Jamie Ferguson
March 14th, 2005
Eng. 333

The Picture of the Beast in the Closet:
Coded Homosexual Cues in Oscar Wilde and Henry James

As is the case with most eras, the Victorian period in England was one marked by a contentious culture war. As the nineteenth century drew to a close long standing tensions exploded as a decade of excess met opposition from a staunchly conservative segment of society. The 1890's, or “Yellow 90's,” as they came to be known, may have proved the boiling point for these cultural tensions, but the roots of the problem went back the better part of a century. Central to this conflict was the idea of sexuality. Specifically, homosexuality was a point of discussion during the period. Even persons who considered themselves more liberal would have been strongly opposed to the idea of homosexual relations at the time, and much of English society was far from liberal. Even so, homosexuality was a common theme in the literature of the day. Oscar Wilde would of course eventually be outed as a gay man and tried for “gross indecency.” Before that point, however, homosexuality was already an important undercurrent found in his works, The Picture of Dorian Gray in particular. Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle also dealt with this idea. The circumstances of the period, however, meant that this was not an easy thing to do. Any allusions to homosexuality or homosexual culture needed to be carefully embedded within the text and expressed with a wink and a nod rather than a loudspeaker. Societal concepts of decency and morality at the time forced Wilde and James to work carefully when imbedding these allusions into their work, and the two authors took different approaches to reach similar ends.
Homosexuality had been present in England for hundreds of years by the time the Victorian Age finally rolled around. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries effeminate men were called “Mollies” and “Mollie Houses” were widely known as places of prostitution (Winwar 193). Homosexuality had in the past been considered a moral outrage, but as time wore on it had become more of a source of amusement and less an abomination. Even so, at the end of the nineteenth century sodomy was still punishable by death. Most courts refrained from handing down this sort of penalty, however, and persons convicted of sodomy would usually receive fines or short jail sentences. As the civic institutions in England began to liberalize their came a rising backlash from the conservative powers-that-were. By the 1850's a number of moral conservatives (among them John Wordsworth) had begun to ascend to prominence. Walter Pater, the premier advocate for the homosexual lifestyle prior to Wilde (and also Wilde’s mentor of sorts) was met with hostility by these groups in the 1860's during his time as a student at Oxford University (Dellamora 60). While not charged with Sodomy, he was denied an important promotion within the university as retribution. The group that aligned itself with Pater would eventually give birth to people like Wilde. One of it’s primary foci was on the promotion of pederasty in the ancient Greek tradition, the love between a mentor and student of the same sex. These are the circumstances, a situation taught with angry tension and outrage, that both The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Beast in the Jungle were written. It is understandable, then, that writers would be motivated to discuss these issues under cover of extreme subtlety. This is why both Wilde and James chose to code their homosexual cues into the story rather than express them outright.
“...I suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned half-way round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time.” This is how Basil begins to tell Lord Henry about the title character in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Even after two sentences it sounds more like a “love at first sight” type story than a description of two platonic friends meeting for the first time. The rest of the section, however, seems even stranger, especially to modern ears. “When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.” (Wilde, 145-146). Of course, there is nothing explicitly homoerotic about this passage. On the surface the reader is willing to accept the statements at face value, as they purport to be completely ordinary. If we allow ourselves as readers to look further into the text and permit its connotative message to come forth, we can clearly detect homosexual undertones. Not just homosexual undertones, but undeniably homosexual undertones. As a reader it is easy to ignore the feeling that “something is wrong” with the passage and continue reading. The impression, however, that there’s more going on than meets the eye can’t be dismissed. That is the nature of coded language in cases such as this. This type of reading is a method that the reader needs to take constantly when reading either of these novels.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, because it contains volumes of dialogue between male characters, relies a great deal on situations like the one quoted above. Interaction between the characters that seems curiously homoerotic is written in such a way for a reason.
“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”
The painter considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered, after a pause, “ I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.” (Wilde, 152)

