The legal discourse used against him framed the ‘homosexual’ for decades to come, thus validating Foucault’s theses of a late-nineteenth-century medico-legal discourse differentiating normal from dissident sexualities and forcing individuals to enunciate their sexuality. The will of the court to prosecute and sentence him has been demonstrated his trial is often seen as a turning point in the history of homosexuality in Great Britain. On his release he left England.Ģ Wilde’s trials have given rise to numerous legal studies. He was immediately jailed until 19 May 1897. On 25 May Wilde was tried again and sentenced to two years’ hard labour for ‘gross indecency’. He was tried three weeks after but the result was a hung jury. On the same day, Wilde was arrested and jailed. Before the grave accusations and the announcement that some of the said young men were due to appear before the court, Wilde and his counsel withdrew the case on 5 April. Edward Carson, Lord Queensberry’s counsel, argued that Wilde wrote immoral and ‘sodomitical’ texts (Holland 97) 1 and corrupted young men. For 2 days, Wilde had to defend himself against that accusation with the help of his counsel Sir Edmund Clarke. Queensberry had left a card for Oscar Wilde at the Albermarle Club accusing him of ‘posing somdomite’. 1 Unless stated otherwise, all references are to Merlin Holland’s The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (2003 (.)ġ On 4 April 1895, the trial of the Marquess of Queensberry for libel began.Napoleon had legalized homosexuality in France early in the 19th century, and even an affair such as the torrid relationship between Verlaine and. There's no arguing that homosexuality in the 19th century was a different social phenomenon than it is today but before Wilde, the attitude toward it was ambivalent, with a tendency to regard it as a purely private matter. That homosexuality emerged as a public issue in this way was not inevitable. On the other hand, he ensured that homosexuality itself would be perceived by the public as something to be stamped out ruthlessly. On the one hand, Wilde put the issue of gay rights on the agenda of every socially progressive industrial country. The Wilde debacle-he served a torturous term in prison, then exiled himself to France, where he drank himself to death-so transformed the emerging discussion of homosexual rights that it's difficult to tell what would have happened if he hadn't pressed his hopeless prosecution. Forcing these facts upon the public, an inevitable outcome of his lawsuit, given the context of the times, was bound to brand homosexuality as essentially perverted in the public mind. His sexual tastes ran to working-class boys and the teenage children of friends, some of whom had been entrusted to his care. In a note left at his club, Douglas senior had called Wilde a "somdomite," misspelling but not misidentifying a crime of which Wilde was undoubtedly guilty, according to the legal definition, having committed sodomy hundreds of times at that point. It must be remembered that Wilde's legal trials took place only because he sued the irascible father of Lord "Bosie" Douglas, the teenager with whom he was having a flamboyant relationship. 2005), I reviewed a fine new study of Wilde's sexuality, Neil McKenna's The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (Basic Books, 2005), which emphasized the conflict between Wilde's platonic defense of ideal male love and the reality of the often predatory behavior that led to his conviction. In a recent issue of this journal (Sept.-Oct. Did Wilde's wavering and reluctant but ultimately open defense of his sexual orientation promote or retard the cause of GLBT rights? Was Wilde a liberating figure comparable to Lincoln or Martin Luther King or did he set back the "movement" as it would be defined today? Wilde's two trials made homosexuality a public moral, social, and political issue in Europe and the United States, and provoked widespread conservative reactions against homosexuality across two continents. Perhaps the seminal event in the definition and fate of the modern "gay movement" was the late 19th-century disgrace and tragic end of Oscar Wilde. AS GLBT PEOPLE, or at least those in Europe and North America, have approached the mountaintop and can at last cast their eyes on the promised land of true liberation, we are in the process of redefining our identities, which also means reexamining our histories.
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