Narcissistic Reflections in a Wilde Mirror

Narcissistic Reflections in a Wilde Mirror KARL BECKS ON At the opening of Act III of An Ideal Husband (1895), the dandiacal Lord Goring engages in conversation with his servant, Phipps, described by Wilde as "a mask with a manner" who represents the "dominance of form," the perfect reflection of his master. Thus, Phipps echoes Goring's remarks with affirmative responses as though validating his master's narcissistic vision of reality (indeed, the following should be staged with Goring gazing into a mirror in admiration of his self-generated, idealized existence as though an artist admiring his own creation): LORD GORING Rather distinguished thing, Phipps. I am the only person of the smallest importance in London at present who wears a buttonhole. PHIPPS Yes, my lord. I have observed that. LORD GORING You see, Phipps, Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. PHIPPS Yes, my lord. LORD GORING Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. PHIPPS Yes, my lord. LORD GORING (Putting in new buttonhole) And falsehoods the truths of other people. PHIPPS Yes, my lord.. LORD GORING Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself. PHIPPS Yes, my lord. LORD GORING To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance, Phipps.I Dandiacal self-sufficiency - "The only possible society is oneself' - is thus fused with the narcissistic self-love expressed in Goring's revealing final line. In Metamorphoses, Ovid presents the most enduring and influential of several versions of the Narcissus myth,2 a fable of self-destructive homoerotic desire. Modern Drama, 37 (1994) 148 Narcissistic Reflections 149 In gazing with longing into the pool, Narcissus is so consumed by passion for what he regards as another male that he is initially unaware that the image has no substance or that it is his own reflection. Despite his discovery that he has, in fact, been gazing at himself, he nevertheless continues to long for the image until he dies on the bank of the pool. The myth also tells the story of Echo, the young woman whom Narcissus has rejected but who perseveres in her love for him. In Wilde's use of the myth for the stage (his dandies do not, for example, exhibit homoerotic propensities), traces of narcissistic doubling are evident in the plays written in the 1890s, as in Act III of An Ideal Husband. Goring and his externalized self-image, Phipps, whom Wilde has wittily transformed into a male Echo reflecting his master's dandiacal cynicism, thus achieve unity out of the disunity of the Narcissus tale. As Jeffrey Berman writes of Ovid: The richness of [his] myth is inexhaustible. Narcissus dramatizes not only the cold, self-centered love that proves fatally imprisoning, but fundamental oppositions of human existence: reality/illusion, presence/absence, subject/object, unity/disunity, involvement/detachment. These dualisms continue to preoccupy literary theorists, psychologists, and philosophers.3 In Act I of An Ideal Husband, the narcissistic mirror image is initially suggested when Lord Caversham complains that his son, Lord Goring, is leading an idle life. Mabel Chiltern - a dandy who emerges in the play as Goring's idealized reflection - responds: "Why, he rides in the Row at ten 0'clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?" (136). In Act II, when Goring remarks that he goes to sleep at once when he thinks of his "bad qualities," Mabel responds like the devoted Echo that she represents: "Well, I delight in your bad qualities. I wouldn't have you part with one of them" (147). Goring's idealized self-image is further suggested in Act II, when Sir Robert Chilton and Goring are engaged in devising a strategy to counteract the potentially dangerous "woman with a past," Mrs. Cheveley (187). Goring insists that "everyone has some weak point. There is some flaw in each of us" (184). At this point, the stage direction indicates: "(Strolls over to the fireplace and looks at himself in the...