"Both /And"

I am glad Dennis reminded me, and our readers, that material conditions always affect, if not exactly determine, subjectivity, and that Wilde's sexuality is so very distant and different from current queer sexualities that comparisons are problematic at best. Yet I stick by my usage of Wilde, for finally I am much more interested in today's challenges and behaviors than in historically bound, specifically "Victorian" crises and cultural events. Of course, I see this broadly as a "both/and" rather than an "either/or" situation. In the words of Tennyson's Ulysses, "He works his work, I mine." And my peculiar and, yes, admittedly appropriative work is to use Victorian literature, responsibly I hope, but always unabashedly, to work on how we live today. Thus certainly I would be much more interested in The 1900 House (if I could only bear watching its annoying inhabitants for more than five minutes) for what it reveals about how we today struggle with our responsibilities to each other and our perception of failures and inequities in our cultural histories, than I would be in anything it may or may not reveal about the Victorian or Edwardian eras. The Victorians are dead; I am interested primarily (oh, let's be honest, only) in the living.

And, yes, while a move toward any delineation of "ethics" will always depend upon a certain reliance upon the transcendental (as does "justice" or "tolerance" or any other concept we might use to counter selfishness and the genocide that might result from it) I have no problem with that as long as any such reliance is always questioned aggressively, which is why, again, Dennis's skepticism is not only welcome and warranted, it is absolutely vital. That give and take (which, of course, Joyce did not engage in with Elizabeth), is, in fact, a potentially "queer" ethics in action. It is also what some of the very best literary and cultural criticism evinces, what many of the most vibrant classrooms demonstrate, and certainly what the most responsible, collegial, and exciting departments of English and cultural studies incorporate and value highly. Indeed, institutionally, pedagogically, and meta-critically, one might say that this is a form of "heteronormativity" that I can actually applaud: the normalizing of heterogeneity (rather than heterosexuality, of course).

And that movement between self and other, between pressing theoretical and political crises today and those of yesterday, is demonstrated in all three of the essays included in this issue's cluster. Melissa Valiska Gregory, in her reading of Browning and the "violent lyric voice," attends not only to the poet's nuances of language and representation, but also to previous critical "mis-hearings" of that voice. Likewise, Christine Sutphin, in her examination of Victorian discourses concerning prostitution and women's sexuality, moves between historical data and late-twentieth- century readings of that data, and ends, much like Gregory, with a focus on both diachronic and synchronic differences in how one might listen to the voice of the prostitute. Finally, Suzy Waldman's examination of desire in Christina Rossetti's poetry aggressively uses twentieth-century theory to read conflicting impulses in pre-twentieth-century texts, even as she admits the highly speculative nature of her work. All three evince a boldness that I admire. Indeed, this cluster answers Gregory's muted concern, expressed in her first paragraph, over whether or not the study of Victorian poetry is perhaps "teetering on the brink of extinction" today. That is impossible, of course, for there will always be a materially different "today"-with its own concerns and conflicts--that will invigorate new scholars and provoke them into asking significantly different questions, lead them to hearing Victorian answers and voices in very diverse ways, and provoke them into offering unique readings of even very well-known Victorian texts.

Donald E. Hall is Professor of English at California State University, Northridge. His most recent book is Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications (Houghton Mifflin).

...