i SUGGESTIVE SILENCES: SEXUALITY AND THE AESTHETIC NOVEL A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Ph. D. in English by Meredith L. Collins Examining Committee Members: Dr. Peter Logan, Advisor Temple University Department of English Dr. Priya Joshi Temple University Department of English Dr. Steven Newman Temple University Department of English Dr. Teresa Dolan Temple University Department of Art History Dr. Kate Thomas Bryn Mawr College, Department of English ii ABSTRACT This dissertation addresses how the philosophy, subculture, and sexuality of aestheticism interact with the form of the nineteenth-century novel. One primary result of this exploration is a nuanced delineation of the aesthetic novel in its formal characteristics, its content, and most notably, in the sexually charged silences that both this form and content reveal—silences made audible to invested aesthetic readers through coded doubleness. Through thus defining the aesthetic novel and seeking to articulate the unspoken sexual transgressions that are, as is argued, requisite therein, this project sheds new light both on the partially submerged sexuality of aestheticism as a movement, and on why novels account for so small a portion of the aesthetic movement’s output—topics first raised in part by Linda Dowling, Dennis Denisoff, and Talia Schaffer. By engaging Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Vernon Lee’s Miss Brown (1884), Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean (1885), Robert Hichens' The Green Carnation (1894), John Meade Falkner’s The Lost Stradivarius (1895), and Aubrey Beardsley’s Venus and Tannhäuser (1895), this dissertation demonstrates that, whether politically engaged as affirmation or using sexuality as a way to communicate rejection of middle-class morality and its own fascination with the unusual, aestheticism defines itself by its inclusion of unusual sexual situations. This argument is in part guided by and grapples with theoretical writings by Victorian sources including Walter Pater, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Hamilton and contemporary sources including Alistair Fowler, Nancy Armstrong, and D. A. Miller. iii Central to the dissertation are the suggestive silences in aesthetic novels that function not merely as the unsaid, but appear at points that beg explanation or exploration, indicating the presence of the forbidden with the frisson between interest and absence. Such moments form a pattern of mysterious sexual omissions in the novels of aestheticism, titillating audiences with their implied perversity, but never explicitly exploring it on account of legal, economic, and social censorship. Finally, this project shows that the unspeakable gaps in legal above-ground literature can easily be articulated within the already illegal world of pornography, which this dissertation accesses through the aesthetic and pornographic Teleny (1893). iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank everyone who has helped me produce this dissertation. To Dr. Logan and my committee members Dr. Newman, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Dolan, and Dr. Joshi, you were all crucial to this process. Thank you. I offer sincere thanks to Dr. Mitchell for the additional sources for understanding Miss Brown. To my unofficial readers and commenters, especially Dr. Schaffer, Dr. O’Hara, and Dr. Sandifer, I could not have understood the project as I do without you. I would also like to thank the Temple University British Writers Group. Even more, I want to thank those who supported me personally. You are all invaluable to me for so many reasons. Alex, you get a special thank you because you endured it all at close range with tremendous grace and humor. I love you. My thanks cannot express the measure of my appreciation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iv LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ viii I. Aestheticism ...................................................................................................... viii II. Aestheticism in Context ...................................................................................... xi III. Pater’s Aestheticism and Sexual Appreciation ...................................................xx IV. The Aesthetic Novel and Suggestive Silences ................................................ xxiv V. Chapter Overviews and Conclusion ............................................................... xxxii CHAPTER1: CHARACTERIZING THE AESTHETIC NOVEL ...................................1 I. Current Descriptions .............................................................................................1 II. Aestheticism and Decadence ................................................................................4 III. A New Description .............................................................................................14 IV. Sexuality and Aestheticism .................................................................................18 V. The Picture of Dorian Gray as Model ................................................................24 VI. Understanding a Variation: Teleny .....................................................................29 CHAPTER 2: STYLE, PLEASURE, AND THE AESTHETIC NOVEL ......................36 I. Aesthetic Style ....................................................................................................36 II. Aesthetic Language Considered Quantitatively ..................................................39 III. Stylistic Silence ...................................................................................................47 IV. Doubleness ..........................................................................................................55 V. Stylistic Suggestion .............................................................................................57 VI. Code, Sexuality, and Language ..........................................................................66 CHAPTER 3: DECENTRALIZING MARRIAGE ........................................................72 I. The Marriage Plot ...............................................................................................72 II. Subverting the Marriage Plot ..............................................................................80 III. Attacking the Marriage Plot ................................................................................84 IV. Negative Relationships of Influence ...................................................................89 V. Positive Relationships of Submerged Sexuality .................................................91 VI. The Green Carnation as Praxis of Multiple Strategies .......................................99 CHAPTER 4: PARODY AND THE AESTHETIC NOVEL .......................................103 I. Understanding Parody and its Relationship to Aestheticism ............................103 II. Simultaneous Parody and Participation ............................................................111 III. A Case Study of Aesthetic Parody: Miss Brown ..............................................115 IV. Parody and Sexuality in the Aesthetic Novel: Venus and Tannhäuser ...........122 V. Audience, Hybridity, Sexuality, and Parody in The Green Carnation .............132 vi CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................147 I. Organizing and Perceiving ................................................................................147 II. The Utility of Genre ..........................................................................................150 III. Avenues of Research .........................................................................................153 BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................156 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1: Diagram of comparative word frequency .............................................................. 42 viii INTRODUCTION I. Aestheticism It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed. (Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray 240) Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm. (278) I fell in love with The Picture of Dorian Gray at seventeen, and immediately I wanted more. Over the next several years, I read all that I could find by Oscar Wilde, along with Walter Pater’s The Renaissance, and volumes of poems and short stories relating to aestheticism and decadence. As much as these texts and their contexts intrigued me, I faced an extended frustration because they denied me the reading experience so many of us are trained to prioritize: the novel. The aesthetic movement is known for The Picture of Dorian Gray, several plays, a large number of short stories and poems,