| dc.description.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”. | en_US |
