The Dandy or How to Distinguish Yourself Through the Senses

In this chapter, I will look at the personalities of the dandy and the aesthete to understand what this sublimation of the senses, which was purportedly developed outside the system, consisted of. I base my analysis on two of the most representative novels of fin-de-siècle decadentism: À Rebours (Against the Grain, 1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans and The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde. First, I will highlight some of the traits that differentiate the dandy and the aesthete. Then, I will focus on three facets that I have identified as proper to aesthetic life and that make sensory experience the centre of existence. This is a sensory experience that claims to be distanced from that driven by capitalism—the latter associated with a chrematistic purpose—and which comes to guide the totality of their life decisions. To conclude, I will discuss how the singularised figure of the aesthete fits in with the development at the end of the century of a whole movement such as aestheticism, which, straddling elite and mass culture, advocates the popularisation of sensory pleasure.