Queer Aesthetics : Homoerotic Desire in Wilde and Androgynous Vision in Woolf

Abstract

This research paper explores the intersection of aesthetics, gender, and sexuality in the works of Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf through the lens of queer theory. By situating Wilde within the aestheticist tradition of the late Victorian era and Woolf within the experimental modernist milieu of the early twentieth century, the research paper examines how both authors resist heteronormative frameworks and articulate alternative modes of identity. Wilde, often censored and persecuted for his homosexuality, encodes homoerotic desire in his art, particularly in The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, and his letters. Through his celebration of beauty, wit, and decadence, Wilde fashions an aesthetic space in which same-sex desire becomes visible, albeit in veiled and symbolic forms. His homoerotic sensibility destabilizes Victorian moral codes and foregrounds a queer temporality that defies conventional family structures.

Woolf, by contrast, advances a vision of androgyny that disrupts binary constructions of gender and redefines creative subjectivity. In Orlando: A Biography and A Room of One’s Own, Woolf emphasizes the fluidity of identity, presenting androgyny as both a literary strategy and a feminist ideal. Her experimental narrative techniques-stream of consciousness, fragmented temporality, and shifting perspectives-embody queerness in form as much as in content. Subtle depictions of same-sex affection in Mrs. Dalloway further complicate the boundaries between friendship, desire, and identity.

Comparatively, Wilde and Woolf deploy divergent yet complementary aesthetic strategies: Wilde foregrounds homoerotic desire through aesthetic excess, while Woolf envisions a liberating androgynous consciousness through modernist experimentation. Together, they reveal how queer aesthetics function as a radical critique of social norms and a reimagining of literature’s capacity to articulate marginalized desires. The research paper underscores their enduring relevance in contemporary debates on sexuality, gender, and artistic freedom.