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Jones-Renger, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1999 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Linda Mizejewski, Adviser Professor David Riede Adviser ^ Professor Cathy Shuman English Graduate Program UMI Number: 9 9413 53 UMI Microform 9941353 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT My dissertation articulates the concept of "dangerous reading," situated within the context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglo-American culture. I postulate that certain forms o f scandalous entertainment were perceived as threats to middle-class values because they preyed upon the "weak-minded"—population segments discursively linked with children and the "lower races"—who, theoretically, would be inclined to mimetic reproduction o f the culture they consumed. I argue that the counterhegemonic strategy of Camp emerges as a way to circumvent charges of corruption, even while allowing duplicitous double meanings to accrue to certain cultural productions when interpreted by a knowing audience. Camp is a way of resisting "straight" reading while appearing to conform to it on a literal level. Although my dissertation investigates different aesthetic objects from two cultures, I find that these are linked through their ability to be read as Camp objects. Furthermore, the British texts that I employ—Wilkie Collins's sensation novels and the work of Oscar Wilde—enjoyed popularity in America, while the productions of Mae West also made a successful transatlantic crossover. In addition to the primary texts, I examine contemporary reviews of sensation novels and scientific discussions of cultural "degeneration"; the trials of Oscar Wilde; and critical responses to and historical conditions surrounding Mae West’s work. Using Oscar Wilde as the pivotal figure in this study, I argue that sensation novels are symptomatic of the cultural conditions that lead to 11 the coining of the term "Camp" in the first decade of this century, and that the brand of Camp employed by West depended upon a nostalgic retrieval of the Gay Nineties. Replete with murder and sexual scandal, the Victorian sensation novel threatened the chastity of the women who read it, and it made the dangerous suggestion that gender and class could be imitated successfully. Chapters Two and Three investigate three sensation novels from the 1860s, and this study is original in its treatment of these texts as Camp artifacts. These novels problematize the gender identity of the protagonists, as well as of the reading subject. My reading focuses on femininity as role-playing and links the "act" of femininity to "deviant" sexuality. 1 argue that the "normality" that these texts seem to approve is only a successfully closeted deviance. Chapter Four studies Oscar Wilde as the pivotal figure in the histories of both Camp sensibility and homosexuality. The Picture of Dorian Grav and Wilde's trials are the primar}' focus in this examination of how "dangerous texts" come to be seen as signs of the artist's degeneracy. Beginning with Wilde, the body of the artist is regarded as the potential repository for cultural "poison" that may be disseminated to vulnerable minds and bodies through the corrupting medium of the text or stage spectacle. Wilde's "camping" is interpreted as an attempt to combat the criminalization of his body by baffling a "straight" reading and by resituating "deviance" in the mind o f the reader rather than the mind/body of the author. Chapter Five examines literature's replacement by visual entertainment as the most potentially dangerous form of popular culture. Mae West provides the perfect meeting point for discussions of Camp reading, gender performance, transgression, and censorship. This chapter draws connections between West and the fin-de-siècle, arguing that West's one-liners and double entendres are Camp strategies derived from Wilde's epigrams and insisence on the indeterminate meaning of art. Ill My concluding chapter examines the theoretical implications of transgressive consumption and dangerous culture in the late twentieth century. Specifically, the discursive shift in focus firom one aesthetic form to others (the relative neglect of literature in the face of more immediately accessible incarnations, such as television and music), as well as in the consuming subject who is supposedly at risk, reveals the facets of cultural identity currently perceived as being under siege by unsupervised consumption of popular entertainment. The viability of Camp's continuance as a counterhegemonic strategy is also examined. IV Dedicated to Todd, who always indulges my consumption of transgressive culture ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Linda Mizejewski, for her inspiration, enthusiasm, intellectual support, and advice, without which I could never have completed this project. I am grateful to my other committee members, David Riede and Cathy Shuman, for their encouragement and assistance with my drafts. I also thank the scholars whose advice and letters of support were instrumental to my project and doctoral career in general, especially Clare Simmons, Kathy Psomiades, and Pamela Robertson. Completion of my dissertation and degree was assisted by three fellowship awards, for which 1 thank The Ohio State University and its Department of English. VI VITA August 4, 1970 Bom - Logansport, Indiana 1992 B. A. Art, University'of Notre Dame 1994 M.A. English, Purdue University 1994 - 1995 University Fellow, The Ohio State University 1995 - 1999 Graduate Teaching, Research, and Administrative Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Nineteenth-Century British Literature Secondary Field: Film Studies V ll TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract.............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication..........................................................................................................................v Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................vi V ita ................................................................................................................................... vii Chapters: 1. Introduction................................................................................; ........................ 1 2. A Silk Gown and a Sense o f Her Own Importance: Identity and Impersonation in No N am......................................... e 26 3. "Hysterical" Texts: Camp and Sexual Crisis in Armadale and Man and W................................................................. ife 74 3.1 The Fatality that Follows Men in the Dark: Desire and Deadly Identity in Armadale......................................77 3.2 Fatal Identity Revisited: Man and Wife and the Triumph of the Fallen Woman......................................119 4. Forgery and Toxicity: Oscar Wilde and the Body in/as T............................. ext 151 4.1 The Paradise of Women: Oscar Wilde, American Consumerism, and Mae W est...........208 5. Don't Go West, Young Woman: Mae West, Impersonation, and Identification.....................................................222 6. The New Fin-de-Siecle: Sex, Violence, and Entertainment in a Carceral Culture of Consumption.........................................270 Bibliography....................................................................................................................288 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION A class of literature has grown up around us, usurping in many respects, intentionally or unintentionally, a portion of the preacher's office, playing no inconsiderable part in moulding