The following is a paper I wrote in the winter of 2012 for a British Literature course...
[In the Name of Beauty: A Further look in the homoerotic subtexts of
The Picture of Dorian Gray]
In the 1930s and 40s, after vast ethnolinguistic research, anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as linguistic determinism, or “the idea that language to some extent shapes the way in which people view and think about the world around them (Haviland113.)” Most of Whorf’s research on this topic came from translating English into Hopi, a North Native American Language. He discovered that Hopi differs from English in many ways including: vocabulary, grammar and verb tenses. In interpreting the text of Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, I would like to flip this hypothesis to look at it from behind. From this perspective the hypothesis would read, “The way in which people view and think about the world around them shapes their language.” We see this in America through the constant pejoration and amelioration of specific words in our language, a good example being the word “gay.” Whereas in the late 14th century the word “gay” most likely would be used to mean "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree (Harper)" it moved to having undertones of promiscuity into a slang term for homosexual men. Presently, young people will use the term “gay” towards anything they find un-pleasurable or stupid. This pejoration of the term “gay” shows Americans fearful, unwillingness to accept homosexuals in modern day society and proves the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis correct.
On a similar note, in the beginning of Francis Mondimore’s book A Natural History of Homosexuality, he gives a brief history of the invention of the word “homosexuality.” “Homosexuality” was created in 1869, in an open letter to the German Minister of Justice from writer Karl Maria Kertbeny. In drafting the new North German Federation, a debate had formed over whether to keep the section of the Prussian Criminal Code making sexual contact between persons of the same gender a crime (Mondimore3.) The actual language of the text is this: “IV. Section 143 of the Prussian Penal Code determines ‘Unchastity contrary to nature exercised between persons of the male sex or by human beings on animals shall be punished…’ (Malik.)” It is important to note the difference of language because of the distinction between the words “gender” and “sex” and also between male and female sexuality. Sex is biological and objective, while gender is socially constructed and, therefore, subjective. The code determines only that sexual contact between men is a crime. Gender is still a concept to be built upon, as well as the concept of female homosexuality. This history shows the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to be true. As hostility for what is considered “degenerate forms of male sexuality (Cohen1)” ascends, new words are created to reflect the new state of being.
Twenty years after the emergence of the word “homosexual” makes its (un)popular debut Oscar Wilde would have seemed to have ‘missed the boat.’ The main characters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, namely Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil Halloway, maintain a pre-homosexual mentality in a post-homosexual environment. Alex Ross of the New Yorker, in describing the book, claims that against popular ideals of the time, “no work of mainstream English-language fiction had come so close to spelling out homosexual desire (Ross.)” Wilde’s main characters mentality and natures are more like those of ancient Greeks than Victorian England, reflecting instead, Wilde’s own sexual desires and ideals.
Around the time of Kertbeny coining the term “homosexual,” he was also developing the concept of sexual orientation, “This idea that some individual’s sexual attraction for persons of the same sex was an inherent and unchanging aspect of their personality was radically new (Mondemore3.)” Since this time sexual orientation has quickly ingrained itself in all aspects of our lives; it’s become a method of identification. Our modern day culture cannot, now, conceive of a human being without sexual orientation; conceive of the way Wilde’s characters identify themselves sexually. They, like the Greeks, would be most appropriately considered bisexual. The creation of “homosexuality” has turned bi-sexuality into a type of purgatory, filled with those waiting to find out what their relationship-future will hold for them.
We can explore this mysterious bisexuality through acts of marriage. In the society of ancient Greece as well as Victorian England, marriage was a requirement for heterosexual sex, and sex was required for procreation. England told its women to, lie back and think of the empire, heterosexual relationships are a duty. However, for men in ancient Greece, sexual contact with both sexes was not only accepted but expected as “necessary compliments to procreation (Mondimore.)” Men need contact with other men to gain a fulfillment that cannot be found in relationships with women. Women were seen as un-intellectual objects, run by their emotions and frivolous desires. For these reasons, women cannot experience real love. “The first edition of Mahaffy's book, Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander, proposes that Greek men preferred beautiful Greek boys because women were not sufficiently cultivated to provide interesting company (Terpening.)” These ideas are present in The Picture of Dorian Gray through the constant philosophizing and warnings from the character of Lord Henry. Dissatisfied with his marriage (he and his wife are only once seen in the same room), on woman’s manner Lord Henry pontificates, “Women represent the triumph of matter over mind (Wilde)”, and on their appreciation of aesthetics, “Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least good women have not (10.)” Lord Henry does not only reflect Greek and Victorian ideals, he embodies them through his language and relationships.
Wilde himself was dissatisfied in his marriage. In 1884, he married Constance Lloyd with whom he had two children. William Terpening describes the union in his short biography, The Picture of Oscar Wilde: A Brief Life,
“The marriage… represented all that was to go badly with the union as a dumbfounded and unappreciative woman of quite mediocre intelligence was thrust into the resplendent world of the Aesthete Prince…Visitors would repeatedly describe the shy and doll-like bride hanging on each of Wilde's words, speaking little, an attractive prop more than a person (Terpening.)”
