
of strong moral impulse and restless aesthetic curiosity” (RH 177). Rowland’s sense of
aesthetics keeps itself in proper religious bounds. However, Roderick, like Dorian Gray,
clamors for keener “sensations” (RH 136). Roderick rapidly detaches himself from the
tastes of Rowland and progresses toward cultural sophistication and the world of passion
and the senses, causing worry for the “hypertrophied” morally “conscious” Rowland
(Cannon 11). Roderick embodies possibilities that Rowland cannot explore, due to his
Puritan and self-negating attitude.
Basil is also an adamant preacher, like Rowland. He wants to serve Dorian well, and
guide him through the right path. He is concerned for his friend’s wellbeing, so he states:
“England is bad enough […] English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want
you to be fine. You have not been fine” (Dorian Gray 174). Basil is obviously referring to
the stringency of their homophobic society that punishes degenerates and people who
behave immorally. He wants to put Dorian on the right path, in order to prevent his
persecution and oppression, brought on by their late-Victorian traditional society.
Like Rowland, Basil also tends to judge (typifying a late-Victorian conservative who is
convinced that he has the prerogative to render opinion about people with less virtue and
merit): “One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours
seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You [Dorian] have filled them
with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You lead them there”
(Dorian Gray 174). Basil’s main concern is his friend’s moral uprightness. Basil preaches
with devotion, similarly to Rowland, counseling his adored friend to resist pleasure:
I do want to preach to you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the world
respect you. I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get
rid of the dreadful people you associate with. Don’t shrug your shoulders like that.
Don’t be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not
for evil. (Dorian Gray 174)
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Basil sounds like a broken record in his preaching. He incessantly reiterates the phrase “I
want you to […]” as if he were a demanding surrogate father, similarly to the abbots
depicted in Carlyle’s works, who give orders to their mentees. From the above quote, it is
apparent that Basil is obviously a late-Victorian man of conviction and principle, who
feels he has a vital duty to accomplish a good deed, thus Basil is resolute in saving
Dorian’s soul.
Rowland is also unwavering and very didactic. However, Rowland may also very well
be compared with Lord Henry. He too instructs Roderick on morality, purity in art and
aesthetics. During Rowland’s and Roderick’s walks, Rowland educates Roderick, giving
his friend an “accredited fountain of criticisms” (RH 106). Rowland is said to understand
everything, like Lord Henry. He is keen on advising Roderick in philosophy and
literature. He once comments to Roderick, that “Aristotle was not the poet for a man of
his craft; a sculptor should make a companion of Dante” (RH 194). So, he lends Roderick
the Inferno and advises him to look into it (RH 194). Rowland thinks that Dante’s
religious insight and accounts of a journey through hell, with its emphasis on punishment,
is morally improving for Roderick. It is important to note that Carlyle similarly respects
Dante for his spiritual wisdom:
For the intense Dante is intense in all things; he has got into the essence of all. His
intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all
other sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the
beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;—as indeed,
what are they but the inverse or converse of his love? ’A Dio spiacenti ed a’
nemici sui, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God:’ lofty scorn, unappeasable
silent reprobation and aversion; ‘Non ragionam di lor, We will not speak of them,
look only and pass.’ Or think of this; ‘They have not the hope to die, Non han
speranza di morte.’ One day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of
Dante, that he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely die;
‘that Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.’ Such words are in this man.
For rigour, earnestness and depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world;
to seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique
Prophets there. (Carlyle, Sartor Resartus 328)
Lord Henry also hands a book over to Dorian, the mysterious yellow book, which advises
young men on decadence: the world of the senses. Lord Henry’s and Rowland’s advice
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are generally conflicting, however, they are also similar: both men mean well, yet the
outcome of their didacticism leads both Dorian and Roderick to their downfall and doom.
Rowland, like Basil, similarly counsels Roderick on repressing passion. When Roderick
is introduced to Miss Light, he says to Miss Light bluntly, “My feeling is this. Hudson, as
I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of passion.
He is better without it; he is emotional and passionate enough when he is left to himself
[…] I suggest most respectfully that you leave him alone” (RH 231). Rowland is resolute
in safeguarding Roderick from all negative influences – and, unconsciously, perhaps,
from all influences that might rival his own. Christina threatens to enter Rowland’s manly
Eden and seduce Roderick away from it. Rowland’s aversion for the world, his dedication
to art and Roderick, his celibacy, his personal decorum, and moral aptitude parallels
Carlyle’s ideal male, the monk and the “Man of Letters.” Just like the monks Rowland
wishes to live a sanctified life in a male homosocial environment dedicated to art, and
wishes to encourage Roderick to do the same. Just like Carlyle (as detailed in Past and
Present 246 ) Rowland believes that sexual passion is dispensable for an artist, indeed, a
dangerous distraction and drain, since a man’s entire attention should be focused on his
creation and work.
Rowland, like Basil is a true exemplar of Carlyle’s celibate monk, who dedicates his life
to art and to his homosocial environment. Another theory of Carlyle’s is also applicable to
Rowland. In an oppressive state, Rowland feels “a sudden collapse in his moral energy; a
current that had been flowing for two years with liquid strength […]” (RH 267). This
quote is not only an indication of the homosexual temptations that Rowland is subjected
to, which he tries to sublimate, with more or less success, into the appreciation of art and
mentorship, but is also an indication of Carlyle’s theory, where he sees man having a
hydraulic form. The hydraulic body is man’s steam engine, allowing one to repress and
sublimate (homo)sexual desires and constantly better oneself and one’s environment.
Similarly, Rowland is convinced that a peaceful environment without temptation serves
Roderick’s betterment. He wishes to guarantee the development and the security of
Roderick. Rowland notes about Roderick: “his moral, his sentimental security […]I have
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a strong conviction that the artist is better for leading a “quiet life” (RH 81). The “quiet
life” here is the quiet and secluded life that Carlyle highlighted and which manifested
itself in the secluded monasteries, where the monk could diligently and without any
intrusion from the outside world indulge in his art.
Roderick and Dorian also share similar characteristics; they both love entertainment,
parties and have a liking for the finer things of life that appeal to the senses. Roderick’s
“appetite for novelty was insatiable, and for everything characteristically foreign […] and
was clamouring for keener sensations (RH 106). Dorian, an impeccable Aesthete and
decadent, similarly loves “beautiful things” and “exquisite surroundings” (Dorian Gray
128). He seeks to make himself “perfect by the worship of beauty” (Dorian Gray 149), he
succeeds in turning artificial, losing his “natural[ness]” (126). Dorian immerses himself in
the studying of perfumes and the “secrets of their manufacture” (154), furthermore
“distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums from the East” (154). He
experimented with “frankincense,” (154) an aromatic resin and “ambergris,” (154) a
fixative. Roderick’s decadent nature may be paralleled with Dorian’s decadent lifestyle.
Roderick “burns the candle on both ends” (RH 138) just like Dorian. He too likes
“aesthetic revels” (RH 108), moreover he is sure that life must have for “all one’s senses
an incomparable fineness” (RH 108). Roderick’s first fortnight in Rome was a “high
aesthetic revel” (108). He “declared” that “Rome made him feel and understand more
things than he could express; he was sure that life must have there for all one’s senses and
incomparable fineness” (RH 108). Dorian Gray’s and Roderick’s appetite are similarly
unquenchable. Roderick is described just like Dorian:
His appetite for novelty was insatiable, and for everything characteristically
foreign, as it presented itself he had an extravagant greeting but in half an hour the
novelty had faded, he had guessed the secret, he had plucked out the mystery and
was clamouring for keener sensations […] He had caught instinctively the keynote of the Old World […] all things interested him and many delighted him[..]
(RH 106).
Roderick is thus a passionate young man with sensorial values, who worships the senses
and subjects himself to refined sensations, similarly to the aesthetes and dandies, depicted
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in the background chapters. Rowland like Basil is worried about his adored friend, who
“took to evening parties like duck to water, and before the winter was half over was the
most freely and frequently discussed young man in the heterogeneous foreign colony”
(RH 113). He associates with the wrong crowd of high class prostitutes, being drawn to
ladies who “rose at midday, and supped at midnight” (RH 137). Like a typical dandy,
who loves the nightlife, Dorian, similarly to Roderick, consorts with the wrong type of
people. He “brawled” with “foreign sailors” in “dens” and associated with “thieves and
“fashionable young men” (173-4). Dorian, just like Roderick is continuously talked about,
people are contriving stories that “[creep] at dawn out of the dreadful houses” (Dorian
Gray 174). Rowland correlates Roderick with animal like qualities merely because, unlike
the dandies and decadent aesthetes, Rowland does not understand the true and sublime
nature of the senses. Equally, it dawns on Dorian that the nature of the senses “had
remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into
submission,” instead of making them “elements of a new spirituality” (Dorian Gray 150).
As has been alluded to, Roderick’s malicious crowd are high class prostitutes;
interestingly, Dorian also associates with the marginalized, the only difference is that they
are all male. Dorian’s friendship to the “fashionable young men” and “young sailors,”
(162) is described as “fatal” (173) – indicating homosexual degradation and moral ruin.
Basil notes that “‘there was [a] wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide’”
(173), in addition Sir Henry Ashton had to leave England, with a “tarnished name” (173).
Basil comments: “’You and him [Sir Henry Ashton] were inseparable’” (173). The
wording, much more blatant here than in James’s novel, refers to homosexual
involvements. The reader is bound to make the inference that the Guardsman killed
himself as a result of unrequited love. The “tarnished name” of the young aristocrat
unequivocally references the social ostracism attending the discovery of homosexuality
(which uncannily also foreshadows Oscar Wilde’s own tragic fate). The fatal blow to
these young men is the same-sex love affair that Dorian shared with them. Importantly,
Dorian is constantly reminded of these transgressive sins via the portrait, as a result of
which he panics, experiencing a psychological vulnerability to the social pressure of
homophobic blackmail. Antithetically, the homoerotic passion between Basil and Dorian
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is unrequited and innocent. Basil cannot be swayed, he is too moral, and also Dorian may
not feel that he deserves Basil’s love due to his self-hatred.
The Homoerotic Gaze
As has been argued in the beginning of this chapter, the homoerotic gaze is a powerful
indicator of homosexual attraction, even if this attraction is never publicly acknowledged
by the characters. The same-sex love affairs between Rowland and Roderick, Basil and
Dorian are unavowed. In both cases, the remnants of this homoerotic passion are solely
visible in the intense gaze. Primarily, it is Dorian’s and Roderick’s beautiful effeminate
poise, youth, and importantly, performance, which are so appealing to men. As Butler
states behaviour, poise, and gestures produce an effect, thereby arousing sexual desire.
This production takes place on the surface of the body, meaning on its exterior. This
means that the Roderick’s and Dorian’s womanly “performative” body articulate a new
form of gender identity that is the amalgamation of female and male gender play, which is
very much comparable with Salomé’s androgynous sex, representing the transfigured
dandy.
Dorian does everything in his power to attract the homoerotic gazes of men, so much so
that he even sells his soul to maintain his youthful appearance. Dorian’s “gracious and
comely form” (Dorian Gray 8) is not only what catches the attention of Basil. Dorian’s
charm is also in his dandified character, delicate effeminacy, and refined aesthetic taste
reflected in the female conventions of his dress, like an “elaborate,” “silk-embroidered
cashmere wool” and “dressing gown” (Dorian Gray 110). Dorian lures Basil with his
“mode of dressing” and his “reproduc[tion] of a “graceful” “accidental charm,” a
“particular styl[e] that from time to time he affected” (Dorian Gray 150). Dorian, like
Wilde, and the dandies in general made a space for a new form of gender identity and
performance, which is effete and graceful. Thus, overall, Dorian’s feminized gender
performance and effete exterior arouse homoeroticism. Importantly, Basil’s homoerotic
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passion for Dorian, similarly to Rowland’s for Roderick, not only manifests itself in his
attachment to his admired friend and concern for him, but also in his homoerotic gaze as
he cannot muster enough courage to act aggressively sexually. He is too principled and
too much an exemplary model, like Rowland.
Similarly to Dorian, it is Roderick’s effeminate exterior, poise and behavior that charm
his mentor, Rowland:
He emphasized his conversation with great dashes and flourishes of a light silvertipped walking stick, and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of those
slouched sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or
Carolinian of romance. When his hat was on he was very picturesque […] this was
visible in his talk. (RH 65)
Roderick is also an “excellent mimic,” his “sonorous twang,” “see-saw gestures” (65) and
“aristocratic temperament” (68) - indicative of moral laxity and effeteness, have quite an
effect on Rowland. Like Dorian, he is “acutely sensitive” and has something “tender and
divine of unspotted” in him (68). His youth is “beautiful” and “supple,” but “restless”
(69). The “delicacy” of his “structure” seems “graceful” even “when they [are] most
inconvenient” (69).
Rowland “had an indefinable attraction [to] exuberant, confident youth” (RH 68). The
first time Rowland meets Roderick, he is struck by Roderick’s pose, “vivacity,” “delicate
countenance,” and his “extraordinary beauty” (RH 64) – “delicacy” and “beauty” being
words that are generally applied to women rather than men and thus creating a subtle
undertone of erotic attraction in the narrative. More conventionally, he perceives Roderick
to be “remarkably handsome” (RH 64); the emphasis put on Roderick’s exterior again
indicates that the mentor is evidently taken with the physical effete beauty of the young
artist. Likewise, it is Dorian’s beautiful effete youth and performance that captivated both
Basil and Lord Henry:
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Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his
finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair[…]all the
candour of youth was there[…] No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.
(Dorian Gray 23- italics added)
This passage not only reflects Dorian’s effeteness and androgyny. The striking similarity
to the passage from Roderick Hudson rests upon the emotive language and the choice of
words which readers would normally associate with the portrayal of heterosexual passion.
Hair fetishism, an emphasis on red lips, and on white complexion can frequently be found
in both authors’ works, which in normal cases, depict a man’s obsession with a woman’s
beauty. It is this very familiarity of the elements in the descriptions that makes the
passages decipherable for the reader as veiled declarations of (homosexual) love.
The gaze is a way of both indulging in homoerotic fantasies and evading the dangers of
homosexual consummation. Roderick’s effeminate body and performance are constantly
on display, arousing homoerotic desire, and thus luring Rowland’s erotic gaze. The reader
is also put into the position of a voyeur, invited to enjoy and indulge in the spectacle of
male beauty. Roderick’s first appearance, when he is wearing a “white linen suit,” a
“bright red cravat, holding “a pair of yellow kid gloves” and a “light silver-tipped walking
stick,” showcases a “tall slender young fellow, with “a singularly mobile and intelligent
face” which is “remarkably handsome,” thus attracts attention in a very striking way (RH
64). Roderick is evidently depicted as a dandified male, so evidently, he also “had a
natural relish for brilliant accessories,” (RH 65) similarly to Dorian. The sculptor’s attire
blatantly displays the essential requisites of the aesthetic and decadent movements, for it
reflects grace and the elaborate aesthetic fashion that was the focus of their attention.
