OSCAR WILDE: EROS AND AESTHETICS

Oscar Wilde Eros and Aesthetics

Patricia Flanagan Behrendt Assistant Professor of Theatre, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN 978-1-349-21659-8 ISBN 978-1-349-21657-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21657-4

© Patricia Flanagan Behrendt, 1991

Softcover reprint of the bardeover 1st edition 1991

All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1991

ISBN 978-0-312-06576-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Behrendt, Patricia Flanagan. Oscar Wilde: eros and asthetics/Parricia Flanagan Behrendt. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-06576-8 1. Wilde, Oscar, 1854-190o--criticism and interpretation. 2. Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900-Aesthetics. 3. Sex in literature. I. Title. PR5827.S48B44 1991 828' .809-dc20 91-13780

CIP

To Stephen C. Behrendt

Contents

Note on the Title IX

Note on Texts xi

Preface xii

1 Eros and Aesthetics 1 Eros and Aesthetic Judgment 1 Sex and Critical Discourse 5 Wilde in Context: The Politics of Sexual Discourse in Nineteenth-Century England 9 Sexual Studies: The Burden of Myth 16

2 Sexual Drama in the Early Poetry 21 The Honey of Romance: Homoeroticism in the Early Poetry 21 The "Sovereign of the Insufferables" and His Contemporary Critics 2 7 Wilde and Pater: The Importance of Being Musical 33 Blind Eros: Sexual Conflict in the Early Poetry 3 7 Wilde and W omen: Images of Fernale and Male Sexuality in the Short Poems 55

3 Sexuality and Death: The Fate of Wilde's Heterosexual Lovers 63 Vera; Or, The Nihilists 65 The Duchess of Padua 7 4

4 Eroticism and the Dialogic Form 93 "Who do you think seduced me ... little Robbie" 93 Wilde and the Cult of Personality 100 Eroticism and the Critical Dialogues 105

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5 The Dandy Coup de Thititre: Homosexual Eros and the London Stage 119 Lady Windermere's Fan: The Dandy Unbound 127 A Woman of No Importance: The Dandy Devil in the Garden 147 The Dandy as An Ideal Husband 158 Ferocious Idyll; or The Importance of Being Earnest 166

Epilogue: Speaking the Unspeakahle 179

Not es 183

Select Bibliography 190

Index 192

Note on the Title

In the broadest sense, the implicit connedion between Eros and aesthetics lies in the fad that both are ways of accounting for processes of creation; the first is a prima! and archetypal way of symbolizing the mythic creation of the earth; the latter refers to an academic system of dodrines. While Eros is an ancient mythic figure at the center of creation mythology who is said to have emerged from an enormaus egg to create the earth, aesthetics, on the other hand, is the study of how artistic creations achieve meaning. The two are linked uniquely, however, in the study of the works of Oscar Wilde. The more popular frivolaus image of Oscar Wilde as a decadent dandy overshadows his role both as a Classics scholar, familiar with the classical concept of Eros in Creek mythology, and as theorist in aesthetics. As the following text demonstrates, the study of the development of Wilde's aesthetics, both as writer and as theorist, reveals that at the core of his work is his own exploration of the complex sexual themes associated with the Classical concept of Eros.

The early religion conneded Eros, who was originally both male and female, with sexuality as the central expression of the life force. Over time, the image of Eros has evolved into that of the mischievous childlike figure whose arrows inspire passion in his vidims. In Classical thought, however, Eros represents the more serious concept of erotic passion or erotic Iove and the corollary threat it poses to reason and to self-control. It is this very theme of the threat to reason represented by the passions that forms a core conflict in Wilde's writings from the earliest poetry to the social comedies. But the Classical concept of Eros is even more complex than its association with the conflid between the desires of the mind and the body and, likewise, even more relevant to the study of the works of Oscar Wilde. One of the more overlooked aspeds of the concept of Eros is the bisexuality of the original image which essentially frees it from what we would today call gender specific stereotypes. Thus the early image of Eros suggests a being that is complete unto itself or self-contained; likewise, Eros may be attraded outwardly by either or by both sexes simultaneously. Such is the complexity of the image as an allegorical figure which, in

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X Note on the Title

its bisexuality, symbolizes the roles of both heteroerotic and homoerotic passion in the human being' s complex struggles to know itself. The complex theme of seif-eentered sexual passion which exists prior to the seledion of a love objed outside oneself­a theme which refleds both heteroerotic and homoerotic passion centered in the individual psyche- is basic to, Oscar Wilde's works and to his aesthetic outlook. I use the term Eros throughout the text to embrace the complexity of the sexual themes, allusions, anxieties, and delights which his works contain.

