The Heteronormative Panopticon in The Picture of Dorian Gray

Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Queer Subtext

Discuss ideas of how literature is involved in various ways of with the exercise of

power in society.

Jeremy Bentham conceptualised the panopticon as a physical structure for which one,

single gaoler could observe prisoners; Foucault conceptualised the panopticon as a

societal structure through which those with power could observe those without,

externalised in hospitals, schools, and asylums. Combined with Foucault’s idea of

discourse as practices that affect institutions at economic, social and political level,

the panopticon effectively polices society in accordance with what is seen to be

dominant in any society. In this essay, I will explore the idea of homosexual

performativity through the examination of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

and how this text is exemplifies the exercise and allocation of power by the

heteronormative panopticon that constitutes the dominant discourse in society. In

doing this, I will examine how literature defies the constant surveillance to break the

exercise of power in a panoptic society by establishing a precedent, ‘homosexual’ or

not. The examination of power through the examination of literature is effectively a

discussion of the question as to how power is constituted and exercised through

literature.

The connection between literature and the exercise of power is encapsulated in

Marxist thought, base and superstructure. Essentially, the base, or the means of

production, influences the superstructure, or the ideologies present within a society,

like culture, religion, and literature. Gramsci maintains that the superstructure is

innately related to the concept of hegemony, the propagation of the ruling class’s

values in order to normalise these values, establishing a dominant discourse that

panoptically observes, regulates, and punishes any deviation from these normalised

values (Bates 357). In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the bourgeoisie ruling class

dominate the cultural concerns as a matter of plot, but also because these conditions

are a reflection of Wilde’s own life – this was the society that he knew, the society

that punished him for writing a lewd novel because he could not regulate his own self

in accordance with the dominant cultural values of the zeitgeist. Fundamentally,

deviating from the normalised values within a panoptic society where power is

situated in the hands of the bourgeois is detrimental, which is precisely how the

exercise of power affects literature. For fear of being condemned to Franco Moretti’s

slaughterhouse of literature, an author must accord with the normalised standards

espoused by the proponents of the dominant discourse, the gatekeepers and gaolers

who watch the watched, the prisoners of an invisible prison, the panopticon.

Furthermore, writers are situated in this discourse, regardless of their belief in their

own personal autonomy, because these values are ingrained and regulated by this

panopticism that is enforced in society, especially Wilde’s. Writers and their texts

reflect the discourse, the power structures, and the environment that they are

positioned in, because of the all-encroaching, pervasive regulation of literature, both

by this panopticon, but they are also tempered by, at least according to Moretti, the

marketplace. Literature is, then, not separate from society, but, rather, dependent on it.

Foucault wrote about his conceptualisation of Bentham’s panopticon in Discipline

and Punish. Essentially, Foucault regards the main purpose for the panopticon is so

that an inmate is aware of constant surveillance to ensure that power functions; that is,

by being aware of the perpetual surveillance, the inmate does not interrupt the

progression of power structures, as Foucault states, “power should be visible and

unverifiable” (202. Essentially, one polices oneself to escape imprisonment by the

panoptic and discursive forces that regulate society. In Dorian Gray, it is the

moneyed, bourgeois society that scrutinises Dorian’s actions, this sort of society being

the social class embedded with power. The excessive dinner parties and dandified

outfits communicate the visible power that Foucault writes of, a visible power that

Dorian Gray revels in. Dorian’s ability to blend in is symbolic of Wilde’s own social

concerns, disguising latent homosexuality in a heteronormative milieu to avoid

persecution. Butler states that, “ To be sexed, for Foucault, is to be subjected to a set

of social regulations,” (130) illuminating the ouroboros of sexuality in Dorian Gray:

Gray’s sexuality, or sexual acts, is mandated by society, which in turn punishes,

quarantines, and monitors him because of it. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault

claims that one does not choose their sexuality; rather, one’s sexuality chooses them,

because discursive power pervades the sexual constraints that determine and define

sexuality. In Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton, a symbolic pederast, imparts this

sexuality to Dorian. This imputation of sexuality resembles the discursive practices

that regulate society, as “sexuality is always situated within the matrices of power,

that it is always produced or constructed within specific historical practices, both

discursive and institutional, and that recourse to a sexuality before the law is an

illusory and complicitous conceit of emancipatory sexual politics” (Butler 131-132).

However, Foucault contends that because of panopticism present in society, subjects

will regulate themselves to avoid punishment from the omniscient guards. It is

precisely this fact that disrupts the panoptic practices in Dorian Gray; Gray knows

full well that he is being observed by the panoptic bourgeois, but fails to regulate

himself, leading to his eventual downfall. Now, we must closely read the passages

leading up to Dorian’s death to reveal Wilde’s idea on this self-regulated panoptic

society, and whether Dorian’s suicide is the ultimate form of self-regulation or an

escape from self-regulation.

Dorian overhears “two young men in evening dress” whispering “one of them… to

the other, ‘That is Dorian Gray.’” to which Dorian is “tired of hearing his own name

now” (Wilde 236). Dorian is exhausted with societal panoptic regulation; even on a

stroll he is being observed by anonymous, unknown members of society, and he does

not enjoy it as he once did. There is something of reverse voyeurism a la Hitchcock in

Dorian when he revels in the constant observation the panopticon enables, a perverse

pleasure in being watched by the unknown. Now that he has experienced the

detriment to his soul – emblematic of the results of undermining the dominant

discourse in a panoptic society – he craves solitude, an escape from panoptic society,

or death. The fixtures of bourgeois society – “he found his servant waiting up for

him” – maintain a strict surveillance, even when Dorian is not present, who “knew

that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to this

fancy” (Wilde 236).

