Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas

92 Pages·2013·0.75 MB·English

Masarykova univerzita
Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Magisterská diplomová práce

J
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Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature

Michal Šilar
Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas:
A Tragedy of Requited Love

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Dr. Michael M. Kaylor, M.A., Ph.D.

2013
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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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I would like to thank my supervisor - Dr. Michael M. Kaylor, M.A., Ph.D. –
for his generous advice and comments which helped to shape this work.

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Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6
A Note on the Sources……………………………………………………………………………………………9
I. Deconstructing Oscar………………………………………………………………………10
The Greek Things…………………………………………………………………………………………………10
Women……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13
Walter Pater………………………………………………………………………………………………………..15
Marriage……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..19
II. Meet Dorian Gray………………………………………………………………………….24
Homme Fatale……………………………………………………………………………………………………..24
The Lord of Language………………………………………………………………………………………….29
Love at Second Sight…………………………………………………………………………………………...33
A Woman of No Importance and A Man of Great Importance…………………………………..37
III. Through Thick and Thin………………………………………………………………..46
The Imminent Danger………………………………………………………………………………………….46
The Green Carnation…………………………………………………………………………………………….49
The Chameleon…………………………………………………………………………………………………...54
The Trials……………………………………………………………………………………………………………58
The Imprisonment……………………………………………………………………………………………….71
De Profundis……………………………………………………………………………………………………….77
Exile…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...81
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..85
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………………………………87
Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….90
Resumé……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...91
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Introduction

Over the years, the life of Oscar Wilde has become an inexhaustible source of
inspiration not only for readers and theatre-goers who have admired his wit, but also for
many biographers who have attempted to depict his life. However, in spite of the fact
that Wilde´s work has been analysed from different perspectives and interpreted in
various ways, the author´s personality and sexuality are two issues to which, until
recently, not much attention had been paid. As Neil McKenna points out in his Secret
Life of Oscar Wilde:
Despite many excellent biographies and critical studies, comparatively little has
been written about Oscar Wilde´s sexuality and his sexual behaviour. Most
accounts of Oscar Wilde´s life present him as predominantly heterosexual, a man
whose later love of men was at best some sort of aberration, a temporary
madness and, at worst, a slow-growing cancer, a terrible sexual addiction which
slowly destroyed his mind and his body (McKenna XV).
Such views of Wilde´s sexuality appear very often, especially in the biographies
written in the first half of the 20th century. The reason why many biographers resorted to
such misleading interpretations was not only the fact that homosexuality was a criminal
offence in Britain until 1967, but also the fact that the scholars of that time did not have
and could not have had sufficient evidence to deal with this issue in a conclusive way.
While all Wilde´s works have been available since 1962 (the year in which the complete
text of De Profundis was published), it was not until 2000 that The Complete Letters of
Oscar Wilde came out in London. Whereas a lot of Wilde´s works contain strong
autobiographical elements, it is his letters that enable one to explore Wilde as a person.
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Paradoxically, the profusion of information concerning the life of Oscar Wilde
which is now available has caused, in many ways, the playwright´s personal image to
suffer. Some fascinating new information based on hitherto unpublished accounts of
Wilde´s sexual and emotional life (e.g. Neil McKenna´s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde)
has resulted in a new perception of Wilde´s sexuality. Today, Wilde is no longer referred
to as a heterosexual writer who, inexplicably, "converted" to homosexuality, but as a
homosexual predator who was aware of his sexual preferences from the very beginning
and whose life´s ambition was to seduce as many men as possible. This perception is
totally different from the above-mentioned stereotypical view of Wilde adopted in the first
half of the 20th century, but it is, unfortunately, equally misleading and inaccurate.
Perhaps the best example of a distorted interpretation of certain aspects of Oscar
Wilde´s life is the question of his association with Lord Alfred Douglas. Whereas Wilde´s
relationship with Douglas turned out to be fatal for Wilde and almost every book on
Wilde deals, at least to some extent, with Douglas too, a great deal of scholars still
consider Douglas to be nothing but a mediocre poet of whom the world would hardly
have heard if there had not been for his association with Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately,
albeit partly true in nature, these generalizations and simplifications of Douglas as an
artist have led many to making a similar judgement about Douglas as a person. His role
in the life of Oscar Wilde is often either considerably downplayed or excessively
exaggerated. In his Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, E.H. Mikhail
compiled a list of 375 books dealing entirely with Wilde as of 1978. While this number
has increased dramatically since then, only 6 biographies of Lord Alfred Douglas have
been written and published as of 2012. Unfortunately, the lack of serious interest in
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Douglas is one of the reasons why there are so many myths concerning his personality
and his influence on Oscar Wilde.
The objective of this thesis is to provide a truthful and undistorted analysis of the
relationship between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas and to topple and shatter
some widespread myths concerning the personality of Lord Alfred Douglas in general.
The relationship between the two men will be dealt with in different connections and
from different perspectives in order to refute the prevailing notion of Wilde as the victim
and Douglas as the person to blame. Rather, the evidence should show that Douglas
was Wilde´s devoted friend and lover who, contrary to popular belief, did not let Wilde
down.

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A Note on the Sources

As pointed out in the Introduction, the number of books and studies dealing with
Oscar Wilde is enormous, whereas serious scholarly interest in Lord Alfred Douglas is
not but marginal. Besides, although there are a lot of first-hand accounts of various
aspects of Wilde´s relationship with Douglas, one has to be careful with the sources of
these accounts, for some of them are, unfortunately, not particularly reliable even though
they may seem to be so. For example, there is not a single mention of Lord Alfred
Doulgas in Robert Sherard´s The Life of Oscar Wilde (1906) in spite of the fact that
Sherard was one of Wilde´s closest friends and was fully conversant with their
relationship. The reasons why Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, Frank Harris and others
often depicted Douglas in a vague or entirely negative way were purely personal, but,
unfortunately, a number of Wilde´s biographers, especially those of the first half of the
20th century, adopted, quite automatically, such misleading views of Douglas without
justifying them in a conclusive way.
Also, since the main focus of this thesis is the relationship between Wilde and
Douglas and the issue of their sexuality, it proved inevitable to consult not only the works
of the eminent Wilde´s biographers (Ellmann, Hyde, Holland...), but also some studies
dealing exclusively with the above-mentioned issues (McKenna, Wintermans, Foldy...).
While Richard Ellmann´s Oscar Wilde remains the indispensable and impeccable
biography, both in terms of scope and insight, for everyone who intends to deal with
Wilde seriously, this thesis often required a less conservative (albeit still scholarly)
approach to encompass the above-mentioned issues in their entirety.

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