![]() What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain. Such an overwhelmingly queer figure cannot be called anything other than a nineteenth century ‘gay icon’.ġ Tosh, J. We will continue to see Wilde’s visage in LGBT spaces as well as literary ones due to his prominence of personality, and the overwhelming evidence of his sexuality. Such a larger-than-life person was easy to caricature in media at the time, and is easy to reproduce in the form of stickers, badges, birthday cards etc today. His dandy-aesthete look was intrinsically connected to him as a person, and his wit, socialite status and outspokenness made him a bold character. Wilde as a character was an excellent figure to be seized upon as an icon. He did not remain silent when accused of sodomy and was valiant in defending his literary works and the emotion behind them. However, it is Wilde’s own words that allow us to see him as a modern-day gay icon. Wilde’s novel ‘the Picture of Dorian Gray’ was used to demonstrate to the court his obvious, unabashed homosexuality. There were, of course, other aspects of evidence used in the trials. It was quite clear to a jury that Wilde was connecting his and Douglas’ relationship to the romance of the past. Within his response Wilde connected the love of the men in the poem to queer-coded artists of antiquity, such as Michelangelo, Plato, and Shakespeare. 6 His speech, known in historiography as ‘the love that dare not speak its name speech’, was what truly damned him to be jailed. ![]() Wilde’s response, as noted in the court transcript, was full of ‘great emphasis and some signs of emotion’. ![]() In the trials he is questioned by the prosecution in regards to the poem Douglas wrote for him specifically, the prosecution asks ‘What construction can be put on the line, “I am the love that dare not speak its name”?’ 5 Statements such as ‘I am not, happily, I think, an ordinarily constituted being’ further underscored Wilde’s status as a witty, entertaining, but evidently gay man. However, Wilde’s strength of character only served to sentence him for evident homosexuality. One can argue that this proud, joking attitude to sexuality is one that the LGBTQ+ community should uphold today when challenged, criminalised or accused, one should stand proud in their identity. Whilst such a blunt response was evidently intended for humorous effect, his lack of denial only served to criminalise him further. For example, when asked if he had had sexual relations with a serving boy, Wilde responded with ‘no, he’s far too ugly’. ![]()
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