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 vii viii Contents 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 Note s 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 ix 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 oneself a 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). xi