Christa Giles

42
˝Sorry to hear it, Tuppy; whenever people agree with me, I
always feel I must be in the wrong.˝ 104 In Wilde’s plays,
then, the dandy is invariably wicked and possesses the art of
pleasing by displeasing: ˝Dear Lord Darlington,˝ the
Duchess of Berwick remarks, evincing a pleased fascination,
˝how thoroughly depraved you are.˝ 105 Similarly, in The
Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry manages to both fascinate
and repel simultaneously, and, faithful to Baudelaire’s dicta,
constantly astounds without betraying his haughty
satisfaction at never being astounded himself. The desire of
the dandy, like the decadent, is to diverge as far as possible
from nature, to abrogate life in favour of art. In Lady
Windermere’s Fan an individual named Hopper has atrocious
manners. He is therefore described by the dandy as being
˝one of nature’s gentlemen, the worst type of gentlemen I
know.˝ 106 For the dandy strives to overcome nature by
working in the realm of forms, by making his own existence
a work of art. In Wilde’s view, then, one should either ˝be a
work of art or wear a work of art.˝ 107 Art is not, a reflection of
life; art is life – replaces life. Therefore Dorian Gray models
himself upon the dandy and, to him, life becomes ˝the first,
the greatest of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to
be but a preparation. Fashion . . . in its own way is an
attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty.˝ 108 Wilde
not only stressed the connection between art and life, but