Is the picture of dorian gray a gay novel
Published in:November-December issue.
THE AUTHOR of this piece passed away in , having contributed many articles to this publication over the years, including this feature-length review of a book with the somewhat salacious title, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (), by Neil McKenna. While Hattersley doesn’t directly address the question of The Picture of Dorian Gray’s primacy as a gay novel, he does venture that it was, “while guarded, implicitly homosexual”—at least for cognoscenti who knew what to look for.
This obfuscation is what makes Dorian Gray’s place in the gay canon so open to debate. The novel’s very coyness on the matter of queer desire, its not daring to name “the love,” is what prevents it from being a shoo-in as the first lgbtq+ novel in English. Wilde is not to accuse, of course (and notwithstanding that a few of the most suggestive sentences were excised by his publisher): late Victorian world simply did not enable for a more explicit exploration of the like whose name could not be spoken, much less elevated to a core role in a novel. Thu The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s classic tale set in modern times and told as he would have done…had he dared. It is a dim and twisted story filled with moral decline, depravity, sex, and ruthless blackmail. This story is not a mere retelling of Wilde’s tale, but strikes out in recent directions, taking the listener on an unpredictable journey with an unknown destination. Dorian Gray is a young, college freshman, attending his first semester at Indiana University. There he meets Caleb Black, who becomes his obsession. While pursuing Caleb, Dorian acts on the advice of an older acquaintance, Seth, who encourages him to indulge in all life has to offer. Dorian’s world is filled with delights; it is a buffet of sexy, adolescent college boys all Dorian’s for the taking. While Dorian satisfies his desires and lust, he grows ever closer to his destiny and the reality of the portrait that calls to him from the darkness. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a tale of love, lust, depravity, romance, friendship, and Dorian’s inner battle to save Over time, perceptions of Oscar Wilde’s works have changed significantly. Initially considered scandalous and used against him as evidence of gross indecency, The Picture of Dorian Gray () is now regularly introduced to readers as a canonically gay novel. However, attitudes towards homosexuality had started to shift by the time James Joyce’s Dubliners () was published, as a direct result of Wilde’s sensationalised persecution. This article analyses Joyce and Wilde’s characters through the lens of necropolitics and examines how homosexual panic and gender inequality contributed to the tragic, preventable deaths of women and gay men. By depicting the effects of these societal influences, both Joyce and Wilde criticise the strict moral codes that governed the common and private lives of ‘sexual deviants’ oppressed within a heterosexist system, factors which can be deduced from the treatment of the era’s proscription of queer relationships, the colonial situation, and gender imbalances promoted by the strict moral codes of the time. Coined by Achille Mbembe, the In his article "The Gay Musician as Tragic Hero in The Picture of Dorian Gray" Henry M. Street discusses the central creative figure in Oscar Wilde's novel, Basil Hallward. As the novel's tragic protagonist, he commands the most pity and fear and serves as the most dynamic member of the dramatis personae. Alley contextualizes his discussion within Aristotle's Poetics, contemporary criticism, as well as Wilde's have comments. In addition, Street looks at Hallward's strive to hide or censor his gay feelings as parallel to Wilde's effort with the various versions of the novel. Nevertheless, the characterization of Hallward celebrates the possible unity between moral and aesthetic beauty, and, further, comes to affirm gay like, such as Wilde also saw in the lives of Shakespeare and Michelangelo. As other critics hold pointed out, The Picture of Dorian Gray anticipates the tragic end of Oscar Wilde's own experience. Nevertheless not enough emphasize has been placed on the sympathy elicited by the two dramas. Yet, in both t
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