Chrononormativity: An Exploration of Queerness, Time and Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

Abstract

This thesis will explore the extent to which Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) addresses chrononormative issues in the Victorian period, using literary scholar Josh Mcloughlin’s “Queer Time in Woolf and Wilde” as a point of departure. By definition, chrononormative issues are linked to the organization of human lives towards maximum productivity following the “major milestones” of life, including but not limited to coming of age, academic graduation, marriage and children. Mcloughlin examines the connection between queerness, aestheticism, gender practices and what Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (2010) refers to as chrononormativity. Mcloughlin argues that in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1933), both protagonists, as queer characters, resist and reject chrononormativity. Mcloughlin goes on to compare the use of aestheticism in both novels as useless and digressive. In order to expand on his claims, I apply the theoretical framework of Freeman’s chrononormativity and queer temporality, with reference to Swikriti Sanyal’s focus on gender and sexuality in “Breaking through the Limits of Flesh: Gender Fluidity and (Un)natural Sexuality in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando”.