Moreover, his dress exhibits the seditious gender notions of these movements. Roderick’s
attractive dandiacal poise and womanly performance are subjected to a lengthy visual
gaze and even James’s narrative gaze lingers on the body of this “beautiful, supple,
restless, bright-eyed animal, whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the
tremulous delicacy of its structure [that] seem graceful […]” (RH 68). The allusion to his
‘animal’ like body references Roderick’s erotic sex appeal. He is very much described
like the decadent dandies, as his effete self-conscious performance suggests. The
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narrator’s description of the artist focuses almost obsessively on Roderick’s impeccable
body, which draws Rowland’s (and indeed the reader’s) gaze. Rowland’s desire for
Roderick is present to the very end, he even gazes at Roderick’s deceased body,
concluding that his face is still “admirably handsome” (RH 386). Rowland wants to
engrave his friend’s figure into his memory, so that he can recall Roderick’s image
whenever he wishes.
Rowland’s first reaction and look at Roderick is remarkable and worth noticing:
Rowland was struck at first only with [Roderick’s] responsive vivacity, but in a
short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome. The features were admirably
chiselled and finished, and a frank smile played over them as gracefully as a
breeze among flowers […] and certainly there was life enough in his eye to
furnish an immorality! It was a generous dark grey eye, in which there came and
went a sort of kindling glow […] (RH 59)
In the quote above, we can see the textual representation of the impression of the
“textualized eye” (Savoy 23) and the cruising act as an “optical procedure of negotiating
sexual contact” (Savoy 23). Rowland like Basil is addicted to the sight of his protégé. At
one point in the novel, Roderick demands of Rowland to stop watching him. Unlike
Dorian, Roderick is stirred by Rowland’s homoerotic gaze to the point of becoming
paranoid and even homophobic, for he exclaims, “You are watching me; I don’t want to
be watched!” (RH130). Rowland is a voyeur right from the beginning. He incessantly
cruises Roderick: “The young man [Roderick] sprang up with alacrity, and Rowland
coming forward to shake hands, had a good look at him in the light projected from the
parlour window” (RH 63). Besides the admiring gaze of Rowland, the reference to
“immorality” and the “kindling glow” in Roderick’s eyes is an unconscious homosexual
invitation, provoking and exciting a response.
The above examples signal a sexual attraction and interest on Rowland’s part through
the oblique direction of his subtle gaze. Subtle, because as Savoy notes, “the fear of
detection which restricts the affiliation to mere interplay of gazes and masks” (Savoy 23)
is a necessity when same-sex passion is concerned because of the existence of
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homophobia. Its experience by homosexuals has influenced the gay literary history and its
concealment.
The homoerotic gaze, invoked by male effeminate beauty and performance, also leaves
its mark on Dorian Gray. Basil’s account of his meeting with Dorian is centered around
the homoerotic gaze, “suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose
personality has so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes
met again” (Dorian Gray 14). Basil is only fulfilled when given the opportunity to fix his
eyes on the beautiful young man, “If you wish me never to look at your picture again, I
am content. I have always you to look at” (Dorian Gray 132). It is apparent that Basil
displays sexual interest in Dorian. Basil’s implementation of the gaze is an “optical
procedure” (Savoy 23) to initiate sexual contact.
Overall, the passages that have been highlighted from Roderick Hudson and Dorian
Gray confirm that the homosocial environment depicted is potentially homoerotic. As has
been noted, there is often an “indistinguishability” between the homosocioal and the
homosexual (Sedgwick, Between Men 90-3). The only difference is that men participating
in homosocial spheres are only subconsciously aware of their same-sex passions.
The Moral Exemplar
While the previous chapters have focused on the striking similarities between two novels
that are often regarded to be opposites, the present sub-chapter will deal with an aspect in
James’s novel that does not feature prominently in Wilde’s, despite the moral figure of
Basil. As has been pointed out, it is obvious that in Roderick Hudson Rowland is cast and
placed in the role of a moral exemplar. James utilizes Rowland as a mentor and a moral
commentator. Antithetically, the faults of Roderick highlight his moral isolation and
immaturity, both of which harm artistic production and success. James emphasizes
Roderick’s infantile nature when he introduces him as “a child” (RH 3). Roderick’s
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introspection is a preoccupation with what he is and should be. This preoccupation
stimulates his social alienation and moral isolation. He cannot reconcile himself to the
requirements of living as a responsible adult, he remains a child nurtured by his devoted
patron, Rowland, out of both moral obligation and same-sex passion. This allows James
to introduce his tutorial on human relations and late-Victorian morality. Fictions that
include adolescent characters tend to instruct their readers because the readers are invited
to participate in the psychological dilemmas that encapsulate moral and emotional issues.
By describing Roderick’s faults and misdemeanors, the narrator engages the reader in
ethical questions. Rowland, the patron and exemplar, holds an important position for
James because the advice of the patron contributes to the definition of the nation’s culture
(Savoy 24). Thus, Rowland’s role is an important one, a role that includes counsel and
good influence, in spite of the fact that he is a passive homosexual, like Basil. Rowland’s
obligation, like Basil’s, is to teach and civilize constructively and sometimes implement
control. Thus, a good patron does not only support the artist financially, but sets an
example and dedicates his life to nurturing the weaker. Rowland carries this out
impeccably. He sees patronage as an ethical duty. He commits himself to the principle
that he expects from Roderick. Rowland is, after all, of “Puritan stock” (RH 54).
Furthermore, he is “a master who set [a] high price on the understanding that he was to
illustrate the beauty of abstinence, not only by precept but by example” (RH 56).
James’s tutor deploys power (Savoy 25) and at the same time is also attracted to his male
bond. He wants to keep Roderick on a leash and control his every move. The idea of
exercising power over another may appear to be questionable and distasteful. However,
for James it is indispensable for art patrons and exemplars to improve their environment
and society. The successful mentor should be able to teach and profit at the same time,
bettering himself by bettering his pupil (Savoy 25).
The very first time that Rowland sees Roderick he has an urge to guide him. Rowland
notices that “something seemed to shine out of Hudson’s face as a warning against a
compliment of the idle, unpondered son” (RH 20). Rowland begins to dominate Roderick
by making Roderick agree to his conditions. He manages to persuade Roderick to leave
his home the very first day that he saw him. Similarly, Carlyle also advises young males
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to leave their mothers and their home and submit themselves to the instruction of a wiser
male. The (homoerotic) symbiotic relationship that develops between the two men
commences the moment that Roderick leaves home. Just like two plants intertwining, “if
Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil, Roderick also
surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local influence” (RH 157). The image
of the roots growing together side by side mirrors a shared experience (Savoy 25). This
shared experience is art and aesthetics, of course.
James introduces moral education at the level of conversation and through
exemplification. In Roderick Hudson, James constructs a delicate tale of morality and
self-negation. The text establishes, similarly to Carlyle’s selected texts for analysis that in
the long run egotism is a failure because it leads the individual to succumb to decadent
passions and desires. Rowland writes in a letter to Cecilia, “is it also that it makes a
failure in the arts?” (RH 359). Conflating the problems of ethics, aesthetics and egotism,
Rowland poses the big question of how the individual should negotiate between his or her
needs, desires, and society’s expectations. Roderick Hudson is a moralizing fable that
addresses this question with the hope of teaching by example and giving a moral picture
of life. This means that this text sets out to reflect a “set of principles” through the
impressions of life (Duquette 161).
In the opening scene of Roderick Hudson, Rowland’s cousin Cecilia introduces the
problems concerning the role of the exemplar of morality. “Bestir yourself, dear
Rowland,” she cries, “or we may be thought to think that virtue herself is setting a bad
example” (RH 169). To Cecilia Rowland seems to demonstrate “social usefulness;” he is
“intelligent,” “well informed,” “rich,” and “unoccupied” (RH 169). To be exact, Cecilia
proposes that Rowland is a person to do something on a large scale through which he will
be an example of morality and restraint to others. Rowland is expected to do something
“handsome” for his “fellow men” that will terminate and forestall the negative option of
“setting a bad example” (RH 169). Cecilia seems to maintain that any individual could
provide an example of what the others should be like. Rowland, however, is not set apart
from the group. “He is presented by Cecilia not as an idealized figure but as a member of
the community who serves within this context as an example” (Duquette 161). Cecilia’s
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concern for responsibility stresses that moral instruction is a calling (Duquette 161). Her
view of human interaction highlights that all individuals (at least those that are in a
socially distinct position) need to live with caution because they are models for their peers
(Haralson 42). Antithetically, Rowland holds that only an extraordinary individual, a great
artist, thinker, critic, and patron, has the prerogative to stand as an exemplar.
The moral position vocalized by Cecilia echoes nineteenth century “moral theories” that
obliged an individual to high standards of responsibility. W. K. Clifford would be a good
example, who argues in his essay entitled “The Ethics of Belief” that from each member
of society the highest moral standard should be expected, from “the leader of men” to the
“rustic” (Clifford 171) “Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her
children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it to pieces” (Clifford 171). He
further argues: “We all set examples for each other by our actions, thoughts, the objects
we value and what we cultivate. We all have the authority to impact our environment in
negative or positive ways” (Clifford 171). Clifford’s standard of belief is in connection
with the social aims of Anglo-American thought in the late nineteenth century that
articulated the essence of integrity.
The moral position that Cecilia bestows on Rowland first shocks him, therefore he
comments with surprise:
‘Heaven forbid,’ cried Rowland, ‘that I should set the examples of virtue! I am
quite willing to follow them, however, and if I don’t do something on the grand
scale, it is that my genius is altogether imitative, and that I have not recently
encountered any very striking models of grandeur.’ (RH 169)
Elizabeth Duquette claims that Rowland objects to communal responsibility because he is
just too humble at the beginning to think of himself as a moral exemplar (Duquette 163).
However, it may also be argued that Rowland’s thoughts on a moral exemplar are a lot
more idealized. For him, to be able to set an example he would have to be exceptionally
virtuous. While Cecilia proposes that all citizens are in the position of acting as models,
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Rowland thinks that only great role models have the right to be imitated. Only the person
with exceptional virtues is worthy of copying.
Soon after this subject is initiated by Cecilia, Rowland starts to entertain the notion that
he might, after all, be ideal in some way. He asks Cecilia, “Pray, what shall I do?” (RH
170). The narrator notes that Rowland is “wooed to egotism” (RH 170). He is
indoctrinated with the idea of the exemplary model, and religious renunciation. He
meditates on his own take on usefulness and comes to the conclusion that for him:
it would be the work of a good citizen to go abroad and with all expedition and
secrecy purchase certain valuable specimens of the Dutch and Italian schools as to
which he had received private proposals, and then present his treasures out of hand
to an American city, not known to aesthetic fame, in which at that time there
prevailed a good deal of fruitless aspiration toward an art museum. (RH 171)
Here, Rowland is not yet at the stage when he can rise above the mean and transcend
fashions even though the potency is there. James once said that “everyone had a kingdom
within himself- was potential sovereign, by divine right, over a multitude of inspirations
and virtues” (Edel, Essays 66).
Rowland’s decision to sponsor Roderick rather than purchasing valuable specimens and
exhibiting them is consistent with the drive for personal excellence and the endeavor of
obtaining a high moral standard. Rowland notes:
When it first occurred to me that I might start our young friend on the path of
glory, I felt as if I had an unimpeachable inspiration [...] I can’t do such things
myself, but when I see a young man of genius standing helpless and hopeless for
want of capita; I feel-and it’s not affection of humility […] it would give at least a
reflected usefulness to my own life to offer him his opportunity. (RH 198-99)
By sponsoring and patronizing Roderick, Rowland attains his ideal form of bliss that
caters to the sublimation of his homoerotic desire:
It seemed to him that the glow of happiness must be found in either action, of
some immensely solid kind, on behalf of an idea, or in producing a masterpiece of
one of the arts. Oftenest, perhaps, he wished he were a vigorous young man
without a penny. As it was, he could only buy pictures, and not paint them; and in
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the way Of action, he had to content himself with making a rule to render
Scrupulous moral justice to handsome examples o it in others. (RH 177)
Since Rowland cannot sublimate his energies into creating art, like Basil, he contents
himself with the admiration of art, rendering moral and aesthetic judgments of Roderick’s
actions and art making, and also acting as an exemplary role model/patron, thereby,
providing a sense of good taste and instruction on moral uprightness for his new artist
friend.
Cecilia is inquisitive and goes on probing Rowland about how he will guarantee the
moral security of his protégé. Rowland decides that it is his own example that will serve
as a good moral instruction for Roderick:
I believe that a man of genius owes as much defense to his passions as any other
man, but not a particular more, and I confess I have a strong conviction that the
artist is better for leading a quiet life. That is what I shall teach my protégé, as you
call him, by example as well as by precept. (RH 199)
Rowland asserts his capability to mold the young and beautiful artist actively and
passively. However as for the decadent Roderick this is a process that is problematic.
Roderick is convinced that “no school could be found conducted on principles sufficiently
rigorous” (RH 174). We learn that Rowland was educated at home “by a master who set a
high price on the understanding that he was to illustrate the beauty of abstinence not only
by precepts but by example” (RH 174).
Rowland is a little disturbed in the presence of Roderick’s mother, Mrs. Hudson, who
considers him “very exemplary.” “Rowland had an odd feeling at last that she had begun
to consider him very exemplary, and that she might make later some perturbing discovery.
He tried, therefore, to invent something that would prepare her to find him fallible. But he
could think of nothing” (RH 209). Rowland is perplexed by her judgment, but finds
nothing that would signal to Mrs. Hudson his incompetence for the exemplary role
because he has embraced the idea of his own exemplarity and the conviction that he can
be the best possible example for virtue (Duquette 166).
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Choosing to become an exemplar is not an easy task. It requires fortitude, perseverance,
renunciation, and dedication. In order to carry this out it is necessary to be focused and
not allow oneself to deviate from the set-out goal. Just as Carlyle communicates in his
works, James seems to believe that the stimuli for lack of focus and productive work are
women, and sexual intercourse. The conservation of Rowland’s male fluid is essential,
since according to Carlyle’s premise, it is the catalyst for (creative) work and moral
living. (Homo)erotic stimulation devalues man as it opens the floodgates of sexual desire,
turning male energy from productive labour to useless pleasure.
