Social Structures In Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray

My roommate had a dilemma in the evening before he left the dormitory to catch a morning flight: whether to wash and then pack clean bed sheets, but not sleep comfortably on his own bed; or not launder them, sleep well, and stuff the dirty bedclothes into a box and store it over the vacation. Our female friend heard us trying to find a solution to the dilemma and suggested that we could share my bed for one night, and the problem would, thus, be solved. Surprised by her queer suggestion, we were able to immediately rule out it from the set of possible solutions. “Guys just cannot share a bed,” was the obvious reason for the elimination of our friend’s suggestion. This paper tries to find an explanation why and since when males have not been
Revolution of bourgeois family values was accelerating in 1889 when people even from the upper echelons of England were involved in the so called Cleveland Street scandal: aristocrats Earl of Euston and Lord Arthur Somerset as well as Prince Eddy were revealed to be regular customers at a gay brothel. A year after of this, another scandal was aroused by Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray which was considered immoral and homosexual by the public. During this time, the scandal around Wilde was only at its beginning and it took five years to reach the peak. In 1895, Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” for two years in prison, and the case was thoroughly covered in the media and public discussion. The sodomic acts of the aristocrats were already forgotten when the public found the first homosexual “species,” Oscar
In contrary to Wilde’s case, the aristocrats were not even tried in the Cleveland Street scandal, however working-class men were punished. Had the aristocrats been imprisoned of gross indecency in 1889, homosexuality could have gained mass awareness already then; however, maybe because of their social status they were not tried. On the other hand, the media is not interested in working-class men’s crimes, thus, the public did not become mass aware of homosexuality during the Cleveland Street scandal. Another specific trait in Wilde’s case was his feminine dandy style which made people to relate homosexuality to femininity. Unlike the people involved in the Cleveland Street scandal, Wilde did not look like a usual male because of his flamboyant dressing style, thus, he was a perfect model for other deviances as well. Because of these two specific traits in Wilde’s case, he is the first homosexual and responsible for the Western homohysteria. Arguably, Wilde’s case is one major reason why it is unusual for males to share a bed whereas females can easily share a bed. Even after the Western world fell into homohysteria, display of homosocial affection still exists; however, it may appear only under certain conditions. Most often homosocial tactility appears in the most homophobic and not homohysteric societies,