This is another prime example of this type of allusion to homosexuality. The discussion of fondness and “liking” each other is much more familiar to us in the context of a schoolyard crush or youthful courtship. In fact, it is almost comical to read Basil talking about the younger man “liking” him, as the childish language seems to clash with Basil’s somewhat advanced age. Later, he describes Dorian as being insensitive and nonchalant with his affection. This is a complaint often made in romantic situations, and it is likely that this was also the case in Wilde’s time. Basil goes on to say “I feel... that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat...” Frankly, most platonic relationships between members of the same sex don’t involve one party or the other “giving away their soul.” This, as much as anything else in the passage, implies a relationship that runs deeper than ordinary friendship.
As is often the case in Dorian Gray, homosexual motifs show through more than once in a short period in the second chapter. As Dorian is sitting in the garden with Lord Henry he watches a “furry bee” flitting between the flowers. “He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.” It is clear that Wilde refers here to the presumed tension within Dorian as he comes to grips with his homosexuality. It is already somewhat apparent by this point that the three main characters share some sort of homosexual interaction, and the only other “thing of high import” mentioned thus far is the fact that Basil doesn’t believe he will show the painting publicly, and Dorian is unaware of this. A few lines later we find this passage:
“You are glad to have met me, Mr. Gray,” said Lord Harry, looking at him.
“Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?”
“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
As they entered the studio Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry’s arm. “In that case, let our friendship be a caprice,” he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose. (Wilde, 165-166)

