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The Art of the Pose : Oscar Wilde's Theory of Persona

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The Art of the Pose : Oscar Wilde's Theory of Persona THE ART OF THE POSE: OSCAR WILDE’S THEORY OF PERSONA By HEATHER JOY MARCOVITCH A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2002 Copyright 2002 by Heather Marcovitch As always, this work is dedicated to the memory of my father, Stephen Marcovitch, who cultivated both my intellectual curiosity and my appreciation for all things comedic. This work is also dedicated to my mother, Judie Langleben, who, in addition to passing on to me her own sense of humor, encouraged me to always read. This is the result of all your efforts. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My development as a scholar and a writer would not have been possible without the help and support of my doctoral advisor. Dr. Chris Snodgrass. His rigor and enthusiasm made my work as good or better than I could have hoped. Dr. Pamela Gilbert was a conscientious reader and gave me invaluable advice about the demands of the profession. Dr. Alistair Duckworth improved my prose style and provided me with important intertextual readings of Wilde. And Dr. Ralf Remshardt introduced me to theater scholarship and helped me give my work an interdisciplinary flavor. My heartfelt thanks go to all of them. A portion of the research for this dissertation was conducted at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles. Suzanne Tatian and Jennifer Schafifaer were of immense help to me during my time spent there, as well as afterwards. Helping me exhaust all Victorian-related conversation was Heather Milton, a fantastic colleague and a good fiiend. Nick Melc2^ek plied me with gourmet cuisine and necessary viewings of Eddie Izzard’s routine. Kristen Chancey had the dubious fortune of suffering most of my dissertation-related neuroses. She handled them with great aplomb, humor, and support. I expect to return the favor soon. IV Of course, I would not have been able to complete this project without the love of my family. My mother and stepfather, Judie and Wayne Lang, were unwavering in their support and pride, as I suspect they will continue to be. lam indeed fortunate in that respect. The rest of my family has also been a bedroek of support. In particular, my brother. Dr. Stuart Marcovitch, kept me entertained throughout the writing of this project. I am very grateful for that. And my grandmother, Anne Savage, delighted me to no end with her familiarity with Lillie Langtry and, two thousand miles away, made me feel at times that I was home. V TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABSTRACT ^ CHAPTER 1 1 INTRODUCTION Notes ^ 2 PERSONALITY CRISIS: OSCAR WILDE’S OXFORD YEARS AND THE STATE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 10 The “Blue Chim’’ Principle: The Beginning Aesthete at Oxford 18 24 Wilde and Walter Pater: The Persona as Artist Notes AND 3 “THE BARD OF BEAUTY”: FAMOUS SKETCHES, FAMOUS WOMEN WILDE’S PERSONA IN THE EARLY 1880S 35 37 “Oscar, Dear!”: The Press’s Wilde and the Aesthetic Threat “He Has His Beauty, She Her Art”: Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt 47 58 “Lily of Love, Red Rose of Fire”: Wilde and Lillie Langtry Notes 4 TRADING FACES: WILDE’S ESSAYS AND THE EXCHANGE OF PERSONAE 81 The Dialogic Essays: Performing the Self The Defense Against Nature: “The Decay of Lying” 88 91 Multiple Personae and Exchange: “The Critic as Artist” 98 Persona in Writing: “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” 105 A State ofPersonae: “The Soul ofMan Under Socialism” Notes VI 5 CONCEALING THE ARTIST: THE LIMITS OF PERSONA IN THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRA Y AND SALOME 112 “Ugly Meanings in Beautifiil Things”: The Picture ofDorian Gray 114 “Me, Thou Didst Never See”: Salome and Persona 130 Notes 142 6 “THE SUPERFICIAL QUALITIES THAT LAST”: THE USE OF PERSONA IN WILDE’S COMEDIES 145 The Playwright’s Persona: Staging the Comedies 148 Ideals, Illusions, and Modem Dress: Persona as Defense in La(fy Windermere ’s Fan 152 Persona in the Wilderness: Struggle and Survival in A Woman ofNo Importance 160 “The Horrible Painted Mask”: PoUtics and Persona in An Ideal Husband .... 