DURING my time at the University of Guelph, while pursuing my English degree with a focus on nineteenth-century literature and Queer Theory, particularly Victorian Gothic, I came across this book while looking for texts to aid with my studies in the field. I still have my original copy, which I picked up at the now-closed (in 2014) “World’s Biggest Bookstore” in Toronto, a beloved city landmark famous for its vast selection and maze-like layout.
Richard Dellamora’s Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism is a key book for understanding nineteenth-century sexuality and the cultural politics of the Aesthetic movement, which promoted “art for art’s sake,” holding that art’s purpose is beauty rather than morality or function. Key figures like Oscar Wilde, James Whistler, and William Morris emphasized visual pleasure and refined taste, rejecting the industrial ugliness of the time. Although it was published in 1990 and naturally reflects the scholarly context of its time, Masculine Desire nonetheless offers sharp historical insights presented in a clear, engaging, and accessible style. Dellamora combines literary criticism, gender studies, and social history to reveal how Victorian aestheticism created a coded space for male homoerotic desire and expression, including homosocial spaces.
Dellamora’s central argument is both elegant and persuasive: Victorian aestheticism, often portrayed as apolitical or decadently detached, was in fact actively involved in reshaping cultural ideas about masculinity and desire. Writers such as Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, John Addington Symonds, and Algernon Charles Swinburne are central to this study, navigating a society where openly expressing homoerotic desire was socially forbidden and potentially dangerous.
What distinguishes Dellamora’s work is his insistence that these writers were not simply concealing their sexual identities behind coded language and other means of obfuscation, but were actively attempting to challenge and rework the norms of male subjectivity in a repressive society and masculine portrayal, in general. In his view, aestheticism was not just an artistic movement but a political formation, providing alternative models and creating safe spaces for different expressions of male intimacy, sensuality, and desire.
The book excels in showing how Victorian masculine identity was both constrained and unsettled by ideas of taste, self-cultivation, and beauty. Dellamora illustrates how writers were drawn to classical and Renaissance models of male beauty, not merely as stylistic preferences but as coded expressions of desire. [See my previous post on Louis Crompton’s Byron & Greek Love.]
His analysis of Pater clarifies why some readers saw his work as innocuous while others recognized its subversive undertones, where aesthetic appreciation is intertwined with longing. Similarly, Dellamora’s exploration of Wilde highlights the tension between Wilde’s embrace of aestheticism as a liberating cultural practice and its potential as a vehicle for “queer” self-expression. Wilde emerges here not simply as a figure defined by sexuality, but as a theorist of male pleasure, beauty, and friendship.
One of the book’s notable strengths is its balance of theoretical insight and readability. Dellamora writes clearly, avoiding jargon while retaining nuance. Although it draws on the Queer Theory of its time and cultural materialism, the book remains grounded in close readings of texts and their historical settings.
Some readers might wish the book addressed a broader spectrum of gender expressions or engaged more
deeply with intersections of class and imperialism in homoerotic discourse. Again, these gaps largely reflect the period in which it was written. Nevertheless, Dellamora’s work paved the way for later scholars to build on these ideas and expand the reach and scope of Queer Theory.
What endures is the methodological boldness of the work. Dellamora was among the first to argue that the Aesthetic movement cannot be separated from the sexual politics of its practitioners. By foregrounding queer desire as central, he helped transform Victorian studies, showing that sexuality is an essential aspect of literary form and cultural practice.
Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism is a landmark text: insightful, nuanced, and deeply thoughtful. Dellamora restores the complexity and risk of Victorian aestheticism, demonstrating how manner and appearance, particularly “beauty,” could serve as a means of negotiating restrictive social norms, particularly for upper-class men. For students and scholars of Victorian literature, queer studies, and the history of sexuality, this book remains essential reading.