Antithetically, in Dorian Gray an education on decadence is in the forefront voiced by
Lord Henry, the philosopher of decadence, who succeeds in influencing Dorian for the
worse, not the better, supplanting the positive influence Basil might have exerted on the
young man. Indeed, in both Roderick Hudson and Dorian Gray the exemplars’
(Rowland’s and Basil’s) good influence does not prevail. These two moral mentors fail at
their task and are unsuccessful in preventing their disciples from their doom, for Roderick
and Dorian are too weak to reform themselves by choosing a life of virtue. Interestingly,
Wilde’s novel suggests, through Lord Henry that:
there is no such thing as a good influence […] All influence is immoral--immoral
from the scientific point of view […]Because to influence a person is to give him
one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural
passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins,
are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part
that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize
one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of
themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that
one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and
clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out
of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis
of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--these are the two
things that govern us. (24)
Instead of Basil’s advice on moral uprightness, Dorian took Lord Henry’s, which
“bewilder[ed]” (26) him initially; upon reading the Yellow book, which was passed on to
him by Lord Henry, he commenced following the promptings of his 'true self,' but was
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still in agony because of his homosexual panic and bad conscience. Even though Dorian
gave “form to every feeling,” and “reality to every dream” (Dorian Gray 25) he still did
not attain satisfaction and bliss as he suffered from “maladies of medievalism,” (Dorian
Gray 25), or in other words, homosexual panic. Lord Henry reaffirmed this when he
stated that the “bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself” (25). This fear was in fact
the cause of Dorian’s doom, which climaxed the moment that he repeatedly stabbed the
loathed portrait, which reflects his homosexual degeneracy.
It is paradoxical that Lord Henry’s cynicism about the hopelessness of moral influence
also seems to hold true for James’s novel, which is infused with moral lessons on
responsibility, sublimation and restraint. Roderick’s flair for entertainment, women, and
luxury is very much reprimanded by his mentor. Rowland, Roderick’s “sheep dog”
constantly acts as the young sculptor’s censor. Rowland sticks to him like glue, inhibiting
him from sculpting what he wishes, and even from marrying and eloping with his new
love, Christina Light. Rowland’s rigidity and intended “good influence” stifles the young
man. Whereas Roderick dies, Rowland, the rigid conservative, survives, who is obsessed
with moral codes and proper behaviour, for he sublimates his homoerotic passion into
mentorship. Similarly, Basil finds it liberating when he channels his same-sex passion
(aroused by Dorian) into art and mentorship alike.
The Abomination of Heterosexual Courtships
The Carlylean ideal of men participating in a male social sphere to gain wisdom is also
present in the novels by James and Wilde. Women are a danger to this utopian malebonding, therefore the female sex is barred from this male sphere and substituted by a
surrogate father. In Dorian’s case the surrogate fathers are Basil and Lord Henry and in
Roderick’s the surrogate father is Rowland. This is a necessity because by casting off the
female and by submitting oneself to a stronger male is how homosociality is realized.
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Rowland and Basil correspond to Carlyle’s exemplary figures, who avoid marriage and
sexual passion by transferring desire from the temptations of (homo)sexuality to
productive work and usefulness, in other words being a moral exemplar and patron to an
adored male friend. If we apply Carlyle’s premise, then Rowland’s and Basil’s celibacy
does not mean enervation, nor a psychic distortion, but something liberating and heroic.
In this view leading a life as a married man with sexual pleasure dissolves the self and
limits the useful, but at the same time also the homoerotic masculine plot. This is what
Rowland Mallet concurs with and even demands of Roderick.
Thus, it is not a coincidence that heterosexual romance and marriage in Roderick
Hudson, “The Lesson of the Master,” “The Author of Beltraffio,” “The Aspern Papers”
and Dorian Gray and Salomé are not illustrated positively. Wilde and James both avoid
the depictions of happy courtships in their novels. Furthermore, they both fail to portray
characters who can achieve the pleasures of fulfillment and consummated desire. Instead,
they focus on the horror of heterosexual intimacy and sexuality.
Another element in James’s and Wilde’s works that indicates a homosexual subtext is
the narratives’ refusal to eroticize heterosexual activity. The moment a heterosexual affair
is mentioned, right away the erotic component is denied. Sexual liaisons between
heterosexual couples get no exposure. James’s and Wilde’s works appear to be driven by
purity and restraint, where heterosexual relationships do not develop into anything
intimate and if they do, they are represented as degenerate. The first time that Roderick
sees Christina Light he is overwhelmed by her grace and exquisite beauty. Rowland, upon
seeing Roderick’s admiration for the young lady, takes charge and claims Miss Light to
be the incarnation of “Mephistopheles” (RH 110). Miss Light is stigmatized and referred
to as “dangerous” (RH 110). No leeway is given for heterosexual relationships to triumph.
Similarly, James’s “The Lesson of the Master” highlights the negative aspects of
heterosexual relationships. St. George’s, a renowned writer’s, cautionary notes about the
female sex and guidance save Paul Overt, an aspiring writer and an adamant admirer of
St. George, from conforming to heterosexuality: “Ask me anything in all the world. I’d
turn myself inside out to save you,” says St. George to Paul Overt, who thereupon
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succeeds in reconfiguring and liberating his homoerotic desire onto the aesthetic, just like
Basil and Rowland. Art forms a circuit of male to male communication that sublimates
male sexual energy and also sexualizes the aesthetic experience. The master-disciple
relationship obviously opens up the possibility of the transgressive homo-aesthetic where
homoeroticism is realized via the making of art, which may provoke homoerotic desire. In
conservative late-Victorian England this was a subtle means by which homosexuals could
legitimately experience and realize their homoerotic desire. Obviously, the opposite sex
threatens the dispersion of this male desire, in both Wildean and Jamesian works, the
female either endeavors to interfere with or censures this process, thus heterosexuality is
not at all favoured. This problem is stated openly in the advice St. George gives his
disciple, Paul Overt:
[Paul Overt asks St. George]"You think, then, the artist shouldn't marry?" "He
does so at his peril—he does so at his cost."[ answers St. George] "Not even when
his wife's in sympathy with his work?" [asks Paul Overt] "She never is—she can't
be! Women haven't a conception of such things."[answers St. George] “Surely
they on occasion work themselves,” Paul objected.
“Yes, very badly indeed. Oh of course, often, they think they understand, they
think they sympathise. Then it is they’re most dangerous. Their idea is that you
shall do a great lot and get a great lot of money. Their great nobleness and virtue,
their exemplary conscientiousness as British females, is in keeping you up to that
[…] (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm)
Here, the hostility towards heterosexual relations is voiced very openly. Women are said
to sympathize with male art, however art, indeed, is conceptualized as an exclusively
male concern. In St. George’s view, similarly to Lord Henry’s, women are also obviously
incapable of comprehending the sublimity of an artist’s mission, despite the fact that they
(erroneously) believe that they are capable of understanding essential things that pertain
to art. This attitude rejects the need for women’s sentimentality and her role as man’s
helpmeet, and thus the lip service paid to women’s supposed “nobleness,” “virtue,” and
“exemplary conscientiousness” is in fact ironically used to pejoratively allude to women’s
materialistic and greedy nature. This passage from “The Lesson of the Master” illustrates
most clearly and unequivocally, of all the texts analyzed, the rejection of marriage and the
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contempt for women as hindrances to artistic attainment and as sources of distraction for
men. The obvious alternatives to marriage are homosexuality (an alternative that lateVictorian laws and norms prohibited) and art onto which homoeroticism is reflected in the
analyzed works of Wilde, James and Carlyle. Heterosexual relationships jeopardize male
“artistic integrity,” thus the artist must choose. He either marries and cheapens his art, like
St. George, or takes another course; living a celibate life, permitting the artist to transfer
his homoerotic desire onto art, which is perfectly exemplified by Paul Overt, Basil,
Rowland and even Carlyle’s Abbot Samson. St. George manages to save Paul Overt from
cheapening his art, however, he is remiss in saving himself:
“As an artist, you know, I’ve married for money.” Paul stared and even blushed a
little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his host, observing the expression of
his face, dropped a quick laugh and pursued […] “I refer to the mercenary muse
whom I led to the altar of literature. Don’t, my boy, put your nose into that yoke.
The awful jade will lead you a life!” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898h/898-h.htm)
The passage deliberately blurs the line of who is actually meant by the “awful jade”
leading the married man “a life”: the allegory for either the mercenary (female) muse or
the actual heiress he married. St. George like Lord Henry speaks about how one should
not marry and submit oneself to one’s passions, but he on the other hand reclines to
follow his own advice. He is a late-Victorian, like Lord Henry, who lives in a happy
marriage, and paradoxically plays the revolutionary and decadent man in what he says,
but outside his male circle behaves according to the norms of the conservative and
‘appropriate’ late-Victorians. St. George devalues his work, not only by involving his
wife in his art making, but also by having to please the late-Victorian conservative art
critics. St George’s wife has been making his bargains with his publishers for the last
twenty
years,
which
is
the
reason
why
he
is
“pretty
well
off”
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm). Paul Overt initially is convinced
that this is the secret to success, however St. George informs him otherwise:
“Success?”—St. George’s eyes had a cold fine light. “Do you call it success to be
spoken of as you’d speak of me if you were sitting here with another artist—a
young man intelligent and sincere like yourself? Do you call it success to make
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you blush—as you would blush!—if some foreign critic (some fellow, of course I
mean, who should know what he was talking about and should have shown you he
did, as foreign critics like to show it) were to say to you: ‘He’s the one, in this
country, whom they consider the most perfect, isn’t he?’ Is it success to be the
occasion of a young Englishman’s having to stammer as you would have to
stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made
people wriggle to another tune. Do try it!”
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm)
St. George is insinuating that real success is when a writer awakens the readers’
homoeroticism. However, to truly write in a queer manner, one must sacrifice the woman.
Paul inquires from St. George:
Are there no women who really understand—who can take part in a sacrifice?”
[St. George responding] “How can they take part? They themselves are the
sacrifice. They’re the idol and the altar and the flame.
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm)
Obviously, the woman must be shed, for it is only then that the queer self is revealed in
one’s work. Similarly, in Dorian Gray women are seen to be a threat to art and
individualism. Lord Henry also notes to Dorian: “[women] are charmingly artificial, but
they have no sense of art” (Dorian Gray 119). The female sex’s influence leads to inertia
and Lord Henry makes sure to communicate this thought to Dorian, who is considering
marriage: "the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely
that he loses all possible interest in life. If you had married this girl, you would have been
wretched” (Dorian Gray 116). Lord Henry is convinced that marriage threatens a man’s
individualism, which is an important constituent for the creation of art. Lord Henry
ascertains that “individualism has really the higher aim […] Modern morality consists in
accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the
standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality” (92). “Ordinary people,” like
married men, can wait incessantly “till life disclosed to them its secrets” (Dorian Gray
92), however, “to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life [are] revealed […] this [is] the
effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dea[l] immediately with the
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passions and the intellect” (Dorian Gray 92). So, based on Lord Henry’s and St. George’s
premise, it seems that the single queer male artist is more likely to be initiated into the
secret realm of art. Paul is certainly keen on appropriating this secret so he takes his leave
and breaks his contact with Marian Fancourt, for the woman whom he has been courting
would only hinder him.
Similarly, Dorian Gray depicts heterosexual relationships in a pejorative manner. The
moment that Dorian speaks of his love for Sybil, Lord Henry interjects and starts
criticizing women. Wilde’s novel, just like James’s also avoids the illustration of happy
marriages. Margaret Devereux, a captivating woman, made all the men “frantic” by
eloping with a penniless man. Soon after the couple’s elopement, the “poor chap” was
killed in a duel at Spa, only a few months after the marriage. Later, Margaret died, too,
within a year (Dorian Gray 42). Just like James’s novel, Dorian Gray declines to
eroticize any heterosexual activity, including marriages and even courtships. Lord Henry,
bluntly, verbalizes his disapproval with the institution of marriage, saying “Never marry a
woman with straw-coloured hair Dorian […] because they are so sentimental […] never
marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious;
both are disappointed” (Dorian Gray 57-58). Like Rowland, Lord Henry sees women as a
threat and thus undermines them. “No woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex.
They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the
triumph of matter over mind” (Dorian Gray 57-58). Lord Henry devalues and
commodifies the female sex by emphasizing their superficiality. The Carlylean monk
manages to shed his ego and dedicate his life to his art specifically within a homosocial
bond. Lord Henry similarly notes that marriage makes people “retain their egotism and
add to it many other egos” (Dorian Gray 88), which is a drawback for man’s spiritual
development. The Wildean, Jamesian, and Carlylean texts analyzed seem to concur and
imply that the female sex threatens the spiritual bond between men and the production of
valuable and refined art and thus is a source of danger. Instead of eroticizing heterosexual
bonds (for the above reasons); both James and Wilde, as has been shown, eroticizes
power.
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In Roderick Hudson, similarly to Dorian Gray, the proliferation of violence within the
institution of marriage is quite shocking. The novel is full of beatings and physical and
mental cruelty. This cruelty is located within the institution of marriage. The first example
of such physical victimization is the wife of the portrait painter known to Roderick’s
mother, who “used to drink raw brandy and beat his wife” (RH, 76). Madame Grandoni’s
marriage is just as unfortunate. Her husband is a Neapolitan music master ten years her
junior, with no fortune whatsoever, only his fiddle-bow. He was “suspected of using the
fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction. He had finally run off with a prima
donna assoluta, who it was to be hoped had given him a taste of the quality implied in her
title” (RH121). The non- reciprocity in marital heterosexual bonds is a “working
assumption in the novel” says Stevens (78).
Surprisingly, it is not only the husbands who administer physical aggression in the novel,
but the women, too. Madame Grandoni recollects a story about Herr Schaafgans, a
painter, whose wife “beat[s] him […] and […] make[s] him go and fetch the dirty linen”
(RH 126). Christina Light, the gorgeous, spoiled young woman, has a “(matri)lineage of
quite shameless husband beaters” (RH 152). Her maternal grandfather, also a painter
named ‘Savage’ ‘‘‘used to make everyone laugh, he was such a mild, melancholy, pitiful
old gentleman.’ He had the misfortune of marrying ‘a horrible wife, an Englishwoman
who had been on stage,’ who (as Madame Grandioni tells Rowland Mallet) ‘used to beat
poor Savage with his mahlstick, and, when the domestic finances were low, lock[ed] him
up in his studio and t[old] him he couldn’t come out until he had painted half a dozen of
his daubs […] She would go forth with the key in her pocket’” (RH 152).
It is insinuated that Christina’s mother may have even been a husband killer, no wonder
she is named Miss Savage (Stevens 79). Her husband, a man of property, “had not been
married three years when he was drowned in the Adriatic, no one ever knew how” (RH
152). Her relationship with the Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa, Christina’s father, was also
unordinary. He held her bouquets, cleaned her gloves and shoes, took care of business and
“f [ought] her battles with the shopkeepers” (RH 153). The “shabby treatment” (RH 318)
of the Cavaliere is mentioned in relation to the fetishistic attachment to her gloves and
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shoes. Madame Grandoni says that Mrs. Light only “pretends to be a great lady,” but in
reality even a “washerwoman” is more worthy (RH 153).
