"The Man of the Hour": Oscar Wilde, Performance, and Proto-Modernity in Henry James's The Tragic Muse

Although critics have explored The Tragic Muse, the significance of its Wilde-like character Gabriel Nash remains under-examined. Nash, playing what may appear only a cameo role in the novel's events, nonetheless functions as the key to its central concerns. Deeper analysis of the Nash character provides clues to James's conflicted, likely obsessive relation to Wilde and all he might represent, beyond simple career envy and/or simple sexual panic. Further, it illuminates highly fraught issues of difference, decadence, representation, performance, theatricality, and performativity, not only in the novel and in James's oeuvre at large, but within his historical moment more widely.