N otes on Texts

All quotations from Wilde' s poetry and plays are taken from the edition of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, in one volume, originally published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co., Ud. in 1966, and newly reprinted by Harper & Row, New York, 1989 (reproduced with permission). Page numbers in parentheses for quotations from Wilde's letters refer to The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (New York. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962).

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Preface

This study did not begin, as many do, with an optimistic flash of theoretical insight into a literary work. Instead, quite frankly, I began with the ambivalent realization that, even in the midst of my own enjoyment of Oscar Wilde's works, I feit the nagging sensation that I had been both drawn into the content and yet profoundly left out. I concluded, in fad, that my delight in Wilde, despite an academic knowledge of his life and times, was no more than an enjoyment of what Susan Sontag, among others, has described as a sensibility "that goes by the cult name of 'Camp'." As I read the thoughts of those who have written about Wilde and his works, I noted a similar theme of ambivalence both in the popular and in the scholarly responses to his style. What charaderized this ambivalence for me was the disquieting fad that, despite the pleasure derived from reading Wilde' s texts, I could not account satisfadorily in aesthetic terms for their charming complexity. Over the last century, a number of scholars have replaced similar feelings of having been left out with the decision that much of Wilde's work is purposefully frivolous and therefore dubious in content. Hence the dismissive strain even in Wildean criticism, which repeatedly concludes that much of his style is elusive affedation. However, a corollary experience, also apparent in the perceptions of others, is the angry backlash which often accompanies the phenomenon of finding oneself amused by Iiterature or events which one suspeds one does not fuily comprehend. Sontag suggests the paradox inherent in the experience when she says that she is both "drawn to Camp and almost as strongly offended by it." In their power to attrad and to repulse, Wilde's works reveal the manipulative aggressiveness which lies below the surface pattern of his style.

Among the memoirs of those who knew Wilde weil in his lifetime and even among the scholarly studies which have emerged over the decades, I recognized both conscious and unconscious ambivalence in those for whom Wilde' s works as weil as his personality inspired profound feelings both of attradion and of repulsion. Likewise, even generalizing reviews of Wilde's plays produced both during and after his lifetime inspire similarly paradoxical and ambiguous responses which, in fad, link pleasure with discomfort or anger.

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Preface xiii

George Bemard Shaw, for example, complained of being manipu­lated by Wilde's comedic style in The Importance of Being Ernest. Shaw wrote, "I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it; and that is why, though I laugh as much at anybody as a farcical comedy, I am out of spirits before the end of the second act, and out of temper before the end of the third, my miserable mechanical laughter intensifying these symptoms at every outburst." Much later, Mary McCarthy alluded to the ambiguous surrealism of the play by calling it a "ferocious idyll." She too expressed irritation at puzzling aspects of the play such as the significance of the name Emest; she concluded that "the audience is pointedly left out of the fun" because "the joke about the name Emest is doubtless a private one."

Literary studies emerge for numerous reasons. Currently, many are demonically theoretical and leave the reader feeling enfeebled and oppressed; most are sincere, some even noble. At bottom, however, the conventional scholarly approach to critical analysis is motivated by the belief that one has a special affinity, often emotional as weil as intellectual, for the work to which one is drawn. Furthermore, a work of literary scholarship usually begins with a conviction or a scholarly affectation proposing that some previously untried theoretical methodology will illuminate a work or works from a new angle. It is less conventional to be drawn to a collection of works partly out of the disturbing conviction that they manipulate the reader while simultaneously depriving him or her of any real insight into how effect or meaning are achieved. Wilde' s works ask more of me - more of anyone - than the task of applying even "user-friendly" methods or theories to works which seem safe because one secretly feels that she or he already understands them. Instead, Wilde' s works not only attract but also evade and even repulse. In other words, they do not merely teil us what we feel comfortable knowing about the world. Instead, they create conflict and confusion. And in so doing, they have the power to teach us what we would not know. Wilde hirnself describes the challenge when he concludes that "only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure."

Research at the British Library, London, and at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, was supported in part by a Maude Harnmond Fling Fellowship from the University of Nebraska. Although I am thankful to friends - particularly Dorothy Zimmerman - who read various entries in the text, I wish to express special gratitude to Stephen C.

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Behrendt, friend and husband, for his careful attention to and ceaseless interest in the manuscript at all stages.

PA TRICIA fLANAGAN BEHRENDT