Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Cheryl Price
Second Advisor
Katie Owens-Murphy
Third Advisor
Jason Price
Recommended Citation
Smith, Rachel, "Fetishized Portraits in Victorian Literature" (2024). Theses. 17.
https://roar.una.edu/theses/17
Comments
Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret (1852) consistently discusses a woman and her portrait. Lady Lucy Audley of Audley Court is the portrait’s subject that is a fetish for its audience through her objectification as a person and portrait. Lynette Felber’s “The Literary Portrait as Centerfold: Fetishism in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret” offers a perspective toward the fetishized portrait as “ubiquitous in Victorian literature” for the purpose of male pleasure (Felber 471). Proving her perspective to be accurate, Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” (1842) and Oscar Wilde’s gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) explore the fetishized portraits of men and women during the Victorian era. Critics like Felber demonstrate that portraits allow their audience to experience “voyeuristic indulgence” in sex, luxury materials, and taboo discussions behind the framed picturesque front presented to its onlookers (Felber 472). Other critics, such as Helen Luu, emphasize the female body that is unable to display its sexuality or hide it (Luu 85). At the same time, Patrick Bratlinger focuses on the gaze of the fetish, revealing a more profound darkness of Victorian society (Bratlinger 6). This paper enters this critical conversation by continuing Felber’s discussion of fetishism to Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The portrait of the Duchess and Dorian Gray are both sexualized images desired by an active male and passive female audiences (Felber 471). Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, Laura Mulvey’s film theory, and Karl Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism are vital in understanding the fetish, providing mental and visual clarity through their theories to understand the fetish and fetishists. By looking at the male gaze, character relationships, and fetishistic desire in Felber’s article analyzing Lady Audley’s Secret, I extend the argument that portrait fetishism in Browning’s and Wilde’s works continues demonstrating a symbolic representation of hidden desires and power dynamics in Victorian culture.