The “physical cruelty” depicted in the novel is correlated with “psychic cruelty,”
(Stevens 78) which also permeates the novel. We are let in on the fact that Roderick’s
mother is a “timid tremulous woman” who is “pins and needles about her son.” In
addition, her husband, a Virginian gentleman and “an owner of lands and slaves […]
drank himself to death” and squandered the family’s money (RH 67). The relationship of
the parents is detailed in greater depth. The mother, who is regarded as an angel by
Rowland, is an “unhappy woman” who “found nothing to oppose to her husband’s rigid
and consistent will” (RH 57).
“James quite explicitly relates the volatile entanglement of his three main characters to
the sordid dynamics of the relationships of their parents, although these connections are
far from systematic” (Stevens 78). Rowland and Roderick have no ties with their fathers,
but they are both in awe of their mothers. The fathers are not depicted as attractive
characters. Rowland’s father is characterized as having a “chip of the primal Puritan
block, a man with an icy smile and a stony frown, with a punishing superego and a tight
fist” (RH 54). It is said that Rowland’s consciousness has been “chilled by the menace of
long punishment for brief transgression” (RH 54). No wonder that Rowland has a strong
urge to identify and assimilate to conventional expectations and rules. Antithetically,
Roderick’s lack of willpower alludes to his inclination for transgression. Rowland, with a
cry, claims that ‘[he] is very weak!’ (RH 282).
In Christina’s family, it is also the father with the superego that moulds her into a femme
fatale (Stevens 79-80). In this text all the women are cruel who seize Roderick from
Rowland. Christina’s cruelty is confirmed by the narrative, “Women are said by some
authorities to be cruel […]” (RH 336). In addition, Christina represents the dynamics of
evil activity, and is seen as ‘the incarnation of evil’ (RH 110). Her beauty and femininity
are her true dangers and a threat to male friendship (Stevens 80). Her feminine grace gives
her the power to lure in the man she casts an eye on. At Madame Grandoni’s party, the
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narrator’s description of her is reminiscent of the portrayal of Roderick’s very first
appearance, when he is also the focal point of the spectator’s gaze:
They were of course observing her. Standing in the little circle of lamplight, with
the hood of an Eastern burnous shot with silver threads falling back from her
beautiful head, one hand gathering together its voluminous shimmering folds and
the other playing with the silken top-knot on the uplifted head of her poodle, she
was a figure of radiant picturesqueness. She seemed to be a sort of extemporized
tableau vivant.
(RH 290)
When the narrative later pauses on Roderick, he is taken aback and is withdrawn. His
senses are numbed and his body becomes deathlike:
Roderick lay motionless except that he slightly turned his head towards his friend
[Rowland]. He was smelling a large rose, which he continued to present to his
nose. In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but his handsome
eyes had an extraordinary brilliancy. He let them rest for some time on Rowland,
lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual swoon, whose perception should be
slowly ebbing back to temporal matters. ‘Oh, I am not ill,’ he said at last. ‘I have
never been better.’ (RH 302)
At the end of this scene Roderick seems to be taken ill due to his fear of transgressing.
and succumbing to sexual desire. The prophesy made by Gloriani comes true, ‘You will
become weak. You will have to take to violence, to contortions […] (RH 125). It cannot
go unnoticed that Roderick continuously glances back at Rowland, as if he knew that he
will have to choose between Christina and Rowland and that now his close, bonded
relationship with his patron and mentor will be relinquished, for, as has been noted, the
female sex is depicted as the greatest evil force against the ideal homosocial/erotic
relationship. The woman’s stimulation of eroticism devalues man, opening the floodgates
of sexual heterosexual desire, turning male energy from productive labour to pleasure and
as a result emasculating man. Asceticism is a masochistic economy, in which desire is
never gratified and always punished (Stevens 80).
Hugh Stevens notes that the novel opposes a “current of desire to a current of cruelty,
flowing in different directions around an erotic triangle. Each love object is cruel to the
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lover by turning their attention to another object. The dominant configuration of the
triangle is certainly that in which Rowland is the spectator” (Stevens 81). He is the voyeur
of Christiana’s and Roderick’s flirtatious innuendos. As has been suggested before,
Rowland’s suppression of his desire stems from a moral conviction that respects the lateVictorian norms. Stevens even claims that the unsuccessful love affair between Roderick
and Christina eroticizes Rowland’s suffering (Stevens 80). “This suffering is subsumed
within what might be called, variously, an economy of cruelty, of beating, of pain, of
need,” thus an economy of masochism (Stevens 80). The cruel Christina is taking great
pains to attract the patron and to separate the “sheep-dog Rowland” from Roderick and
obstruct and interrupt the union of the two men. Rowland soon realizes this, thus in
chapter thirteen of the novel, Rowland steps in to ruin the flirtatious coquetry of Roderick
and Christina, with the intention of saving their idealistic homosocial relationship.
The economy of masochism stems from unrequited love and ungratified desire.
Rowland’s desire for Roderick and Roderick’s desire for Christina come “full triangle” in
Christina’s desire for Rowland, which is elusively presented (Stevens 80), with Christina
writing him notes asking him to ‘Begin and respect me!’ (RH 235) and the Cavaliere
informing Rowland that he is ‘the only man whose words she remembers’ (RH 305). At
one point it is Roderick who point this out to the reader. Roderick, at the end of the novel,
alludes to Rowland’s “obtuse” treatment of Christina, who ‘took a fancy’ to him (RH
374). Rowland is criticized for not having the “impulse” to “strike a blow for one’s
passions” and for giving up a “lovely woman” due to “conscience” (RH 374). These
abrupt outbursts point at the masochistic and self-negating elements in the text.
Overall, in both works, the heterosexual relationships, love affairs, and marriages are
depicted as institutions that malfunction and corrode easily, in fact, even go malignant. It
is not a coincidence that the hostile and aggressive husbands and fathers in Roderick
Hudson are artists and painters, with the exception of Rowland’s and Roderick’s fathers.
Brutality, physical, and mental cruelty, are the side effects of marriage. For artists,
marriage is an institution that resembles a cage. It limits and hinders man from prolific
production. The ideal social context for Wilde’s and James’s male characters would be a
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homosocial partnership, in a distanced location that allows the production of work and
chaste male affection. Sexual intercourse with women is thought of as a hindrance, and
something entirely unattractive. James, Wilde, and Carlyle insinuate this through their
paradigmatic problematic heterosexual bonds, which are juxtaposed to an idealized
depiction of homosocial communities.
Closing Thoughts
In spite of the manifold similarities between Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson, the
moral of these two novels is in opposition. Henry James’s intention is purification, and
communicating late-Victorian moral standards, whereas Wilde’s intention in Dorian Gray
is subversion and to unveil the dogmas of decadence and aestheticism. Wilde beckons the
readers in the Preface of Dorian Gray to put morals aside, so he details, “those who find
beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated […] they are the elect to whom
beautiful things mean only Beauty” (Dorian Gray 5). For Wilde, “no artist has ethical
sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style”
(Dorian Gray 5). Antithetically, Roderick Hudson is a very ethical novel denoting moral
consciousness and negation. The following quote perfectly indicates the drama pertaining
to same-sex love:
[…] though there was no reason on earth (unless I except one, presently to be
mentioned) why Rowland should not, at Northampton, have conceived a passion,
or as near an approach to one as he was capable of, for a remarkable woman there
suddenly dawning on his sight, a particular fundamental care was required for the
vivification of that possibility. The care, unfortunately, had not been skillfully
enough taken, in spite of the later patching-up of the girl’s figure. We ail to accept
it, on the actual showing, as that of a young person irresistible at any moment and
above all irresistible at any moment of the liveliest other preoccupation, as that of
the weaver (even the highly conditioned) spell that the narrative imputes to her.
The spell of the attraction is cast upon young men by young women in all sorts of
ways, and the novel has no more constant office than to remind us of that. But
Mary Garland’s doesn’t, indubitably, convince us; any more than we are truly
convinced, I think, that Rowland’s destiny, or say his nature, would have made
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him accessible at the same hour to two quite distinct commotions, even a very
deep one, of his whole personal economy. (RH 47)
The narrator reminds the reader of the “spell of attraction cast upon young men […] by
young women.” Apparently, Roderick Hudson surmounted and overcame this spell. James
sees a danger in the first preoccupation. If the “spell of attraction cast upon young men by
women,” is the other preoccupation then most likely the first preoccupation is same-sex
love. The narrator neglects to allude to what the first preoccupation is specifically. The
only thing that he discloses and unveils is that each of these commotions of sensibility
must be exclusive of other commotions. Most likely the strong “vibration” produced by
Roderick is the “disabling force” that “prevents” Mary Garland from producing a reaction
in Rowland (Graham 128). James proposes that the “dangers of verisimilitude” stem from
the difficulty of controlling same-sex love and heterosexual love –the other preoccupation
(RH 47) - and also from the incompatibility of the different vibrations “to walk hand in
hand […] The novel’s failure to reproduce and advocate the law of the attractiveness of
young women to young men opens up a discursive space in which the failure of young
men to comply with this law might be articulated” (Stevens 87). Cecilia does not succeed
in showing Rowland a nice girl, but a nice boy instead, namely Roderick, an attractive
young man whose “spell of attraction is cast upon young men” (RH 47). At the end of the
novel, Roderick’s death is paralleled with Rowland’s survival and endurance. Rowland
survives most likely content with bachelorhood and its prospects, allowing him to find
another male friend with whom he could connect in the near future.
For Rowland life is fraught with temptations that have been sublimated into aesthetics.
Rowland has never been active in his life, he has is not acquainted with taking an
initiative. His religion has only taught him self-denial and negation. As James Eli Adams
maintains in Dandies and Desert Saints, discipline and asceticism allow Rowland to keep
his acquisitive impulses in check and to lose himself in the flood of aesthetic impressions.
Rowland’s morality “makes a virtue of necessity,” (192-94) conserving his force for the
most sublime aesthetic and philosophic aims. Rowland channeling libidinal energy into
exalted aims is a way of safeguarding himself from falling into sin and from suffering.
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Rowland’s and Basil’s objections to transgressive desires manifest themselves in selfcensorship and sublimation, where the libidinal energies flow into channels of “moral
passion” and “moral energy” (RH 205, 151). “These reactively reinforced currents are
continually in flux, recharged and fagged by contact with the electric current of feeling
that Roderick excites in Rowland” (Graham 124). The narrator adds, “he felt just now
more than ever that a fine moral agitation, adding a zest to his life, is the inevitable
portion of those who, themselves unendowed, yet share romantically the pursuits of the
inspired” (RH 151). According to Graham, Rowland’s effort to attain perfection by
repressing his sexual instincts echo and reiterate Freud’s “pleasure principle.” Rowland
gains excitement by the tension produced by his demand for recognition. No wonder he
endures the suffering that Roderick subjects him to. Graham is convinced that:
Freud’s economic viewpoint sheds light on Mallet’s unconscious conflation of
love and money. Rowland intends to spare himself the unremunerative outlay of
feeling. In a hermetically sealed psyche, one that invests the libido into the ego
and pays none of it out in object- […] there is no dissipation and no expenditure,
and the level of energy available for psychic work ( repression, displacement, and
abreaction) remains constant. Sublimation assists in the process of maintaining
constancy by keeping excitation in check. (Graham 124)
Thus, Rowland’s and Bail’s sublimation is a triumph of the psyche and the subordination
of instincts and desires. Cultural sublimation, which is “siphoning the libido into
acceptable outlets while preserving the intensity of the displaced aim, as in the artist’s
embodiment of a fantasy,” is a better option (Graham 125). Certainly, displacement
cannot be extended indefinitely and incessantly, it is sure to have consequences. Energy
cannot be conserved and saved for an unlimited time, the sublimation of Eros needs to
reroute the libidinal energies into accepted channels of activity. The amorous longings
that are not sublimated remain cerebral and therefore become a “masochistic economy,”
since the focus is on prolonging the sensation rather than achieving an end pleasure by
sublimation (Graham 125). As has been noted, this masochistic economy and
deterioration may be witnessed in Rowland’s weakness at one point in the novel:
Rowland’s “collapse of his moral energy;” something that had been flowing for two years
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now had “a breadth of its own seemed at last to submit to shrinkage and thinness” (RH
316). Roderick Hudson prefigures and highlights the unpreventable crisis that the pressure
of the sublimated sexual drives may cause. Rowland felt that he was too drawn by
passion, so he rerouted his same-sex passions into aesthetics and ethics. As Bersani
accentuates in his work entitled The Freudian Body, Rowland’s aesthetic sublimation was
more than just a defense against illicit and transgressive passion; it was a preventative for
sexual excitation, too. Sublimation for Rowland is the very promise and even guarantee to
a rich spiritual pleasure. Bersani proposes that sublimation is an “extension of desire” and
not a repressive substitute (Bersani 33-34). Furthermore, Bersani argues that both
Roderick and Rowland exemplify tensions of sexual excitation. Rowland, of course,
endeavors to sublimate his homosexual tensions into art and also into the amelioration of
Roderick’s character, with the intention of suppressing what is “beastly” in him (RH 39).
To sum up, the similarities between Wilde’s and James’s novels pertain to the
importance of the male gaze and homosociality, indicating erotic desire, the vilification of
women and marriage, the depiction of effete dandiacal males, the presence of loving male
mentors wishing to act as moral exemplars to the young protagonists, and the failure of
both mentors in saving their charges from ruin. Both works display homoeroticism
covertly because Wilde and James even more so, were aware of the consequences of
acting in a sexually deviant manner. Rowland’s intense desire that lives beneath the
surface undermines the popular categorization of James as being asexual. It is obvious
that both works addressed homoerotic desire within society’s limits even though the
moral of these two works differs. Dorian Gray infers through its dandies that hedonism is
a necessary part of life, thereby emphasizing sensorial values in a more positive light,
whereas James’s text extols conservative values (by virtue of Rowland) and devalues
decadence, although playing with homosexual titillation. In the final sub-chapters, the
presence of fetishism in James’s short fiction will be discussed with the purpose of
showing that these works evince surprising similarities with Wilde’s texts in depicting
multiple forms of behaviour that displaced sexual intercourse by the process of
perversion.
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IV. Homoeroticism and Fetishism in James’s Short Fiction
James’s short fiction also exhibits surprising similarities with Wilde’s “degenerate”
decadent novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and his novella: Salomé (1894).
Wilde’s and James’s works both embrace homo-aesthetics, subversive gender
performance, homosociality, decadence, same-sex passion, fetishistic indulgences, and
gendered metaphors conflated with phallic imagery.