Ordinarily it would be strange enough that one man would ask another earnestly if he was glad he had met the other. This passage, however makes this seem ordinary to the point of boredom. Notice, first, that Lord Henry uses the word “romance” in describing feminine ideas. This sets the tone immediately and makes it clear to both Dorian and the reader what they are talking about. He next implies that a caprice is a “passion” and says it lasts longer than the alternative. Dorian responds by not only initiating what would be considered strange physical contact between the two and suggesting that their passion last as long as possible, he “flushes at his own boldness.” It is arguable that at this point the homoerotic undertones become blatant homoerotic overtones. Again, because Dorian’s main characters are all male, it is possible for Wilde to imply homosexual relationships between the three of them using relatively subtle interactions that cue the reader onto the hidden nature of the characters.
These interactions would not have been seen as audaciously immoral at the time, in part because of the subtlety Wilde employs. In Victorian England close homosexual friendships were still not looked upon with a suspicious eye. At the same time, however, customs like this were waning as societal rejection of homosexuality came to prominence. Wilde’s decision to code homosexuality directly into the plot of the novel was not without risk. As subtle as he was, leaving these instances more or less in full view of the reader opened him up to scrutiny and disapproving criticism. He certainly received plenty of both upon the publication of the book.
Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle deals with the coding of these homosexual themes in a different way. James’ methods are noticeably more subtle than even Wilde’s work. Indeed, many would even argue that The Beast has no homosexual themes at all. It is not uncommon for someone to interpret the piece as being more about Marcher’s blind focus on the future at the expense of his own life than what Eve Sedgwick calls his “homosexual panic.” As Sedgwick herself says in The Epistemology of the Closet, “It is possible that critics have been motivated in this active incuriosity by a desire to protect James from homophobic misreadings in a perennially repressed sexual climate. It is possible that they fear that...any discussion of homosexual desires or literary content will marginalize him (Sedgwick 197)...” Why are James’ homosexual themes in The Beast in the Jungle so ambiguous? One reason may be that he was worried about how the work would be received, fearing that an overtly homosexual book would be trivialized. If he did worry about this, his fears would have been warranted, as Sedgwick’s quote points out. The homosexuality of the novella is hotly debated, and was ignored completely during James’ time, possibly for fear that it would be marginalized because of it. This fear is in itself evidence that homophobia at the time was strong enough that this likely would have been the case.
James goes about creating the homosexual environment in the Beast in a different way than Wilde, one that is so subtle as to actually make people wonder whether it’s there or not. He uses clue words and clever wordplay to imply these themes in the text. It is curious that James uses this method while Wilde, known widely as a master of wit and wordplay, worked mostly in his plot. Still, it is not unexpected that James would choose this route. It has been said about him that he chose every word with absolute intent, and every idiom and phrase can be approached in earnest for consideration, as James was meticulous in his use of diction.
It is in this environment that we can read deeply into words or passages to coax out connotations that contribute to the theme. Much of the novel, for instance, contains subtle clue words with coded meanings. On page 44 and 45, for instance, we find many examples of this in close proximity. “The beast in the jungle,” in this case “crouching” and prepared to “spring,” can be read as a phallic reference. The connotative meanings of a beast about to spring are not lost on readers today but at the same time are hardly obvious. At the turn of the century they would have been even less apparent. James’ was not the only author using phallic imagery, of course. Its use dates back virtually to the beginning of literature and was being used with some regularity during the time in which The Beast was written (A Room With a View by E.M. Forster includes some memorable examples, and this was also the period of Freud’s prominence).
On the next page we get this passage, heavily laden with coded language:
The rest of the world of course thought him queer, but she, she only, knew how, and above all why, queer; which was precisely what enabled her to dispose the concealing veil in the right folds. She took his gaiety from him- since it had to pass with them for gaiety- as she took everything else; but she certainly so far justified by her unerring touch his finer sense of the degree to which he had ended by convincing her. She of course never spoke of the secret of his life except as “the real truth of you,” and she had in face a wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the secret of her own life too.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term “queer” first appeared in print referring specifically to homosexuality in 1932, and it is very likely that the origins of the term being used in this manner in slang date significantly earlier. The word “gay” was used in the same way in print as early as 1935. These means it is not unreasonable to believe that James’ may have known the connotations associated with these words when he used variants of them in this passage in 1903. What is perhaps most interesting is that if one accepts these words as having a homosexual connotation the rest of the passage is transformed. The meaning shifts significantly if one reads that other people think of Marcher as gay. The last line, that May had “a wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the secret of her own life too” becomes wholly different, implying that May pretended to be a lesbian to compliment Marcher’s nature.
Later Marcher begins to catch on that May knows his secret, and as before the text makes more sense if the reader reads it understanding that Marcher is a gay man.
It had come up for him then that she “knew” something and that what she knew was bad- too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might find it out, her reply had left the matter to equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher’s special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasn’t much affected by the consciousness in him that there was nothing she could “know,” after all, any better than he did...That was what women had where they were interested... Their nerves, their sensibility, their imagination, were conductors and revealers, and the beauty of May Bartram was in particular that she had given herself to his case (51).
While reading this passage in a new context doesn’t really change the meaning of it as much as in the other example, it makes more sense this way. It is easier to understand Marcher’s homosexual panic being something this “bad” than it is if Marcher’s secret is his obliviousness to the present because of his forward focus. James’ clever writing gains new life when you read it from a different angle. These passages are expertly written so that they glow when the reader takes them into consideration along with the coded diction James uses throughout the novella.
Of course, James doesn’t completely pass over using plot as Wilde does to impart his message. In the final pages of the book, as Marcher visits May’s grave site, he finds passion for the first time- in an encounter with another man. “No passion had ever touched him” (69), writes James, before that moment. “So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. So she had seen it while he didn’t, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home.” It doesn’t make any sense for Marcher to be moved to passion by meeting a strange man unless what prevented him from feeling it prior was his dormant homosexuality. It may be argued that what May saw that he didn’t was that the two of them, Marcher and May, should be together romantically. It does not make sense, however, that May would be able to see that Marcher loved her when the entire point is that he ignored her all along and was blind to her. It is more likely that this is Marcher’s homosexual awakening as he meets a man with a homosexual attraction for the first time.
Because of the nature of the period in which they lived and wrote, both Oscar Wilde and Henry James were forced to be extremely careful when writing homosexual themes into their books. They were forced to use methods of coding to impart the message to their readers without losing their audience. Wilde was opposed to softening the blow of one’s literature for the sake of their readers, but it also seems very like him to be subversively subtle in creating a scandalous theme in his works. While James was more subtle and used wordplay and coded diction to his advantage, Wilde specialized in utilizing his male characters and their interactions to create relationships with curiously homosexual overtones. The two of them used different methods to reach similar ends.

Works Cited
Dellamora, Richard. Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism. Chapel Hill and London. The University of North Carolina Press. 1990.
"Gay." Oxford English Dictionary Online. 18 Mar. 2005

James, Henry. The Beast in the Jungle and Other Stories. New York. Dover Publications, Inc. 1993.
"Queer." Oxford English Dictionary Online. 18 Mar. 2005
.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Epistemology of the Closet. Los Angeles. University of California Press. 1990.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Portable Oscar Wilde. Comp. Richard Aldington, and Stanley Weintraub. New York: Penguin Books, 1946. 138-391.
Winwar, Frances. Oscar Wilde and the Yellow ‘Nineties. New York. Harper and Brothers Publishers. 1940.