Wilde the “Pervert”: Oscar and Transnational (Roman Catholic) Religion

Abstract

In late Victorian England, a “pervert” meant two things. One meaningdesignated a person who “turned” or converted from one sect ofChristianity to another. In Wilde’s time this referred specifically to convertsfrom the established state Church of England to the transnationalRoman Catholic Church. The other, newer meaning designated someonewho turned from conventional heterosexual relations to a (as yet unnamed)homosexual orientation. In the context of the late Victorian empire, both were considered dangerous. The rising social and political influence of Roman Catholicismappeared threatening as a transnational Church invading a national one. For the Anglican Church of England, this crisis was played out whatcame to be known as the Oxford Movement, still influential duringWilde’s time as a student there from 1874 to 1878. What is interesting in Wilde’s life, as in his work, is the way he himselfplayed with the dangerous transgressions inherent in being a “pervert.”Sexually, he was converted to same-sex love while still a married man. Interms of religion, he remained fascinated with Catholicism, allegedlyconverting on his death-bed. But what is provocative is way that Wildeused one “perversion” to play into another: so that in such works as ThePicture of Dorian Gray and Salome, his version of a kind of anti-CatholicCatholicism becomes a site of sexual desire, and sexual desire expressionfor that kind of spirituality, which, as unrequited longing, can ultimatelyn find no object adequate to its imagination.