As has been shown in the analysis of Roderick Hudson, James displays sexuality only
covertly since he knew the grave consequences of writing in a sexually deviant manner.
Nonetheless, James depicted multiple forms of behaviour that displaced sexual
intercourse by the “practice of perversion[s]” (Cannon 64). James’s and Wilde’s fictional
characters may find sexual perversions in music, food, objects, art, and religion, and in
unexpected objects of desire. Repression in late-Victorian times was a stimulus for
channeling libidinal energies into uncensored domains. James managed to find avenues
for the “transferal of libidinal energies” that Victorian society overlooked or did not
recognize (Cannon 64), thus James in a way also cooperated in the subversion of lateVictorian morality in a more austere and cautious manner as Wilde. James explores his
characters’ yearnings cautiously. He is a writer who has a tendency for fetishizing things
that are dead; in this he is comparable with his contemporary, Wilde, who also depicted
deflections from “normal outlets onto art objects” (Freedman, Professions 149), where the
normal sex object is replaced with an object that is unsuitable for procreation. Fetishism
may include visual satisfaction of an object or even physical contact like smelling, kissing
and touching.
Fetishism appeals to James’s marginalized male characters and allows them to
experience homoerotic “non genital pleasures” (Cannon 81). For example, Rowland’s
obsession with male nudes, in Roderick Hudson – just like Basil’s fascination with
Dorian’s portrait in The Picture of Dorian Gray – is a sign of displaced homoeroticism.
Art that portrays male figures gives Rowland and Basil visual satisfaction. Rowland’s and
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Basil’s weakness for the male figures triggers their admiration for male youth (Roderick
and Dorian).
Homoerotic desire in James’s novella, “The Aspern Papers” (1888) is also mediated
homo-aesthetically through works of art and with the help of two women (Miss Juliana
and Tina). In this novella, a literary scholar goes to Venice, determined to procure and
possess some love letters written by a worthy American poet to a woman named Miss
Bordereau. The mysterious poet cannot properly be known and unraveled, therefore the
narrator seeks a mediated, or “transmitted contact” (AP 48) with the dead poet. His quest
is to acquire Aspern’s papers, as symbolic literary ‘remains’ – or containers – of the
poet’s “buried and mysterious identity” (Sánchez 32). However, the protagonist is
prevented from seeing or possessing the papers, and even knowing what they represent.
In “The Aspern Papers” the first person narrator comes across two women in order to
procure Jeffrey Aspern’s writings, which the narrator fetishizes. These women play the
roles of mediators, who help in generating contact with the poet. Juliana and Tina guide
and lead the narrator to his immensely adored poet, Aspern. The narrator believes that if
he manages to find some of Aspern’s contemporaries, like Miss Tina, he will be able to
“feel a transmitted contact in [the] aged hand that [the poet’s hand] had touched” (AP 6).
The narrator wants to get close to the poet, and become intimate with the things that
Aspern has once touched and felt. Stroking Juliana and Tina is caressing what Aspern
actually caressed and touched. The women offer the narrator the opportunity to look into
“a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any
aged hand that his hand touched” (AP 8). It is even suggested that Juliana may be the
reincarnation of Aspern. The narrator notes that Juliana’s presence contains something of
Aspern, he states, “I feel nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her that I ever had
been before or ever have been since” (AP 23). Since the narrator wants to establish
proximity with his favourite poet, it is not a coincidence that he wants “access” to Miss
Bordereau’s palace (Sánchez 32). He is placing himself as closely as possible to Aspern in
order to feel his presence and spirit. It is only on one occasion that the narrator is deterred
and obstructed by the possibility of a very intimate contact with the poet. This happens
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when Miss Tina offers him the letters on the condition that he marries her. Miss Tina
obviously tries to manipulate the narrator into marriage. Her proposal represents society’s
powerful insistence on heterosexuality, for she is aware of the narrator’s keen (homerotic)
attraction to the much loved poet. Miss Tina’s offer of her hand is thus a “menacing
outgrowth” (Beast in the Closet 161) of homophobia.
Thus, for the first time that the narrator is dissuaded, in fact even flabbergasted for he
exclaims “I couldn’t for a bundle of tattered papers, marry a ridiculous, pathetic,
provincial old woman” (AP 131). Eventually, the narrator gives in to a heterosexual
marriage, similarly to Dorian, in spite of the fact that he looks down upon women, for
they threaten male same-sex passion, and even thinks that they are “stupid” and “little to
be counted on.” (AP 2) However, the narrator is buoyed with the thought that the letters
are worth every single dime and sacrifice, even marriage – a marriage that is clearly
depicted as emotionally unfulfilling and even physically repulsive. As we have seen, in
the texts analyzed the derogatory allusion to the female sex and their abomination is one
of the themes that indicate homoerotic desire. Similarly to Dorian, the narrator’s
homosexual panic causes him to experience psychological vulnerability, which pushes
him to finally marry Miss Tina.
The narrator is obsessed with Aspern, his papers, and everything that he has ever felt,
seen, and touched. Fetishized objects take on value, mystery, and sacredness. The narrator
fetishizes Aspern’s letters and everything that the poet has ever come in contact with.
Fetishization allows the narrator to experience non-genital homoerotic pleasures with the
deceased man whom he yearns for (Sánchez 33). Moreover, there is a propensity for
fetishized objects to become conflated with secrets, just like in Wilde’s Dorian Gray,
where Basil’s secret homoerotic desire is projected onto the painted image of Dorian. In
“The Aspern Papers,” it is the narrator’s obsession with Aspern and his papers that mirror
his homosexuality. It is not only the narrator’s homoeroticism that is the driving force that
motivates his mission to possess Aspern’s writings, but also the mystery about Aspern, for
his papers represent a secret, waiting to be unveiled. Importantly, it is homophobia, the
fear of homosexuality that is responsible for the ruin of the papers. It is when the
protagonist is the closest to uncovering Aspern’s secret and possessing the papers, that
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Miss Tina, Miss Bordereau’s niece, “consigns the writings to the flames” (AP 150). It is
tragic that the papers are destroyed as they have an exceptional value for the narrator: the
papers are the means through which the protagonist can become intimate with the poet
and feel his erotic closeness (Sánchez 34). However, late-Victorian conservative power
structures, represented by Miss Tina, cannot possibly allow their environment and society
to be tainted by degenerates. Hence, the narrator is regulated by surveillance and
censorship. The niece evaluates, and thus bans the papers, for they are representations of
the abominable and the illicit: the narrator’s homosexual desire for Aspern. Overall, the
women’s operations in this short fiction are the very operations conducted by the paranoid
conservative late-Victorian moralists and their power structures.
Similarly in “The Author of Beltraffio” the narrator is overcome with excitement as he
gets into the proximity of Ambient, who is a writer, like Aspern. In both of these
narratives, James analyzes the rapports between male authors and their audience, allowing
male readers to become intimate with the writer whose work they adore (Person 126).
“The Author of Beltraffio” is a tale based on what Edmund Gosse told James about the
unhappy domestic circumstances of John Addington Symonds (1840-93), whose wife
regarded
his
writings
as
‘immoral,
pagan,
hyper-aesthetic’
(http://josephsolearytypepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/jamesian_subtex.html).
James's
and Wilde’s stories about writers and artists frequently thematize the tensions between
creative men and demanding, debilitating women. Indeed, women are seen in these
authors’ texts to defy art, namely homoerotic art. The couple’s battle inevitably climaxes
with the death of their child, Dolcino. The subject of homosexuality is insinuated covertly
by
Ambient
being
an
aesthete
who
resembles
Symonds
(http://josephsolearytypepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/jamesian_subtex.html).
Moreover, the homosexual subtext is addressed at the beginning with an allusion to Walt
Whitman, and lastly, the very name Beltraffio alludes to is the Milanese painter Giovanni
Antonio Beltraffio, who so greatly adored his male models that he caused scandals
(http://josephsolearytypepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/jamesian_subtex.html).
Ambient
has made “a considerable tour in the East” (AB 58), and his work ‘Beltraffio,’ which
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terrifies his wife and leads her to murder her child, as a consequence of her homophobia,
concerns ‘impressions of the East’ (AB 59). As the East or the Orient was imagined to be
a sexual Mecca with homoerotic associations, “The Author of Beltraffio” is similarly
made to explore homoerotic poetics by connecting the “transgressive desire” with the
“transgressive aesthetic” (Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence 67). A similar suggestive setting
is used in Wilde’s Salomé (as has been pointed out), where Wilde also plays upon his
contemporaries’ association of the Orient with decadent sexual indulgence to suggest a
homoerotic subtext.
James, like Wilde, also fuses aesthetics with eroticism in both “The Aspern Papers” and
“Beltraffio.” Both of these authors’ selected writings either depict the (passive)
homosexuals’ loss or fear of being detected. Basil assumes that his homo-aesthetic
portrait would threaten his good name once it is exhibited and Ambient’s shockingly
perverse writing endangers his marriage, but on the other hand lures the homoerotic
admiration of the narrator, who daydreams about his first encounter with Ambient. The
narrator says:“ the pleasure, if it should occur –for I could scarcely believe it was near at
hand- would be so great that I wished to think of it in advance […] to feel it there against
my breast”( AB 57). When he eventually meets Ambient, his heart “beat[s] very fast” (59)
and he [feels] quite “transported” (AB 60) –both the bodily symptoms and the emotional
‘transport’ are suggestive of an orgasm. The narrator is so swept away by Ambient’s
appearance that he gazes at him, sizing up his features very carefully, thereby fetishizing
the visual image of the desired object (which sexually satisfies the narrator). Specifically,
his gaze deflects homosexual intimacy onto the act of voyeurism. Wilde, in Salomé and
Dorian Gray, similarly subjugates the admired persons to the gazes of their admirers. In
Salomé, when Narraboth’s corpse is found by the tetrarch, Herod is very much displeased
for he was very “fair” (Wilde, CW 567).
Importantly, in “Beltraffio,” the narrator’s obsessive gaze at Ambient‘s face is
transmitted into the author’s writing, a “site where James prefers to liberate male desire”
(Person 128). The narrator’s homoerotic desire is transcribed into his writing, in the same
way that Basil’s homoerotic desire is displaced onto the painting of Dorian. Texts, too, are
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projections of desires and in Dorian Gray Wilde also offers a warning explanation about
close reading when Basil Hallward expounds to Dorian why he declined to exhibit his
portrait. “One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I am determined to paint a wonderful
portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress,
and in your own time” (Dorian Gray 148 ). Painting Dorian as he is in reality, means
painting him as Basil views him: gay, thus making the artist both a painter and a good
observer. Basil’s homosexual panic over representing and interpreting his desires may be
paralleled with James’s anxieties, which he explores in “Beltraffio.” James does not allow
the narrator to have access to Ambient as he actually is. The narrator’s relationship with
Ambient is mediated on three levels, by Ambient’s wife (Beatrice), by their son, and by
the scandalous text ‘Beltraffio,’ which the narrator reads five times. James triangulates the
narrator’s relationship with Ambient “by confronting him with Beatrice and with the
problem of Ambient’s heterosexuality” (Person 128). Even though the narrator
acknowledges Beatrice’s beauty, he still questions whether she is “worthy of the author of
a work so distinguished as ‘Beltraffio’” (AB 63-64). Similarly, Lord Henry of Dorian
Gray and Carlyle also undermine and devalue women, decreeing them to be unfit to be
man’s (intellectual) equals, for their encroachments prevent homosocial bonds from
forming that are potentially erotic. The narrator finally remains calm when he observes
that Beatrice, an anti-aestheticist, has “no great intellectual sympathy with the author of
‘Beltraffio.’” The wife’s disapproval of Ambient’s homoerotic writing gives him the
chance to take her place. Beatrice’s late-Victorian puritan and homophobic attitude
generates a disgust for her husband’s homoerotic writing, and a resoluteness to keep the
writing away from their son, giving the narrator the opportunity to substitute himself into
a “literary relationship” with Ambient (Person 129).When he spends the night at
Ambient’s residence, he is finally convinced that Ambient’s marriage is “by no means the
happiest possible” (AB 81-82) – not a surprising diagnosis given the failed heterosexual
relations portrayed in all the other texts analyzed.
“Beltraffio” and Dorian Gray share a common structure, where homoerotic desire is
deflected by the introduction of a woman. However, at the same time, Jamesian and
Wildean texts consciously deny heterosexual eroticism and purposely ward off healthy
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heterosexual relationships. In Salomé Jokanaan assesses Herod’s and Herodias’s marriage
as blasphemous and characterizes their relationship as impure. Herod himself points out
the “evils” of their marriage, emphasizing his wife’s sterility. He notes, “I say that you
[Herodias] are sterile. You have borne me no child, and the prophet says that our marriage
is not a true marriage. He says that it is an incestuous marriage, a marriage that will bring
evils….I feel he is right […]” (Wilde, CW 567). It is indispensable for James and Wilde
to depict marriages in a bad light or make no mention of them since both authors favour
homosocial/sexual bonds in secret. James’s “Beltraffio” seems to suggest that Ambient
had his first homosexual experience in the Orient, the exotic East, the land of mysteries
and (homo)sexual bounty. Here Ambient has gained understanding and developed his
personality and character that go beyond the ‘Pagan’ and ‘Greek,’ (90) qualities which his
wife abhors. Ambient’s wife is aware of the homoerotic content of her husband’s work,
which brought Ambient “many worshippers” (AB 67), and Beatrice has even seen some
of them. Her frantic attitude resolutely keeps the homoerotic writing and her husband’s
decadent friends away from their son.
It is Ambient’s and his work’s supposed power to corrupt and to poison which is the
cause of Beatrice’s homophobic hysteria. Ambient’s professed doctrine (which is
comparable with Wilde’s Lord Henry’s and Dorian’s) that “art’s everything […] beauty’s
everything” (AB 94), which imbues Ambient’s ‘Beltraffio,’ has a literary power to
influence and seduce (AB 57, 89). Dolcino’s fate is determined by the fear of this
influence, which Beatrice is keen on preventing. However, it is a hard task, for Dolcino
seems to embody a flair for aestheticism and beauty. When the narrator sees the boy, he
responds emphatically to the child’s beauty. He notes:
I lost no time in observing that the child […] was extraordinarily beautiful. He had
the face of an angel- the eyes, the hair, the smile of innocence. (AB 64)
The narrator describes Dolcino as a work of art, his effete poise and pose invoke
homoeroticism. In addition, the child’s arresting description signifies an “erotic
innocence” (Ohi 750) that Dorian also inhabits. The child is a perfect piece of art, like the
dandiacal Dorian, who is “made out of ivory and rose-leaves” (Dorian Gray 9). Dorian’s,
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Willie Hughes’s, and Dolcino’s effeminate gender performance and beauty similarly
explore and reflect homoeroticism. Innocence and beauty eroticize all of these characters,
and thus render a screen for the projection of desire.