Terpening then goes on to suggest reasons for Wilde’s insistence on the marriage. He is unconvinced that Wilde thought, like the Greeks, that women “were not sufficiently cultivated.” He uses the examples of Wilde’s regard for his mother and the relationship between the male and female characters Salome and The Sphinx in one of Wilde’s later works, Salome, to prove his higher regard, or at least sympathy, for women. “Perhaps in his quest for a kind of naturalness that was uncorrupted by society, he sought along the way a mannequin so pure, so blank, that he might craft her into the ideal woman.” At first, in reflection of The Picture of Dorian Gray, this argument appears weak. However, it is familiar. Perhaps Wilde’s love for Constance is similar to that of Dorian’s love for Sybil Vane. Dorian loves Sybil for her emptiness; she is Juliet, she is Rosaline, but she is never Sybil Vane (Wilde.) When Sybil falls in love and becomes a real person in Dorian’s eyes her image is completely shattered and he leaves her. One cannot craft perfection, perfection is only a mirage. In this way Dorian and Sibyl’s relationship mirrors that of Wilde and Constance, marked with a warning sign. Marked further by the commentary of Lord Henry, when Dorian tells Henry of his love for Sybil, Henry responds with, “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex (34.)” There’s a constant dichotomy present in the text between the sexes that illustrates the disconnect felt by men that prompts the need for contact with other men or “intellectual contact.”
In Modern, as in Victorian times, the acceptability of sexual acts depends on the biological sex of the partners involved. However in ancient Greece, “the social acceptability of a sexual act was not determined by the gender of the partners but rather the balance of power between them (Mondimore8.)” If one was having sex with a woman, the male (the penis) would be the dominant and the female would be the submissive. When males chose other male partners, younger partners or those of lower status became the submissive partner to avoid degrading either member of the partnership. The ideal relationship between men was one where there was an older, dominant partner called erastes and a younger, submissive partner called eremenos. In this relationship the older male would reach climax by sticking his penis in between the thighs of the younger male. This relationship continued until the eromenos partner reached a certain age, at which time he would marry a woman and become an erastes.
We see this type of older male/younger male relationship develop in The Picture of Dorian Gray between the characters of Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry. In Writing Gone Wilde, Ed Cohen describes this relationship saying that, “Dorian is born at the conjunction between Basil’s visual embodiment of his erotic desire for Dorian and Lord Henry’s verbal sublimation of such desire (Cohen.)” Dorian becomes the eremenos for his older friend, Basil. In fact, earlier revisions of Dorian Gray show more of the love between Basil and Dorian then the later versions. In describing Dorian to Lord Henry he says, “I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray (Wilde.)” And in explaining why he cannot display the painting Basil explains, “Where there is really love, they would see something evil, and where there is spiritual passion they would suggest something vile (Ross.)” Dorian also plays the eremenos role for Lord Henry, who also falls for the charm of Dorian’s innocence and great beauty, making Basil jealous of their relationship. Basil, who first tries to keep Dorian a secret from Lord Henry, is hurt when they hit it off so well and even becomes jealous when Dorian confides his love for Sybil Vane to Henry before telling him first. However, all great relationships must come to an end. Later in the novel, as Dorian grows older, although he never marries, he finds his own erastes/eromenos relationship with young men in the city, just as Wilde himself develops his own erastes/eromenos relationship. “He met the charming but temperamental Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), then an undergraduate at Oxford, and began a very close relationship with him. This continued for years (Terpening.)” Through this relationship we find Wilde, again, creating a narrative of bisexuality, a middle pathway between extremes.
In Writing Gone Wilde, Ed Cohen makes a convincing case for the homoeroticism of Wilde. He begins by summoning meaning behind the norms of Victorian England, “Victorian Bourgeoisie’s effort to control a degenerate form of male sexuality- ensured standards (Cohen1.)” He goes on to detail Wilde’s conquest, “By juxtaposing male same-sex passion with a cultural concept of “manliness” that seeks to exclude it, the novel deconstructs those definitions of human nature that deny the homo erotic as unnatural (Cohen5.)” Wilde is often described as a revolutionary for Gay Rights, a fighter in the name of beauty. By choosing what to include and what to ignore in the context of illustrating Victorian England, Wilde creates a commentary on what is important and what is not important. He creates a plea for the middle path that he claims as his stories moral. “All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment (Ross.)” Life cannot be lived within the boundaries of black and white.
Works Cited/Referenced
Cohen, Ed. "Writing Gone Wilde: Homoeriotic Desire in the Closet of Representation." PMLA Oct. 1987: 801-13. JStor. Modern Language Association. Web. Mar. 2012. .
Harper, Douglas. "Online Etymology Dictionary." Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. Web. 30 Mar. 2012. .
Haviland. Et Al. "Language and Communication." Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge. 12th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008. 113. Print.
Malik, Faris. "Benkert-143.htm." The WELL. Born Eunuchs Library, 1999. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .
Mondimore, Francis Mark. "Before Homosexuality." A Natural History of Homosexuality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 3-15. Print.
Ross, Alex. "Deceptive Picture: How Oscar Wilde Painted over "Dorian Gray"" The New Yorker 8 Aug. 2011, Arts and Culture sec. The New Yorker. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. .
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