166 The Triumph of Bunbury: Persona as Play in The Importance ofBeing Earnest 173 Notes 180 7 “A REVOLTING AND REPELLENT TRAGEDY”: DE PROFUNDIS AND THE PERSONA OF SUFFERING 184 Rebuilding the Persona: De Profundis 189 Notes 200 REFERENCES 202 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 212 vu LIST OF FIGURES page Figure 1 Aesthetics v. Athletics 74 2 The British Fungus and the Wild American Sunflowers 75 3 National Aesthetics 76 4 The Aesthetic Craze 77 viii Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy TFIE ART OF THE POSE: OSCAR WILDE’S THEORY OF PERSONA By Heather Joy Marcovitch December 2002 Chair: Chris Snodgrass Major Department: English Oscar Wilde’s writings about persona, or the image of the self projected to the public, has been treated ambivalently by critics. His belief that every individual is obligated to cultivate an artistic self has been applauded as a postmodern queering of identity and denounced as a shallow attempt at self-marketing. This dissertation argues that Wilde’s writings present a coherent theory of persona, positioning the self as a knowable entity within the epistemological uncertainty of the fin de siecle and structuring his many challenges to a repressive and normative Victorian society. Wilde saw persona as a way to bring aestheticism into everyday practice. In the 1880s, as his own persona was being debated in the press, he presented persona as a way of Uberating the self fi'om the oppression of social expectations by encouraging the fi'ee expression of social, sexual, and behavioral difference in the middle and upper classes. His poems about actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and his essays indicate a belief that, through persona, the self can carve out a social and psychic space apart fi-om the rigors of IX normative behavior. By the early 1 890s, however, Wilde, through his own sexual experiences, began to perceive persona more as a mask used to repress socially- unacceptable desires. In The Picture ofDorian Gray and Salome, especially, he displayed his anxiety that a persona constructed out of repression could lead to an outburst of perverted desire. In the 1890s, the years he wrote his successful society comedies, Wilde transformed the struggle between persona and erotic desire that he explored in Dorian Gray and Salome into a struggle between persona and the desire for social standing. In the comedies, Wilde presents his characters caught between the free expression of their own personae and society’s use of the stereotype as a means of control. In 1 895, Wilde’s trials transformed his persona into the degenerated sexual deviant. While in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis as an attempt to recover ownership of his persona. Wilde rebuilds his persona out of his sense of suffering, in order to reclaim his identity and ultimately face a censorious public. X CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Picture the Wildean gentleman. The exquisitely dressed, witty, slightly effeminate sophisticate brings to mind not only a residual likeness of WUde himself but of aU the socialites and homosexual men who fashioned themselves in Wilde’s image throughout the twentieth eentury. Wilde, as these acolytes make clear, cultivated his personal appearanee as studiously and meticulously as if it were a work of art; indeed, Wilde’s aesthetics, as he demonstrates in his writings, hold that the individual should treat him- or herself as a work of art. He writes in “The Critie as Artist,” one of his treatises celebrating the artistry of the self, “For there is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual.”' Dressing and behaving exquisitely, as far as Wilde was eoncemed, was an act that announced a person as individual, different from the conformist crowds and able, in his or her own singular way, to present alternative, even eritical, ways of being to his or her society. Yet from the earliest instances of critical work on Wilde, there has been a charge that Wilde’s attention to physical appearance and surface behavior has been a weakness in his works. Wilde, according to Osbert Burdett, “was more interested in form than in substanee, in effect than in truth. Holbrook Jackson remarks upon “the astonishing reputation which had won [WUde] early notoriety as the posturing advertiser of himself by virtue of the ideas of others.”^ And Richard EUmann based mueh of his biography of Wilde on a dual premise of an Oscar Wilde whose subtly trenchant works were at odds 1 2 with a public figure who believed that “Notoriety is fame’s wicked twin.” “Wilde,” EUmann claims, “was prepared to court the one in the hope that the other would favor him too.”^ Later critics, such as Matthew Sturgis and Gary Schmidgall, on the other hand, while acknowledging that Wilde’s works constitute a genuine ethical philosophy, still see his poses as either ironic counterpoints to the underlying seriousness of his writings or as camouflage. Sturgis, for instanee, writes that Wilde’s poses were a marketing strategy, elaiming that Wilde’s “own brand of dandyism tended more towards . self- advertisement.”^ And Schmidgall argues that Wilde used the ostentatious display of himself to make palatable the subversive political and sexual content of his works.® The critical assessments of Wilde’s self-performance, despite the seemingly disparate views, have one thing in common: the self that Wilde works so hard to put forth to the public always signifies something else, either a publicity stunt, or an attempt to make his works more easily accepted by an audience, or an attempt to privilege the surface over any interior substance.
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