Christa Giles

through a series of ironic inversions, linked the serious and
the trivial or frivolous and, in doing so of course, implicitly
protested against the dull and earnest mediocrity of the
bourgeoisie. ˝My dear fellow,˝ Graham exclaims to Lord
Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan, ˝what on earth should
we men do going on about purity and innocence? A
carefully wrought buttonhole is much more effective.˝ 109 In
effect, the dandy’s greatness lies in his ability to create a
freedom out of his imprisonment, to deny nature through
his emphasis on the artificial.
It is for this reason that makeup is revered in
decadent literature, for it is symbolic of a denial of nature;
indeed, the application of makeup is exalted to an artistic
function. Thus, in Gray’s The Barber, the poet significantly
dreams he is a barber who alters and transforms nature into
aesthetic perfection with monomaniacal fervour:
I moulded with my hands
The mobile breasts, the valley; and the waist
I touched; and pigments reverently placed
Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains,
Beryls and crysolites and diaphanes,
And gems whose hot harsh names are never said.
I was a masseur; and my fingers bled
With wonder as I touched their awful limbs. 110
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