Kevin Ohi seems wrong when he states that children are devoid of desire (751).
“Beltraffio,” similarly to Wilde’s “Wasted Days” seems to substantiate the fact that
children are sexually aware, thereby providing a screen for the projection of homoerotic
desire. In this quote Dolcino seems to consciously exhibit his innocence, yet it is his
effeminate performance which creates an effect that arouses homoerotic desire, and his
womanly charm that lures the narrator. The narrator notes:
The boy’s little fixed white face seemed, as before, to plead with me to stay, and
after a while it produced still another effect, a very curious one, which I will find it
difficult to express […] the traceable consequences of that perversity were too
lamentable to leave me any desire to trifle with the question […] Dolcino’s
friendly little gaze gradually kindled the spark of my inspiration. What helped me
to grow were the other influences-the silent suggestive garden-nook […] (AB 99)
Thus, the child approves of the “intervention” that will be the cause of his demise (Ohi
751).
I found myself looking perpetually at the latter small mortal, who looked
constantly back at me, and that was enough to detain me, with these vaguely
amused eyes, he smiled and I felt it an absolute impossibility to abandon a child
with such an expression. His attention never strayed […] his nature throbbed a
desire to say something to me. If I could have taken him on my own knee he
perhaps would have managed to say it; but it would have been a critical matter to
ask his mother to give him up. (AB 98)
This passage emphasizes the child’s intense gaze, the seal of homoerotic desire. Once
again, the gaze ignites a homoerotic sympathy. The regret that “I didn’t even for a
moment hold Dolcino in my arms” (AB 98) confirms the homoerotically charged
exchanges of gazes.
Ohi also maintains that the wife’s concern that Ambient’s writing might corrupt the
young “could be read to index the intimations of homosexuality” (Ohi 749). Again,
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James, similarly to Wilde, introduces homoeroticism, but closes it off, in James’s case
with the deaths of Dolcino and Roderick, and in Wilde’s case with the deaths of Dorian,
Salomé and Cyril Graham. Beatrice’s act of murder is carefully built up, from the initial
scene on, where the mother “keeps the child from his father’s hands” (AB 64-6) as she
resents her husband’s proto- gay behaviour that has caused scandal and brought him a
crowd of young male admirers. Beatrice “doesn’t like [Ambient’s] ideas […] she doesn’t
like them for the child” (AB 84). Ambient’s sister explains that Beatrice “thought his
writings immoral and his influence pernicious” (AB 84). She is aware of the fact that
Ambient “has many worshippers” (AB 67), she has even seen some of them. Beatrice’s
intransigent bitterness over her husband’s work is due to her homophobia; she skims
through her husband’s most recent composition and this intensifies this phobia, causing
her to go hysterical. Dolcino eventually becomes much more ill. Beatrice neglects to give
the boy his medicine, which causes his death. Beatrice kills her son in order to safeguard
his soul from the malevolent influences of his father.
It is conspicuous that James, like Wilde, has an admiration for pretty things that are
dead. The death of the child, just like the death of Dorian, or even Salomé (whose drag
performance aligns her with the homosexuals) confirm that homoerotic passion is bound
to remain unrequited. Thus, unfulfilled sexual desire is replaced with physical death, a
theme explored in Wilde’s Salomé as well. In Wilde’s novella, Salomé’s homoerotic
passion for Jokanaan goes unavowed, for he is a holy man, who not only strives for
enlightenment, but also symbolizes James’s and Wilde’s late-Victorian homophobic
society, and hence would rather die than to indulge in an illegitimate love affair with the
debauched Princess. Moreover, the Page’s grief over the Syrian’s death as well as his
claim that the Syrian was more than a brother to him implies that the Page’s love for his
friend was homoerotic. The death of the Syrian assures that the Page’s passion for him,
and the Syrian’s for Salomé, will remain unrequited. Both James and Wilde replace the
unfulfilled sexual desires of their characters with death.
James also depicts other scenarios in “Beltraffio” where the normal sex object is
replaced with an object that is unsuitable for reproduction. The narrator experiences non-
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genital pleasures by projecting his homoerotic sexual desires onto Ambient’s writing. For
the narrator, Ambient’s work is a “surrogate child,” not only the product of homoaesthetic writing, like Person states (130), but also the by-product of the narrator’s sexual
yearning. The narrator fetishizes the writings so much so that he nurses them under his
arm. (AB 82). The work actually “cruises” its reader, whose fascination with the
homotext helps “seal his sublimated homo-aesthetic relationship with Ambient” (Savoy
20). And once again the gaze comes into play as a “mask” of repression, which is the very
mode of the homotext by which the writer cruises the reader (Savoy 20). Things are
further complicated since the narrator’s desire for Ambient and his work is strictly
“phallocentric” (Person 130), with Ambient assuming dominance. Ambient’s “artistic
ego” is sexualized: “erect and active.” (AB 86) Ambient further describes his unfinished
work as a “golden vessel, filled with the purest distillation of the actual.” He comments,
“I have to hammer it so fine […] and all the while I have to be so careful not to let a drop
of liquor escape” (AB 87). Importantly, Ambient’s statement echoes Carlyle’s,
concerning the conservation of sexual fluids. In this “spermatically economical view of
art, Ambient and the narrator relate to one another across the sign of this phallus-inprogress and thereby mark off the bounds of an all male literary” (Person 130). Leland
Person claims that this “phallocentricism” asserts “hyper-masculinity” more than “hyperaestheticism” (130). This, however, does not seem really convincing. The narrator and
Ambient have no other option but to express their homoerotic desires in writing, which
formulates an inter-subjective relationship between the narrator and Ambient.
Wilde similarly displaces sexual desire onto objects. In Salomé, the Syrian and the Page
draw parallels between Salomé and the moon. Sensing his friend’s desire for Salomé, the
Page implores him to look at the moon instead. To keep the Syrian’s desire unfulfilled,
the Page uses the moon in two ways; first, he replaces the act of looking at Salomé with
the act of looking at the moon, and second, he correlates the moon with Salomé’s
ominous qualities that eventually lead her to order Jokanaan’s execution:
The Young Syrian: How beautiful is the Princess Salomé tonight!
The Page of Herodias: Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems. She is
like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman.
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The Young Syrian: […] She is like a little princess who wears a yellow veil […]
(Wilde, CW 1-2)
The Syrian only accepts the first substitution and alters the comparison to a positive one
that reflects his affection for the object of his desire. This way the Syrian manages to get
closer to his object of desire without actually confronting her; the normal sexual outlets of
the Syrian are deflected onto the moon (Fembach 200).
Similarly, in James’s “The Lesson of the Master” desire is also displaced onto objects.
James disperses male desire among several gendered objects, thereby instating
homoerotic desire. James’s “The Lesson of the Master” circulates homo-aestheticism and
explores the anxieties of homoerotic passion in the lives of writers and artists, too.
Importantly, art, including literature eroticizes male homosocial intimacy via the creation
of a “male circuit of desire” (Person 133). James’s “The Lesson of the Master” also
liberates homoerotic desire onto the aesthetic, providing only a mediated access to this
desire. The story focuses on Paul Overt, a young novelist with three or four novels to his
credit, who is caught up in the dilemma of choosing between heterosexual marriage and
art. Henry St. George, whose reputation as an artist remains high though his later work is
inferior, is the master of the title, with Paul Overt as his pupil. St. George, like Wilde’s
Lord Henry, instructs Paul Overt on art. St. George's admonition is that Paul must live
only for his muse, to write truly, meaning in a queer way, he advises Paul that he “should
not go straight” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm) and that he should
avoid marriage, not simply because it distracts the artist from his craft, but because
heterosexuality closets the homosexuality in which queer men most truly write about
themselves. When Paul asks St. George about the books that his wife has made him burn,
St. George reveals: “It was about myself.” Similarly, in Dorian Gray, Basil’s homoaesthetic portrait of Dorian also discloses Basil’s true identity. Basil also notes: “it is
rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself” (12). Importantly, St.
George’s and Aspern’s writings and the portraits of Mr. W.H and Dorian are all
destroyed, for they are eroticized objects onto which illegitimate homosexual desire is
displaced. The termination of these erotic objects is symbolic. The destruction of the
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abnormal is a form of regulation, which is characteristic of the homophobic conservative
late-Victorian society. James, like Wilde, investigates the fear and the enigma of
homosexuality, as well as the conflicts between the demands of domesticity and those of
art.
Importantly, artists, like St. George and Basil, who act as mentors, also have the power
to make their young male friends realize their queerness. When Paul Overt leaves
England to work on his novel in seclusion, he acknowledges that St. George has
“inverted” and turned him “upside down” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898h.htm). The narrator further comments:
[Paul] left England for a long absence and full of brave intentions. It is not a
perversion of the truth to pronounce that encounter the direct cause of his
departure. If the oral utterance of the eminent writer had the privilege of moving
him deeply it was especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours and days later,
that it appeared to yield him its full meaning and exhibit its extreme importance.
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm)
The narrator emphasizes Paul’s aptness for putting St. George’s theory into practice. He
turns to leading a solitary life of contemplation in a sheltered and pure place, namely Lake
of Geneva. Nature shields Paul from society’s homophobia and negative influences and
pressures, allowing him to fully give himself over to writing queerness into his work:
He spent the summer in Switzerland and, having in September begun a new task
[…] To this end he returned to a quiet corner he knew well, on the edge of the
Lake of Geneva and within sight of the towers of Chillon: a region and a view for
which he had an affection that sprang from old associations and was capable of
mysterious revivals and refreshments. Here he lingered late, till the snow was on
the nearer hills, almost down to the limit to which he could climb when his stint,
on the shortening afternoons, was performed. The autumn was fine, the lake was
blue and his book took form and direction. These felicities, for the time,
embroidered his life, which he suffered to cover him with its mantle. At the end of
six weeks he felt he had learnt St. George’s lesson by heart, had tested and proved
its doctrine. (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/898/898-h/898-h.htm)
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Evidently, both Wilde’s and James’s narratives depict homoerotic thwarted desires that
focus on the protagonists’ burdensome quest to attain and/or possess a unique mysterious
object. These narratives represent these mysterious objects as libidinal and secretive. In
the gap between the characters’ desires, James and Wilde open up a space, namely in art
and literature, in which they represent homoerotic relationships via aesthetics and fetishes,
in order to mirror illicit same-sex desire by means of subterfuge, and veiled messages.
Overall, the discussed Wildean and Jamesian texts contain and embody the dichotomy
which is also characteristic of the late-Victorian era. All the texts analyzed contain
homoerotic subtexts, which surface by means of fetishization, the homoerotic gaze, lush
decadence, homosociality, dandified and effete performance and appearance, hostility to
women, and homophobia. On account of the dominant moral climate of the time, both
authors, however, are careful not to become too explicit and thus speak on two levels, one
addressed to the initiated, and the other visible to the innocuous reader, who might only
want to see the surface pattern of late-Victorian conformity, not the veiled homoerotic
‘cruising.’ The works by James and Wilde are, thus, contradictory and paradoxical: they
indicate homoerotic passion on the one hand but disavow and close it off on the other.
They arouse homosexual desire but at the same time deflect it onto art and beautiful
objects. It was shown that James, although vociferous in his attack on late-Victorian
decadence, surprisingly employs in fact very similar means of insinuating homosexual
subtexts as Wilde. On the other hand, it is equally surprising that Wilde, who styled
himself into a provocateur of conventional morality, should, in his works, have bowed to
late-Victorian norms by following the dictates of poetic justice and in the end punishing
transgressive and decadent characters. Thus both James and Wilde in the works analyzed
at least on the surface uphold Christian ethics and see to it that characters who indulge in
‘sin’ come to a bad end. The works thus not only manifest similarities and
correspondences little acknowledged by critics hitherto, but they are also emblematic of
an era in which moral zeal and homophobic hysteria coexisted with decadent indulgence
and homosexual subculture. Wilde’s and James’ works seem to partake of both.
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V. Sensuality and Art in Roderick Hudson and The Picture of Dorian Gray
It has been argued and established that homosexuality and other sexual anomalies were
perceived to mar Christian morality in the late Victorian era. Nevertheless, Sedgwick
argues that the idiosyncratic attributes of homosexuality not only include effeminate
performance, poise and connoisseurship, but also religion, and an affinity to Catholicism
(Between Men 93). Sedgwick clearly states that religion and high culture overlap with
“homosexual” culture (94). This phenomenon is clearly present in Dorian Gray’s life and
Rowland’s, as well.
Wilde’s Dorian Gray and James’s Roderick Hudson are novels that are flooded with
homoerotic sensuality, and also with the representation of diverse (religious) artifacts.
Both texts associate homoeroticism with lush visual art and aestheticism, which
frequently appear in the form of things religious. Importantly, Rowland, Basil, and Dorian
are aesthetes who devote themselves to sensori-emotional pleasures, which are gained via
(religious) works of art. Sensual pleasures in Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson partially
derive from the symbolic figuration of art. Art and especially religious art, as will be
shown, is a medium which elucidates the characters’ sexual desires. (Christian) art kindles
complex sensations in the characters that are romantic in nature. Rowland’s, Dorian’s, and
Basil’s fixation on art is homoerotically charged, and this homoeroticism is elicited via
the great stress placed on refined aestheticism, which appeals to the senses:
The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind
stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy
scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying,
smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the
gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose
tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted
across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge
window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to
convey the sense of swiftness and motion […] In the centre of the room, clamped
to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary
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personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist
himself, Basil Hallward […] (Dorian Gray 7)
The passage alludes to a variety of senses: apart from vision, the sense of taste (“honey
sweet”) and particularly the sense of smell; the atmosphere is heavily perfumed. The
room seems to imbue an oriental essence, which stimulates Lord Henry’s imagination.
The prevalent artifacts melt with masculine beauty, all of which instantaneously transmit
an impression of abundant opulence and homoerotic sensuality.
Roderick Hudson starts similarly: sensuality is less obtrusive, but nonetheless present.
The alluring scent of flowers permeates the garden, here, as well. Languidness is also a
key element in James’s text, which is paired up with the hedonistic and sensuous symbol
of the cigar and masculine beauty:
[The] blooming garden and shady porch had seemed so friendly to repose and a
cigar […][Cecilia] added as he [Rowland] followed her in. ‘If I refused last night
to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show you a pretty boy.’ (RH 59)
Dorian Gray’s and Basil’s aestheticism focuses on the allure of images. They are obsessed
with looking at and touching refined artwork. Their sensuality is thus not only conveyed
by means of their gaze (as has been analyzed in the chapter entitled “Homoeroticism in
Roderick Hudson”), but also in their insatiable appetite for art objects, sometimes
depicting beautiful male forms, whose exquisite surfaces seem to fuel homoerotic
pleasure. Dorian notes on multiple occasions:
I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes,
lacquer- work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp,—there is
much to be got from all these. (125)
Dorian, just like Basil and Rowland, gains sensori-emotional pleasures from non-religious
and as we shall see religious art objects alike. Art objects have an attractive appeal as they
are penetrated with eroticism. Dorian recognizes this from the start for he notes to Basil,
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“Can't you see your romance in it [portrait]?" (Dorian Gray (10th ed.) 83) 13. The realm of
art and aesthetics satiate certain desires, thereby not only causing delight, but also
providing sexual drives and sensations for both James’s and Wilde’s characters.