Positing that what is considered Literature in society is the hegemonic exercise of

power; to alter the nature of Literature is to, like Wilde did, write implicit or explicit

texts that undermine the dominant discourse regarding Literature. The heternormative

panopticon creates an encoded discourse: a matrix of homoerotic signs, what Sontag

describes as “something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small

urban cliques” (275). It is precisely this all-encompassing panopticon that observes

and punishes any deviation from the dominant discourse. Foucault’s conceptualisation

of Bentham’s panopticon is apt, because Foucault believes that homosexuality is

socially constructed and not innate, similar to Judith Butler’s ideas on gender

performativity. Panopticism is insidious, because it functions within the social mores

that allocates power by observing those believed to be wrongdoers, the social mores

that the dominant discourse deems as acceptable or not. Therefore, Foucault’s view of

homosexuality as socially constructed is analogous to panopticism because they are

both built on institutionalised values – panopticism relies on these social values to

observe and detect those who flout these socially constructed views, just as

‘homosexuality’ as a concept relies on those social values to construct an identity that

is policed and regulated by the society that invented it. Paglia asserts that,

“Homosexuals, now as then, recognise each other by a mysterious hard meeting of the

eyes, a trope of western aggression,” (519) provoking the question of whether there is

a connection between this panoptic surveillance and the encoded ‘homosexual’ sign

of meeting eyes, or whether this oracular connection is a result of this panoptic

discourse in society “now as then”?

The literal picture of Dorian Gray, painted by the Platonic Basil Hallward, is

emblematic of this encoded expression of homosexuality, an expression that defies the

panoptic-sanctioned heterosexuality. There is perhaps some irony that this Dorian

Gray, the hidden, cloistered, and ‘homosexual’ version is locked in a closet of sorts,

analogous to the constructed ‘closet’ that Wilde undoubtedly knew too well. Foucault

writes of a ‘quarantine’ (206) that is an element of the disciplinary society that

engages panopticism, a quarantine that Dorian Gray experiences in two ways:

isolating himself in the country to escape “culture and corruption” (Wilde 375); and

an enforced quarantine, where he is anathema to society, his presence silencing

conversation and driving people from rooms. This quarantine is result of Gray’s

reputation, a reputation that is implied to be ‘homosexual’. Gray attempts to expunge

this ‘homosexual’ vice from himself by leaving the city for the country and falling in

love with a young girl, Hetty Merton. However, he returns to the city, to Lord Henry,

but more importantly, the portrait, the emblem of his latent and hidden

‘homosexuality’. What Dorian is afraid of is that his secret is found out; that the

panopticon is closely watching the locked closet and is waiting for the right time to

punish him for his vice. However, it is not the panoptic forces that punish Dorian for

his sins; rather, it is he who does the punishing, or the self-regulation. If the portrait of

himself that Dorian destroys is a metaphor for his ‘homosexuality’ or ‘homosexual’

acts, then Dorian’s destruction of the portrait extends this metaphor – Dorian, sick of

societal and panoptic regulation, regulates himself by rebuking this crime of nature, at

least according to the conditions of the panoptic society.

It is important to note that there is no ‘homosexual’ affiliation in the text; Gray’s

reputation is based on ‘homosexual’ acts, but not a ‘homosexual’ identity. Foucault’s

theory on socially constructed sexuality resulted from his historical examination of

Greek male sexuality, similar to Wilde’s construction of Lord Henry Wotton’s

character as a quasi-pederast and the comparisons of Dorian to various Greek

beauties. Foucault contends that the Greeks had a more liberal view on homosexual

acts, that their views on ‘homosexuality’ were more normalised than the staid

Victorian era. What Foucault also believes about Greek sexuality was that

‘homosexual’ acts were not codified and collected into a ‘homosexual’ identity.

Wilde’s writing of Dorian Gray and his subsequent persecution and prosecution

confirms Foucault’s view that ‘the sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the

homosexual was now a species’ (43). Wilde was accused of the criminal act of

sodomy, not of homosexuality. Likewise, Dorian Gray skirts the boundaries of

definite and defined sexuality by engaging with multiple lovers of either gender. One

wonders, then, as to when the ‘homosexual’ identity became codified, not merely

same-sex performances? Furthermore, what is the purpose of this classification? It is

possible to theorise that this classification of the ‘homosexual’ identity was the result

of the wide-reaching panopticism that stills exists. Instead of society regulating

‘homosexual’ acts, now there is a specific subculture, essentially a target, which this

panopticon can specifically observe and regulate, because it could be considered an

illness that needed to be treated, an illness that corrupts the picture of Dorian Gray.

Thus, the role of literature in society is defined by the role of power in society, as

Foucault has noted and Wilde has written about. The Picture of Dorian Gray as an

encoded text is just of many encoded texts that, like Wilde’s revelatory prison epistle

De Profundis, were written in the secret cells of a pervasive gaol, societal or physical.

There is a deep-seated illness in society that needs to be addressed, not of

‘homosexuality’, but of the panopticism that still regulates literature today.

Bibliography

Bates, Thomas R. “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony.” Journal of the History of

Ideas Vol 36, No. 2. (1975): 351-356. Print.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage

Books. 1995. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. New York: Pantheon. 1978.

Print.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily

Dickinson. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Print.

Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador. 1990.

Print.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Books. 1981. Print.