Oscar Wilde’s Trials as a Haunting Presence: An Approach to the Role of Fantasy in Contemporary Neo-Victorian Novels Depicting Same-Sex Romance Between Men
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.45.2024.241-268Keywords:
Neo-Victorian, Oscar Wilde, fantasy, Queer studiesAbstract
The main aim of this essay is to assess the impact of Oscar Wilde’s trials on neo-Victorian representations of same-sex desire between men. Throughout the text, I argue that the consequences of Wilde’s imprisonment have become a haunting presence that still pervades how male sexual dissidence is represented in neo-Victorian novels. The works examined in this essay are therefore considered differently than those which portray sapphic relationships or other forms of non-heterosexual desires. Ultimately, I argue that a new trend within neo-Victorianism, in which fantasy elements are intertwined with queer desire among men, could offer a new way of portraying same-sex desire between men; this new portrayal could be more in compliance with the political, cultural, and social agenda of neo-Victorianism. Through a brief analysis of Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and a more in-depth exploration of Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light, I conclude that fantasy may—if the writer wishes it—allow a portrayal of queer desire that overcomes many of the traumatising and haunting obstacles which resulted from Wilde’s plight.
Downloads
References
Abraham, Nicolas, and Maria Torok. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewal of Psychoanalysis, Volumn 1. Chicago UP, 1994.
Arias, Rosario, and Patricia Pulham. Introduction. Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past, edited by Rosario Arias and Patricia Pulham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. xi–xxv.
Bristow, Joseph. Oscar Wilde on Trial: The Criminal Proceedings from Arrest to Imprisonment. Yale UP, 2022.
Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance. Chatto & Windus, 1990.
Caillois, Roger. “The Natural Fantastic.” The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader, edited by in Laudine Frank, Duke UP, 2003, pp. 348–58.
Castle, Terry. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. Columbia UP, 1993.
Chitty, Christopher. Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System. Duke UP, 2020.
Collins, Sara. The Confessions of Frannie Langton. Perennial, 2020.
Donoghue, Emma. Frog Music. Little, Brown & Company, 2014.
Duvezin-Caubet, Caroline. “Gaily Ever After: Neo-Victorian M/M Genre Romance for the Twenty-First Century.” Neo-Victorian Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 242–69.
Edwards, Louis. Oscar Wilde Discovers America. Scribner, 2012.
Fabrizi, Mark A. Introduction: Challenging Fantasy Literature. Fantasy Literature: Challenging Genres, edited by Mark A. Fabrizi, Sense Publishers, 2016, pp. 1–11.
Fize, William. “The Homosexual Exception? The Case of the Labouchère Amendment.” Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, vol. 91, 2020, pp. 1–13, doi: 10.4000/cve.7597.
Fone, Byrne. The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature. Columbia UP, 1998.
Fredrickson, Nathan. “Designing a Course Integrating Critical Pedagogy, Fantasy, Literature, and Religious Studies.” Fantasy Literature, edited by Mark A. Fabrizi, Sense Publishers, 2016, pp. 57–76.
Golovacheva, Irina. “Is the Fantastic Really Fantastic?: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture.” Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology and Popular Culture, edited by Ina Batzke, et al., Columbia UP, 2018, pp. 61–90, doi: 10.14361/9783839440278-004.
Haefele-Thomas, Ardel. Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity. Wales UP, 2012.
Haralson, Eric. Henry James and Queer Modernity. Cambridge UP, 2023, doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511485534.
Heilmann, Ann, and Mark Llewellyn. Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999–2009. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Hunt, Chris. Street Lavender. GMP Publishers, 1986.
Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Methuen, 1981.
James, Henry. Letters, Volume IV, 1895–1916, edited by Leon Edel, Harvard UP, 1984.
Kaplan, Cora. Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism. Edinburgh UP, 2007, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r243p/.
Koegler, Caroline, and Marlena Tronicke. “Neo-Victorianism’s Queer Potentiality: Livability and Intersectional Imaginaries.” Neo-Victorian Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1–43.
Kohlke, Marie-Luise, and Christian Gutleben. “Introducing Neo-Victorian Families Matters: Cultural Capital and Reproduction.” Neo-Victorian Families: Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Politics, edited by Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben, Rodopi, 2011, pp. 1–42, doi: 10.1163/9789401207249_002.
Letissier, Georges. “More Than Kith and Less Than Kin: Queering the Family in Sarah Waters’s Neo-Victorian Fictions.” Neo-Victorian Families: Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Politics, edited by Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben, Rodopi, 2011, pp. 365–93, doi: 10.1163/9789401207249_016.
Lloyd Smith, Allan. “The Phantoms of Drood and Rebecca: The Uncanny Reencountered through Abraham and Torok’s ‘Cryptonymy.’” Poetics Today, vol. 13, no. 2, 1992, pp. 285–308, doi: 0.2307/1772534.
Marske, Freya. A Marvellous Light. Tor, 2021.
Martin, Robert K., and George Piggford. “Queer Forster?” Queer Forster, edited by Robert K. Martin and George Piggford, Chicago UP, 1997, pp. 1–29.
McKenna, Neil. Fanny & Stella. London: Faber & Faber, 2013.
Miller, Isabel. Patience & Sarah. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020.
Petterson, Lin E. Gender Performance and Spatial Negotiation in the Neo-Victorian Novel. Universidad de Malaga, 2014.
Pulley, Natasha. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Bloomsbury, 2015.
Rand, Nicholas T. Editor’s Note. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, Volume 1, by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Chicago UP, 1994, pp. 100–01.
Sims, Ruth. The Phoenix. Lethe Press, 2004.
Shiller, Dana. “The Redemptive Past in the Neo-Victorian Novel.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 29, no. 4, 1997, pp. 538–60, www.jstor.org/stable/29533234/.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Penguin, 2012.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Penguin, 2011.
Sullivan, Arthur, and W. S. Gilbert. The Mikado; or, the Town of Titipu, 1885.
Tóibín, Colm. The Magician. Penguin, 2022.
Tóibín, Colm. The Master. Picador, 2004.
Vicinus, Martha. “Lesbian Perversity and Victorian Marriage: The 1864 Codrington Divorce Trial.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 1997, pp. 70–98, www.jstor.org/stable/175903/.
Waters, Sara. Affinity. Virago, 2003.
Waters, Sara. Fingersmith. Virago, 2003.
Waters, Sara. Tipping the Velvet. Virago, 1999.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin, 2012.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Manuel Hueso Vasallo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors retain publishing rights and grant ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies right of first publication.
Simultaneously, all articles and reviews published in ES Review until nº 43 are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) while those published from nº 44 onwards will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), by which others are allowed to share and use their work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
In addition, ES Review allows authors to arrange additional contracts for the non-exclusive publication of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. In such a case, authors are required to approach the editor(s)/publisher to request permission.