Therefore, creating a realm of art and aesthetics becomes indispensable, as well as the
discovery of novel and unique sensations. The highest aim is to surrender to art and soak
in what it renders:
It was the creation of such worlds [of art] as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to
be the true object, or among the true objects, of life; and in his search for
sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess that element of
strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of
thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their
subtle influences […] (Dorian Gray (10th ed.) 68- italics added)
In James’s “The Aspern Papers,” the narrator’s quest for “beauty” and “devotion”
similarly entails an element of strangeness, which is a necessary “part” of the narrator’s
“romance” (AP 41). Obviously, art, namely statues and paintings, in both Wilde’s and
James’s texts, possess intrigue and lock in fantasies, pertaining to homosexual love and
eroticism.
Romance similarly imbues art in Roderick Hudson. The allure of the images, depicting
beautiful male bodies have a sway on Rowland’s emotions, granting him instant
gratification. He is taken aback by Roderick’s erotically charged statuette, which “was
altogether [of] exceptional merit” (RH 59). Rowland is “absorbed” (RH 59), “nothing in a
long time had given him” so much delight (RH 60). Rowland has fallen in love with the
young man depicted, he has the compulsion to “look” at the “sculpture” again and again
(RH 61) because it is openly sensual, emanating not only masculine beauty, but
salaciousness. As Rowland is incapable of producing art himself, he derives pleasure from
looking at art. “As a patron […] Rowland can actualize himself aesthetically through
Roderick” (Mendelssohn 519).
13
It is essential to note that the 10th ed. of Dorian Gray is more explicit and suggestive than previous
editions on the subject of eroticism and its correlation with art. This explicitness is exceptionally well
reflected in this quote. Here, Wilde parallels “romance” with art.
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Furthermore, Roderick Hudson’s aestheticism also focuses on Catholic artifacts. Indeed,
both Roderick Hudson and Dorian Gray depict an allure of religious artifacts. Catholic
crucifixes and the nude saints legitimize sensuality (Mendelssohn 522). Since Catholicism
condones the aestheticization of the (male) nude in specific contexts, it provides a loop
hole for the Puritan and the non-Puritan alike to eroticize and sexualize the subjects of art.
As a Protestant, Rowland incessantly visits Catholic places of worship, like the Church
of Saint Cecilia. It is a fact that Protestantism is not renowned for favouring the presence
of religious decorative art in a place of worship, antithetically Christianity is. Rowland’s
visits to Catholic churches are not a coincidence, he attends them on purpose, for their
lavish, exotic rituals, statuettes of unclothed saints, and ornaments cater to his homosexual
drives. “Rowland never passed [St. Cecilia Church] before going in,” (RH 345) notes the
narrator. “Rowland walked to the altar, and paid, in a momentary glance at the clever
statue of the saint in death, in the niche beneath it, the usual tribute to the charm of
polished ingenuity” (RH 345). James’s words depict Rowland’s experience very subtly,
but the lexemes “glance” and “clever statue” mark and hint at something other than an
engrossing religious meditation on Rowland’s part. In fact, these words spell out
Rowland’s focus on corporal beauty. Furthermore, when Rowland approaches the altar,
where communion is offered, he seems to be more overwhelmed by the religious artifacts
on display near the altar than by spirituality.
Wilde’s Dorian Gray similarly depicts the allure of religious artifacts and furthermore
eroticizes them. It is mentioned that religion and its art only consoles some, for “its
mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation” (Dorian Gray (10th ed.) 49) – a remark which
explicitly links religion and homosexual titillation. Dorian reasons in the same manner as
Rowland when Catholic artifacts are concerned:
He [Dorian] had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he
had for everything connected with the service of the Church […]The orphreys
were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of
many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also,
of amber-colored silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and
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cloth of gold, figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of
Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of
white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs de
lys; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chaliceveils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which these things were put there was
something that quickened his imagination. (Dorian Gray 73-4)
The extravagance of the expensive cloths and exotic materials, their bright and singular
colours, the precious ornaments, and exotic animals all seem to contribute to bring out the
sensual appeal of the pictured saints. Dorian’s homoerotic gaze thus focused on the body
of St. Sebastian and the nude crucified Christ. These images enriched with brocade and
silk excite Dorian. In addition, the splendor of the ornaments and half-nude statues, and
the opulence of the rituals are not only indications of an infatuation with orientalism, but
also aristocratic elegance and indulgence, contributing to the homoerotic and decadent
subtexts of the passage.
The beautiful and supple visual appeal of the nude and half-nude artifacts is obvious;
they invite Dorian’s eroticized gaze and seem to satisfy certain erotic desires, so much so
that Dorian finds happiness in Catholicism and decides “to join the Roman Catholic
communion”(Dorian Gray 68). The readers learn that the “Roman ritual had always a
great attraction for him [Dorian]” (Dorian Gray 68). Dorian’s excitement is even
heightened when he:
kneel[ed] down on the cold marble pavement, and with the priest, in his stiff
flowered cope, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the
tabernacle, and raising aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that
pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the
bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the
Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers, that
the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers,
had their subtle fascination for him. (Dorian Gray 68)
Catholicism’s male community, composed of priests, alter boys, male half-nude saints,
and the pictures and statuettes of Christ are all veiled forms of Eros in this case. The
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priests and alter boys present in the churches propel homosocial interaction for both
Dorian and Rowland. The choice of words: “breast,” “kneel, with the priest,” “boys in
their lace and scarlet,” and “fascination” substantiate Dorian’s homo- aesthetic focus.
Dorian is enticed, which reinforces the presumption that Dorian attends church for the
sake of arousal.
Similarly to Dorian and Rowland, Wilde’s Salomé and Carlyle’s Abbot (in Book II of
Past and Present) are both infatuated with the nude bodies of holy men. As has been
depicted in “Carlyle and Victorian Asceticism,” the Abbot’s keen interest in the sacred
body of St. Edmund is very sexual. Salomé, similarly, passionately displays her sexual
admiration for Jokanaan’s body. She is sexually aroused as her instense gaze cruises
Jokanaan’s appealing exterior:
Jokanaan, I am amorous of thy body! Thy body is white like the lilies of a field
that the mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white like the snows that lie on the
mountains, like the snows that lie on the mountains of Judaea, and come down
into the valleys. The roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are not so white as
thy body. Neither the roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia, nor the feet of
the dawn when they light on the leaves, nor the breast of the moon when she lies
on the breast of the sea…There is nothing in the world so white as they body. Let
me touch thy body. (Wilde, CW 558-9)
As can be seen religious figures and half nude statuettes are similarly subjected to the
homoerotic gazes of Wildean, Carlylean, and Jamesian characters.
Fascinatingly, in Dorian Gray, Roderick Hudson, and even Past and Present secular and
religious art or religious men alike legitimize the “right to sight,” meaning that religious
rituals are a “socially sanctioned justification” for males watching males (Mendelssohn
514). As Rowland and Basil watch their objects of desire (Roderick and Dorian) they not
only satiate their creative interests, but by the same token also satisfy their homosexual
desire. There seems to be no border line between the realms of art and reality. Youthful
beautiful males are often seen as works of art and art objects depicting graceful young
men. In the following passage, Rowland takes pleasure in looking at Roderick as a work
of art:
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Coming back to the drawing- room, he paused outside the open door; he was
struck by the group formed by the three men […] Rowland stood looking on, for
the group struck him with its picturesque symbolism. Roderick, bearing the lamp
and glowing in its radiant circle, seemed the beautiful image of a genius which
combined sincerity with power. (RH 246-7)
Rowland is gazing at Roderick as if he were a painting, or the incarnation of an
impeccable male statue. Roderick does not only create homoerotically aroused statues, he
turns into one himself, as a result of Rowland’s gaze. Roderick’s beauty may thus be
appreciated legitimately under Rowland’s patronage. Obviously, Roderick’s image is not
only romanticized, but also eroticized, and this romantic and salacious image gives
Rowland pleasure.
The same thing may be said of Dorian’s striking portrait. Dorian’s impeccably attractive
image arouses delight in Basil. As Bail looks at Dorian’s “gracious” and beautiful “form,”
which he had “mirrored” in his portrait, a delightful “smile” passes across his face
(Dorian Gray 4) that:
seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes,
placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain
some curious dream from which he feared he might awake. (Dorian Gray 4)
The portrait of Dorian Gray is subjected to Basil’s controlling gaze. As Basil fixes his
eyes on Dorian’s image, he not only gains homosexual pleasure, but also embarks on a
virtual sexual journey as he closes his eyes. Similarly to Rowland, Basil is a passive
homosexual, thus the only source that he permits himself to stimulate homosexual arousal
is gaping at Dorian’s image or Dorian himself. Indeed, image and man become almost
interchangeable, with both arousing Basil’s and Rowland’s passions alike.
Overall, both Basil and Rowland are passive homosexuals, who have chosen a life of
virtue. They have sacrificed and repressed their sexuality in order to be chaste and
virtuous men.
Rowland and Basil, like Dorian or Lord Henry, derive homosexual
pleasure from aestheticized (religious) art objects onto which they displace their erotic
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desires. Both novels are full of sensual descriptions of art objects which not only create an
atmosphere of sensual pleasure, but also highlight the fascination and sexual arousal of
Wilde’s and James’s art connoisseurs/artists who revel in such sights.
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Conclusion
The figuration of homosexuality in both James’s and Wilde’s works analyzed constitutes
a kind of secret that may be unveiled via homo-aestheticism, sumptuous art objects,
fetishism, decadence, dandified effeminate performance, sensori-emotional values, the
hatred towards women and the institution of marriage, also the (homo)erotic gazes of
men, and references to aristocratic elegance and orientalism. Wilde’s and James’s novels
incorporate nuances of silence and secrecy in an era in which the homosexual has become
an identifiable figure which is reflected in the passing of the Criminal Amendment Act of
1885 which instituted penalties not only against “buggery” committed with man or beast,
but against all acts of “gross indecency” between adult males. As we have seen,
surveillance was stringent because of moral panic and homophobia, and writers therefore
could not express their homoerotic interests freely and uncensored. Although James
criticized the decadents and advocated strict morality, it has been shown that he is also a
homoerotic writer, but his representations of the erotic are never straightforward. Neither
are Wilde’s, however, because of the hindsight of his trials and his open identification
with aestheticism and decadence, he is seen as a much less inhibited homoerotic writer.
Overall, the consciously obscured representation of the homosexual in both the works of
Wilde and James shows its importance, rather than its irrelevance.
James was influenced by the moralizing Victorian discourses of his day, and his sexual
self-identification was in this sense a product of his time. “James’s aesthetic principles
set a limit to explicitness”
(http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/jamesian_subtex.html).
Characters like Rowland, Miss Tina and Juliana, and Beatrice have been influenced by
late-Victorian Puritan ethics. James does not seem to complain about the constraints
imposed on English writers. He seems to have been content to address same-sex sexual
themes indirectly. James makes the best out of his indirectness, for the most subtle of
nuances and allusions suffice to depict homoerotic dynamics. Thus, James’s
homoeroticism, with all its evasions, was specifically customized for the late- Victorian
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period. There is only a touch of emotion and desire in his selected works, however, there
are complex and enigmatic “passions”
(http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/jamesian_subtex.html) present in
subtle nuances and subtexts. James’s stifled writings were subjected to the restraints of
Victorian orthodoxy. Yet, despite his Puritanism, there is a subtext in his works, which at
times
challenges
and
contradicts
his
explicit
ethical
teachings
(http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/jamesian_subtex.html).
Overall, the Jamesian and Wildean texts analyzed have a dichotomous character as the
works of these authors successfully depict and address both late-Victorian morality and
decadence. In this regard the Jamesian and Wildean texts analyzed are alike, and they
successfully echo and mirror the ambiguous quality of their age. This multifaceted lateVictorian culture, was an amalgamation of refined decadence and stringent moral
radicalism. This dissertation has shed light (via close readings and references to the
cultural context) on the period’s decadent subculture, but also highlighted the rigidity and
conservatism of the age. The birth of decadence, a reaction against this stern dogmatism,
made it its primary goal to challenge and destabilize conventionality, adding diversity and
colour to the era. It has been mentioned that the late-Victorian moralist middle class
establishment endeavored to subdue the “degenerate” (morally perverse) nonconformists, for example, by the nascence of movements like The Church of England
Purity Society and The White Cross League. The radicalism of the attempts to conserve
sexual purity and morality were the primary causes of rigidity. At the same time, Wilde’s
works, especially Dorian Gray and Salomé, and James’s “The Author of Beltraffio” and
“The Lesson of the Master” prove that late-Victorianism was also the golden age of
licentiously seditious creative works and acts of behaviour.
Wilde’s decadent characters critiqued and resisted late-Victorian values, advocated the
importance of leading a life of aesthetic vision, sensori-emotional values and indulgence.
As the analysis has shown, these hedonists transgressed not only gender boundaries, but
middle-class norms of moral behaviour, making the era ambivalent. However, as it has
been shown, ambivalence is also inherent in the works of James not just Wilde –whatever
the reputation or indeed the assertions of the authors may have been. As has been noted
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Wilde not only depicted hedonism and decadent characters, but he also created fictional
characters, like, Basil, who practice moral restraint, and, importantly, punished moral
degenerates, like Dorian and Salomé for their transgressions. Antithetically, Jamesian
texts clearly reject and preach against the decadent dogmas of the late-Victorian counterculture through characters like Beatrice, Rowland, and Miss Juliana, however, in spite of
this, traces of homoeroticism, decadence, and fetishism may still be detected in the works
that have been analyzed. The presence of homoeroticism, fetishism, homosociality, homoaestheticism, and the antagonism towards women in James’s Roderick Hudson, “The
Author of Beltraffio,” “The Lesson of the Master,” and “The Aspern Papers” reveal a
hidden subtext and are comparable with Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Salomé. The presence
of perversions in James’s short fiction has also proved that James depicted multiple forms
of behaviour that displaced sexual intercourse by fetishism, just like Wilde. Thus, both
Wilde’s and James’s texts are flooded with homoerotic sentiment, and a homoerotic mood
is set in multiple scenes of their works. These scenes substantiate a homoerotic ambiance
with images of sensuality, luxury, and a depiction of effeminate masculine beauty. Of
course sensuality itself does not necessarily signal homoeroticism, but in the manner it is
employed and evoked in the texts of Wilde and James, it decisively implies same-sex
love. Their fixation on male beauty is certainly homoerotically charged. Both Wilde and
James orient their reader towards a homoerotic sensibility by means of a crude
antagonism to heterosexual courtships. When this antagonism is paired with homoerotic
sensuality it signals the disruption of gender boundaries.
