Walkowitz and Wilde

I definitely enjoyed reading Walkowitz this week, especially after finishing The Picture of Dorian Gray. The introductory quote from Henry James about how the city has “gathered together so many of the darkest sides of life” and has become a “strangely mingled monster” resonates so much with Dorian Gray. Following him into the opium house on the “wrong” side of town, surrounded by drunks and prostitutes, we can see just how dark Dorian’s life has become. The final scene, where we’re left with an unrecognizable figure, emphasizes just how monstrous living the city life can be. Walkowitz later says of James’ representations of city life, which I think we can also see in Wilde: “activities of manufacture, trade, and exchange were overshadowed by rituals of consumption and display” (17). In the world of Dorian Gray, we see no production, no producers. We have Basil the artist, Victor the attendant, Sybil the performer, but even these characters are placed in the world of the wealthy. We are not made to see value in their individual work as much as to see their purpose in helping the wealthy (i.e. Dorian and Henry) go about their days. As for Dorian, Henry, and the many others in their world, we see that their world revolves around “consumption and display.” They buy art, go to the opera, dine out, etc. It was hard to gloss over the many moments in the novel where we’re given almost a catalog of luxurious items such as jewelry, clothing, furniture, etc. These many instances where commodities are catalogued on the page highlight the author’s choice to emphasize consumption over labor.

            Another connection I made between Walkowitz and Wilde was with the representation of women. Walkowitz, building off of Stallybrass and White, points out the paradox of the prostitute’s role in the urban setting. The prostitute, while being outcast in the “social periphery,” also constitutes a central place in the city. In the novel, the woman in the opium house represents that female figure on the outside of society. I can’t remember if it’s the same woman that soon after tells Sybil’s brother that that was indeed Dorian Gray/ Prince Charming. Either way, if we didn’t already think a lady hanging out in an opium house was part of that “darker side” of life, she soon tells us of her fall from grace (or from the center, from higher society), which Dorian Gray caused. One thing that I found interesting, though, was that other women in the novel, whom we wouldn’t expect to lack virtue and propriety, actually do. For example, Henry’s female cousin is very flirtatious with Dorian, even with her husband present. An idea I’m working out still is trying to reconcile the depictions of women in Dorian Gray with something Walkowitz says early on in his essay. He says that women “lacked autonomy” and were “bearers of meaning rather than makers of meaning” (21). In the homosocial world Wilde has created, we definitely see some issues with the portrayal of women.

            If I can end with one final comment on Walkowtiz, I’d like to end with the following: “They [late-Victorian novelists] expressed this unease [over their ability to read the city] by constructing a mental map of London marked by fragmentation, complexity, and introspection, all of which imperiled the flaneur’s ability to experience the city as a totalizing whole” (39). I think we can see this sort of unease in Dorian Gray, and maybe that can help us understand his inability to see the big picture or the error in his ways.