Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-xtvcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-27T01:09:29.892Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desire in the Closet of Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Ed Cohen
Ed Cohen*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, California
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The name Oscar Wilde has become one of the best-known indexes of late nineteenth-century male homoerotic desire. To situate Wilde's emergence as “a homosexual” in late nineteenth-century literary contexts and thereby explore the ways that sex-gender ideologies shape specific literary works, I focus first on Teleny, a novel widely attributed to Wilde and one of the earliest examples of male homoerotic pornography. Then, by analyzing the more celebrated and yet manifestly “straight” text The Picture of Dorian Gray, I illustrate that, even in the absence of explicit homosexual terminology or activity, a text can subvert the normative standards for male same-sex behavior. In considering how these works challenge the hegemonic representations of male homoerotic experience in late Victorian Britain, I suggest that textual depictions of male same-sex experience both reproduce and resist the dominant (hetero)sexual ideologies and practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 102 , Issue 5 , October 1987 , pp. 801 - 813
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ariès, P. Centuries of Childhood. Trans. Baldick, Robert. London: Cape, 1962.Google Scholar
Calligan, Tim, Connell, Bob, and Lee, John. “Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity.” Theory and Society 14.5 (1985): 551–604.Google Scholar
Chauncey, George. “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality.” Salmagundi 58–59 (1982–83): 114–46.Google Scholar
Cohen, Philip. The Moral Vision of Oscar Wilde. London: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Cominos, P. “Late Victorian Sexual Respectability and the Social System.” International Review of Social History 8 (1963): 18–48, 216–50.10.1017/S0020859000002224CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, R. W. “Class, Patriarchy and Sartre's Theory of Practice.” Theory and Society 11 (1982): 305–20.10.1007/BF00211660CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coward, Rosalind. Patriarchal Precedents. London: Routledge, 1983.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Hurley, Robert, Seem, Mark, and Lane, Helen R. New York: Viking, 1977.Google Scholar
Donzelot, Jacques. The Policing of Families. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Pantheon, 1979.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Soul of Black Folks. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1961.Google Scholar
Ellmann, Richard. “The Critic as Artist as Wilde.” Wilde and the Nineties. Ed. Ryskamp, Charles. Princeton: Princeton U Library, 1966. 1–20.Google Scholar
Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men. New York: Morrow, 1981.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Vintage, 1979.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1980.Google Scholar
Gagnier, Regenia. Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane. The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.10.1007/978-1-349-16779-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Arthur. “Buggery and the British Navy, 1700–1861.” Journal of Social History 10.1 (1976): 72–97.10.1353/jsh/10.1.72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillis, John. “The Evolution of Delinquency, 1890–1914.” Past and Present 67 (1975): 96–126.10.1093/past/67.1.96CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillis, John. Youth and History. New York: Academic, 1974.Google Scholar
Gorham, Deborah. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Hyde, H. Montgomery. The Trials of Oscar Wilde. London: Hodge, 1948.Google Scholar
Katz, Jonathan. Gay/Lesbian Almanac. New York: Harper, 1983.Google Scholar
Knight, G. Wilson. “Christ and Wilde.” Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Ellmann, Richard. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1969. 138–50.Google Scholar
Leyland, Winston. Introduction. Wilde, Teleny 5–19.Google Scholar
Lombroso, Caesar. Criminal Man. London, 1875.Google Scholar
Lombroso, Caesar. The Female Offender. New York, 1897.Google Scholar
Marcus, Steven. The Other Victorians. New York: Basic, 1964.Google Scholar
Mason, Stuart. Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality. New York: Haskell, 1971.Google Scholar
Meyers, Jeffrey. Homosexuality and Literature. London: Athlone, 1977.Google Scholar
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Methuen, 1985.Google Scholar
Nassaar, Christopher. Into the Demon Universe. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Plummer, Kenneth, ed. The Making of the Modern Homosexual. London: Hutchinson, 1981.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women.” Towards an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Reiter, Rayna. New York: Monthly Review, 1975. 157–210.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.10.7312/sedg90478CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverman, David, and Torode, Brian. The Material World. London: Routledge, 1980.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith. “The Double Standard.” Journal of the History of Ideas 20.2 (1959): 195–216.10.2307/2707819CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trumbach, Randolph. “London's Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and Western Culture in the 18th Century.” Journal of Social History 11.1 (1977): 1–33.10.1353/jsh/11.1.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society. New York: Cambridge UP, 1980.10.1017/CBO9780511583605CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weeks, Jeffrey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Quartet, 1977.Google Scholar
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality and Its Discontents. London: Routledge, 1985.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Lippincott's Monthly Magazine July 1890: 3–100.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Portable Oscar Wilde. Ed. Aldington, R. and Weintraub, S. New York: Viking, 1974.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. Teleny. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1984.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto, 1961.Google Scholar
Winkler, Jack. “Garden of Nymphs: Public and Private in Sappho's Lyrics.” Women's Studies 8 (1981): 65–91.10.1080/00497878.1981.9978532CrossRefGoogle Scholar