Importantly, in the beginning of Dorian Gray, specifically in its Preface, Wilde detaches
himself from middle class morals. Instead of substantiating that Dorian Gray has a moral
message, Wilde asserted that "there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book" (Dorian
Gray 3-4). These lines verbalize the "l’art pour l’art" doctrine, thereby segregating the
work from the late-Victorian didactic precepts, or in other words late-Victorian ethics
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1433/is_107/ai). However, in spite of all of these
claims in the Preface, morality is nonetheless instilled in the work. Towards the end of the
novel the world of Dorian Gray is referred to as monstrous. For example, Dorian
perceives his own delight in the altering portrait of himself as "monstrous" (Dorian Gray
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252) and later considers people smitten with "vice and blood and weariness" as
"monstrous," too (Dorian Gray 167). Lastly, Basil observes that the secret of his soul lies
in Dorian’s portrait, but importantly at the end of the novel Basil is convinced that it "has
the eyes of a devil" (Dorian Gray 180). The novel seems to communicate that the human
conscience should not be ignored, for those who do, deteriorate and turn into degenerate
beasts. If this is so, then death in Wilde’s novel and in his other selected works is a kind
of extermination and annihilation of evil. In spite of the fact that in the course of Dorian
Gray Wilde sympathizes with decadence and in spite of the fact that in the Prologue he
ascertains that Dorian Gray has no ethical sympathies, the ending of Dorian Gray surely
assimilates to the moral dogmas of late-Victorian times. During the novel Wilde
destabilizes conventionality, but in the end he reinstates it with Dorian’s death.
Importantly, Wilde similarly achieves this in his tragic play Salomé and in “Mr. W.H.”
Importantly, in Wilde’s Dorian Gray, “Mr. W.H,” and Salomé the (homoerotic)
decadents all get their punishment by death in the end. James, similarly, punishes the
corrupt and decadent Roderick by taking his life away at the end of Roderick Hudson.
Dorian, Salomé, and Roderick all failed to aspire to bourgeois standards and values. As
has been argued, degenerates were conceived as individuals incapable of acclimatizing
themselves to their environment, thus having a high risk of becoming extinct (Dellamora,
Productive Decadence 530-532). Antithetically, the good prevail. Rowland’s objection to
transgressive desires wins him life. He thus survives, seemingly content with
bachelorhood and its prospects. Basil, similarly to Rowland, disapproves of sexual
transgression and also has a moral conception of aestheticism and art. He too believes that
art can strip man of his selfishness and provide empathy to the weak. Similarly to
Rowland, Basil is convinced that it is the vocation of the artist to uplift and transform.
Thus, an artist is not to indulge in sensual pleasures, but help humanity shed their ego.
Hence, Wilde seems to be of the same opinion as James. In a letter to the Daily Chronicle,
published on 30 June, Wilde writes that "the real moral of the story is that all excess, as
well as renunciation, brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and
deliberately suppressed” that it “realise[s] itself purely in the lives of the individuals, and
so becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the object of the work of
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art itself" (Ellmann, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde 246). In
addition, Wilde further asserts that Dorian Gray is “haunted all through his life by an
exaggerated sense of conscience” which “warns him that youth and enjoyment are not
everything in the world,” he tries to “get rid” of his “conscience” so “he destroys the
picture and thus in his attempt to kill conscience Dorian Gray kills himself” (Ellmann,
The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde 246). Wilde’s letter is not only a
defense of Dorian Gray, but also a re-enforcement of Christian orthodoxy. Overall, in
spite of Wilde’s decadent proclamations in Dorian Gray and in his other texts analyzed,
both Wilde and James conclude that morality and social mores cannot be denied and those
who do become self-destructive and indeed self-annihilating. However, critics of Wilde’s
novel undermined and devalued his work and seem not to have paid attention to Wilde’s
moral message. As Vyvyan Holland, Wilde’s son asserts "the tragedy of Oscar Wilde
ranks with most other great historical tragedies, which are mainly brought about by the
stupidity of pompous and self important people" (126).
The Daily Chronicle alleged that "Mr. Wilde's book has no real use if it be not to
inculcate the 'moral' that when you feel yourself becoming too angelic you cannot do
better than rush out and make a beast of yourself” (Beckson, Critical Heritage 72).
Apparently, these contentions were a shock to Wilde for in spite of what he said in the
Preface, he was convinced that Dorian Gray is a moral book. He once wrote to Arthur
Conan Doyle in April 1891: "I cannot understand how they can treat Dorian Gray as
immoral […] my difficulty was to keep the inherent moral subordinate to the artistic and
dramatic effect" (Letters 478). Wilde asserted himself and addressed the critics. In a letter
to the St. James Gazette dated 26 June 1890, Wilde refuted the critics by claiming that:
They will find that [Dorian Gray] is a story with a moral [...] Yes; there is a
terrible moral in Dorian Gray--a moral which the prurient will not be able to find
in it, but which will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic
error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.
(Ellmann, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde 246)
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Since Dorian Gray is a novel that delves into the depths of the diabolic, it requires an
unyielding understanding of the moral. Given Wilde’s theistic rearing, his concept of
morality is contingent on the doctrines of Christianity, similarly to Henry James. Thus,
the ideology of Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson, as well as their shorter works, are
after all, Christian. Wilde’s and James’s selected works stage a dramatic story in which
the concept of God, sin, good and evil, and even free will are ubiquitous. For instance,
Dorian, Basil, Salomé, Rowland, Roderick and Beatrice exercise free will, and their right
to choose, all of which have been betrothed onto man by God. Dorian’s, Salomé’s, and
Roderick’s doom are all the result of bad decisions and original sin. Ever since man has
been
banished
from
the
Garden
of
Eden,
his
“moral
condition”
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1433/is_107/ai) has been flawed and weakened,
thereby negatively influencing man’s spiritual development. Buma also notes that
“because of Adam and Eve's colossal gaffe in the Garden of Eden, humanity is
permanently predisposed toward evil; however, at the same time we remain imbued with
some capacity to choose the good”( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb433/is_107/ai).
In the works analyzed guilt and horror result from the conflict between
homosexuality/decadence and Christian sensibility. Dorian’s, Salomé’s, and Roderick’s
fall and even death are the result of their submission to evil and sin.
As Dorian tells Basil, "each of us has Heaven and Hell in him" (181). Dorian is a
conscious Christian, who has fallen. He is aware of the existence of sin, in fact he is
terrified by it so much so that he pledges to be virtuous:
One thing, however, he felt that [the painting] had done for him. It had made him
conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to
make reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His unreal and selfish love
would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed by some nobler
passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide
to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to
others and the fear of God to us all [...] here was a visible symbol of the
degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon
their souls. (Dorian Gray 112)
224
A liberationist standpoint envisions homoeroticism in a positive light and as a result
most of the recent gender criticism of Wilde’s novel neglected to disclose the "elements
of guilt and self loathing” (Carroll 287) of Dorian. It is, however, essential to realize that
overall, Dorian Gray and Roderick Hudson put forward a Christian view of the universe,
underpinning Christian tenets by dealing out just retribution in the end. However, at
times, Wilde does subject the readers to some moments of skepticism, especially with the
death of James Vane. Unlike James, Wilde of course did not aim to sound orthodox.
“Wilde seems to have truly believed his own dictum about the apparentness of the moral
being the novel's only flaw” (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1433/is_107/ai).
Wilde
notes
that
Dorian
Gray
has
an
"ethical
beauty"
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1433/is_107/ai). For the reader to identify this
"ethical beauty," Dorian’s punishment for his sins, by death, is simply indispensable, and
this holds true for Wilde’s other texts as well, like Salomé and the "Mr. W. H.”
Overall, the principal conflicts in Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Salomé, “Mr W. H” and
James’s Roderick Hudson, “The Aspern Papers,” “The Author of Beltraffio,” and “The
Lesson of the Master” are the dual contending natures of man: the moral and sensual.
One vision derives from decadent aestheticist doctrines, which is correlated with
homoeroticism and same-sex affectionate bonds, and the other from a Christian
conception of morality.
Lastly, in both the analyzed Wildean and Jamesian texts the Christian ethos exhibits
itself quite pejoratively, solely as remorse and agony. Just retribution is invincible, there
are no prospects of redemption or even transformation. Sensual pleasures are correlated
with egoism, vanity, and debauchery. Moral pathos is represented explicitly and
imaginatively — in Christian terms of self-sacrifice, sin, conscience, remorse,
redemption, just retribution, and the soul (Carroll 289). So, the similarities between
Wilde’s and James’s selected works range from the coded presentation of homosexual
desire to a final return to conventional morality and poetic justice.
225
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Index
Aestheticism, 1, 2, 4, 8, 11, 13, 32, 49, 52, 62, 69, 70-4, 80-2, 89, 90-4, 99, 129, 132,
142, 152, 156, 163, 191, 201, 205-6, 209, 210, 212, 217, 219, 220
Aesthete, 8, 18, 59, 64, 71-5, 79, 85, 97, 106, 115, 145, 168,-9, 199, 209
“The Author of Beltraffio,” 2, 9, 11, 14, 20, 65, 89, 104, 123, 126-9, 140, 154, 182, 199,
201, 218-9, 222
“The Aspern Papers,” 2, 3, 9, 11, 20, 65, 74, 89, 111, 126-7, 129, 140, 182, 197-8, 200,
211, 219, 222
Beckson, Karl, 69, 82-, 220-21
Bristow, Joseph, 1, 2, 84, 85
Carlyle, Thomas, 9, 10, 13, 60, 65-6, 73, 94-5, 106, 111-13, 120-22, 133, 135-6, 138, 14052, 159, 162, 166-8, 176, 180-82, 184, 186, 191, 201, 205, 214, 219
Christianity, 3, 24, 26, 27, 33, 38, 50-1, 79, 129, 151-2, 212, 221
The Church of England Purity Society, 6, 30-1, 33, 53, 218
Clitoridectomy, 29, 34-6, 38
Dandy, 8, 18, 52, 57-9, 60-7, 70, 71-2, 77, 82-3, 87, 93, 99, 116, 123, 152, 169
Dandyism, 8, 13, 18, 57-9, 60, 62-4, 67, 70-2, 77
Decadence, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11-3, 24, 31, 35-9, 46-51, 53, 56-8, 60, 64, 67-9, 70-2, 75, 79,
80-1, 83, 90-1, 96, 98, 102, 107-11, 123, 129, 138, 152, 163, 180, 191, 193, 206, 208,
217-8, 220, 222
degenerate(s), 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 31, 35, 37, 39, 47, 48, 52, 80, 93, 100, 107, 115-6, 120, 129,
134, 138, 16, 182, 196, 218, 220
Dollimore, Jonathan, 4, 48-9, 92, 200
Ellmann, Richard, 1, 18, 49, 76-7, 81, 89
Fetishism, 8, 16, 21, 117, 123-4, 128-9, 152, 172, 194, 196, 217, 219
Freedman, Jonathan, 226
Gagnier, Regina, 62
Garelick, Rhonda, 57-9, 60, 62, 81-2, 123-5
Harpham, Geoffrey, 136-8, 140, 162
Homoeroticism, 17, 20, 24, 28, 53, 63-4, 68, 88, 91-3, 96-7, 103, 105, 116, 122, 128, 139,
145, 152, 156, 158, 170, 183-5, 194, 196, 198, 202-3, 202, 217, 219, 222-3
Homoerotic gazes, 2, 11, 19, 20, 21, 99, 118, 127, 139, 234
“The Lesson of the Master,” 2, 3, 9, 11, 17, 20, 65, 89, 104, 111, 126, 137, 140-2, 150,
182-3, 206, 218-9, 222
morals/morality, 2, 4, 6, 8, 19, 23, 25-8, 30-1, 45-6, 48-50, 52, 56, 60-2, 71, 80, 92, 95,
108, 127, 132-8, 140, 150, 163-4, 180, 191
Mendelssohn, Michèle, 211, 212, 214
Mosse, George, 24
Muscular Christianity, 24, 26-7, 38, 151-3
Nordau, Max Simon, 6, 8, 48, 49, 56, 80, 135
Religious Art, 209, 210, 212, 214
Repression, 2-4, 8, 11, 13, 15, 20, 34, 46, 48, 71, 94, 129-138, 142
233
Salomé, 2, 3, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 59, 72, 78, 81, 83, 85, 116-7, 123-29, 140, 145, 153, 170,
182, 196, 200, 205, 214, 218-20, 222
Sedgwick, Kosofsky, Eve, 12, 14-7, 19, 31, 42, 46, 60,63, 68, 83, 93, 140, 152-3, 174,
209
Sensuality, 56, 110, 209-10, 212, 219,
Sinfield, Alan, 15, 53, 60-1, 63-5, 79, 80
Sublimation, 2, 103-4, 132, 134-37, 140-42, 148-9, 156, 163, 178, 181, 193-4
Stevens, Hugh, 5, 6, 156, 187-89, 190, 192
The White Cross League, 6, 30, 32, 218
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Appendix
ABSTRACT
The late-Victorian era is much more convoluted and multi-layered than is generally
acknowledged, making the definition and categorization of this historical era complex and
difficult. Generally, we correlate Victorianism with Puritanism and the trials of Oscar
Wilde, even though it had a flourishing subculture like the Decadent movement, the effete
dandies, the homosexuals, and the transvestites. These social phenomena were reactions
to a time when sexual/social purity and repression were advocated and rigid conservatism
left little leeway for flexibility and resilience. Decadence, the reaction against social
dogmatism, made it its primary goal to challenge and subvert conventionality, adding
diversity and colour to the era. Against this background of late-Victorian Puritanism and
its subversive counterculture this dissertation analyzes and compares selected literary
works by Henry James and Oscar Wilde. In critical reception Wilde and James are
frequently contrasted, however, the present study will draw parallels between some
Jamesian texts and the decadent oeuvre of Oscar Wilde. These works, as will be shown,
are flooded with homoerotic subtexts, which surface by means of fetishization, the
homoerotic gaze, lush decadence, homosociality but also homophobia, dandified and
effete performance, and hostility to women and the institution of marriage. The works by
Wilde and James selected for analysis, also contain and embody the dichotomy which is
characteristic of the late-Victorian era: all the texts analyzed make concessions to lateVictorian mores and ethics, and include the portrayal of moral exemplars, and end by
punishing moral transgressors.
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