Redressing Oscar: Performance and the Trials of Oscar ... - A Stess

Guy Debord today has been called revolutionary. Yet the astonishing thing
about his wit is not that he could always so quickly find the right word to substitute
for the key term of the platitude, but rather that he knew the platitudes
so well to begin with. His mind was stocked with commonplaces, and these
seem to have been there for the sole purpose of their subversion. The situation
is one in which an outsider has to a stunning degree taken upon himself the reflective
apparatus of the dominant group then used this apparatus to mock the
group on, and with, its own terms. The use of such tactics endears the speaker
to the group at the moment he mocks it. This is the technique of ironic reference:
the use of popular symbology by its critics in order to be both commer-
cially competitive and critical. (1986:7-8)
5. Or, as Cohen more complexly puts it:
By infusing the metaphor of the courtroom as theatrical extravaganza with the
textual markings of epistemological desire, the newspapers structure their texts
as "spectacular," (re)producing what Roland Barthes called "myth": they imbue
their first order representations of the "facts" and "events" (denotation) with a
second order of significance that naturalizes the social (con)texts within which
these meanings emerge (connotation). (1993:138)
What happened in the courtroom, however, may in fact be more than metaphorically
theatrical.
6. Unless otherwise noted, newspaper articles cited are reprinted in Goodman (1988).
7. For a more detailed study of antisodomy laws see Cohen, "Legislating the Norm: From
'Sodomy' to 'Gross Indecency"' (1993:I03-25). This chapter is also published in several
other forums.
8. A few years before the trials, Queensberry displayed intense jealousy when his eldest
son, Drumlanrig, was given an English peerage before him-essentially bypassing the
usual channels of primogeniture of passing titles from father to son. And, while Wilde's
criminal trials were still underway, Queensberry caused another scandal by assaulting
his second son, Percy, Lord Douglas of Hawick, on the streets of Piccadilly. The incident
made the papers (see Roberts I980:25o-59).
9. Wilde himself was neither truly upper class (the son of an optometrist and poetess/political
activist) nor middle class (as an actor in aristocratic circles) but part of the upwardly
mobile upper-middle class, making him the perfect target for the snobs above
and below him on the social ladder. For a more complete discussion of the class (and
political) implications of the trials, see Dellamora, "Homosexual Scandal and Compulsory
Heterosexuality in the I890s" (I990:I93-217).
10. Quoted by Travers Humphreys in the foreword to Hyde's book on the trials. The unidentified
person who made the statement was a legal friend of Humphreys (Hyde
I962:I3).
I . According to Michel Foucault, in the I9th century women's sexuality was subjected to a
"threefold process whereby the feminine body was analyzed-qualified and disqualified-as
being thoroughly saturated with sexuality." Once "hystericized," their sexuality
was placed in organic communication with the social body (whose regulated fe-
cundity it was supposed to ensure), the family space (of which it had to be a
substantial and functional element), and the life of children (which it produced
and had to guarantee, by virtue of a biologico-moral responsibility lasting
through the entire period of the children's education). (I990:I04)
In other words, women's sexuality was located on the same three sites as Wilde's: class
(the social body), the home (the family space), and parenting (the life of children).
Wilde's sexuality, then, was subjected to the same "threefold process." His body was
effectively hystericized.
12. According to Frank Harris, Wilde's friend and biographer, the testimony of the Savoy
Hotel chambermaids about fecal stains on the bedsheets in Wilde's rooms weighed
heavily against him. Yet, according to Harris, Wilde revealed to him that the bedsheets
were not his at all, but from the adjoining room of Bosie. Harris writes: "'The cham-
bermaids' evidence is wrong,' Oscar declared. 'They are mistaken, Frank. It was not
me they spoke about at the Savoy Hotel. It was - - - - -. I was never bold enough. I
went to see - - - - - in the morning in his room"' (Harris 1930:198). Wilde withheld
Oscar Wilde Trials 57