LITERATURE AND THE CITY

Baudelaire’s Dressing of the Dandy and
the Prostitute in Erotic and Exotic Fashion 

Baudelaire & Nord

Abstract:

The essay will be an in-depth exploration of the dandy and the prostitute in The Painter of Modern Life written by Charles Baudelaire in 1863. It will focus on how the two can be seen as a double of each other and how they manifest as spectacles and spectators, thereby performing the role of art and artist to illuminate Baudelaire’s idea of aestheticism and modernity. Using Deborah Epstein Nord’s doubling theory of the dandy and the prostitute in Walking the Victorian Street, this essay will show how these modern figures contribute to Baudelaire’s social critique and a general reflection of Paris in the 19th century.

Introduction

             Prostitutes have mesmerised many painters and writers, and inspired a profuse collection of artworks featuring them as models or muses, from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s La Toilette, Édouard Manet’s Olympia, Alexandre Dumas’s The Lady of the Camellias, Richard Mason’s The World of Suzie Wong, to poets like Horace and Liu Yong who glorified their existence dating back to ancient Rome and early Song dynasty. Among these progressive artists, French poet Charles Baudelaire readily embraces the unsanctioned and the condemned by offering readers an exotic vision of the fallen women. He once famously declared, “What is art? Prostitution” (Intimate Journals 31), thereby issuing a bold fashion statement combining the interface of prostitution and art. In his 1863 essay The Painter of Modern Life, he compares the image of the artist with the figure of the prostitute who are both misconstrued and isolated at the social margins by bourgeois society yet act as the bearers of modernity. I will analyse how Baudelaire uses both the dandy and the prostitute as new social types to defy tradition and societal conventions. These modern figures in different social classes function as both the spectacle and the spectator to convey Baudelaire’s critique of society. I will expound upon how the dandy and the prostitute complement each other as a double using Deborah Epstein Nord’s theory, and ultimately constitute as the subject matter of Art and Baudelaire’s self-referential objects as he alternates between the two.

The Dandy

             The dandy manifests Baudelaire’s view of a bohemian modernist who “understands the world and the mysterious and lawful reasons for all its uses” (7) as he saunters on the fringes of society. Being rich and idle, he owns a plethora of vast resources and energy which enables him to fully appreciate the delicate beauty that lies beneath the ordinary life in his “perpetual pursuit of happiness” (26). The pleasure of beauty, as fashion, encapsulates the “ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent” element of the modern world that the dandy relishes to discover and examine (12). Hence a Baudelairian dandy is not bound by the title attributed by aristocracy, but rather rises above the foppery and materiality to grasp the complexities of universal life and captures beauty in the moment of passing. He dresses in fine clothes which mark his gentility and always carries a cold indifference, indicating his moral contempt for the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the dandy follows the “doctrine of elegance and originality” (28) that sets his own guiding principle of philosophy and religion to resist any rigorous laws dictated by authorities. As both a passionate onlooker and a flâneur, he devotes himself to an artistic process to transform his observations into novelties with his roaming eyes, imaginative mind and loitering feet. He is thus a hero of modernity and a painter of modern life driven by the desire of aesthetic sensations and poetic creations.

The Prostitute

             The figure of the prostitute also epitomises Baudelaire’s aestheticism as she embodies the physical and moral corruption of the metropolis with sexual allure that contains “the Protean image of wanton beauty” (36). Her paradoxical duality resides in her profession as a clandestine prostitute who subscribes to illicit sexual adventures lauded by Baudelaire. She is depicted as the bestial idol who holds “a provocative and barbaric sort of elegance” (36) and thus appears as both a divinity and a destitute. Baudelaire recognises the true heritage of courtesans whose sexual dalliance becomes a poetic charm and praises them for being the talented entertainers and bringers of enchantment. He contends an indiscriminate rendering of the prostitute who now exists as both the object of men’s carnal gratification as well as that of artists’ poetic imagination. He is astounded by the artistry of prostitution, seeing harlots as poets who engage in an artistic trade to transcend the commodified exchange of sex. In a way Baudelaire also relegates art to a purchasable form of sexuality and vulgarity when female bodies are bought and sold. Though prostitution was widely frowned upon and stigmatised by society, the profession ironically legitimised prostitutes to wander off on the street. Her freedom and mystique power allows her to experience city life and her versatile identity reinforces the transitory value of modernity that Baudelaire affirms (Nord 5). Hence Baudelaire’s treatment of prostitution subverts traditional views that condemn the fallen woman who sells her body, to extol her as the heroine of modernism.

The Dandy and the Prostitute as a Double

             Both the dandy and the prostitute exemplify aesthetic ideals that Baudelaire heavily suggests with similar intrinsic qualities. They represent the marginal, transgressive and revolutionised figures of the city featuring as the central characters of the 19th century Paris. Along with the pedestrians, ragpickers, workers, shoppers, drinkers and dancers, they are put on display as human portraits in Baudelaire’s variegated gallery of modern life. To begin with, the feminine prostitute harbours the role of a modern flâneuse, a male counterpart of the flâneur or the dandy as “an inquiry into the masculinity of the spectator and into the role of women as either spectacle or player on the rambler’s stage” (Nord 2). Baudelaire levels the two on equal grounds by eulogising the virtues of prostitution and discarding the aristocratic superiority of dandyism; thus the sacred prostitute is placed vis-à-vis the dandy, the patrician of upper echelons to become urban spectators and strollers. Furthermore, the dandy and the prostitute serve as mirror images of marginality, the former as a rare faculty who rejects to be typified by affluence and triviality, and the latter as a social outcast and “a gipsy wandering on the fringes of a regular society” with her risqué quality (Baudelaire 37). In addition, Baudelaire addresses them as vagabonds with sexual and social transgression, in which the prostitute is the “woman of revolt against society” (37), a double of the dandy “as a symbol of his own rebellion against respectability” (Nord 5). Thus the active female sexuality that was once considered as dissolute and dangerous now aligns with male sexual desire, the symbolically erotic impulse to immerse oneself into the crowd in search for aesthetic beauty on the street.

Role of Art/Artist

             I would proffer that the dandy and the prostitute posit three roles of Art: (1) Art as an appearance that is exhibitive, (2) Art as a performance that is seductive, and (3) Art as a reflection that is narcissistic.

Art: Exhibitive Appearance

             Baudelaire denotes the significance of costume to humankinds as a form of fashionable display in both the dandy and the prostitute. The two are described as a spectacle, which shows signs of admiration and adoration from Baudelaire when he praises their artifice and lavish clothing. Fashionable dress represents a symbol of the fleeting and transient nature of the contemporary world, which also expresses its epic and timeless beauty. However, Baudelaire’s inspection of female flesh and scrutiny of masculine body inadvertently debase both the dandy and the prostitutes as “a creature of show, an object of public pleasure” (37). The dandy is deliberately distanced from the mass crowd, his haughty aloofness and alienation are rigidly attached to him as a supposed disposition. He is framed as a mechanical nonentity, “a mysterious institution” (26) commissioned to astonish many, whereas the prostitute “is obliged to adorn herself in order to be adorned” which addresses the indivisible unity between the woman and her dress that Baudelaire wilfully proclaims (33). Hence the dandy and the prostitute are no more than fetishised commodities and mannequins on exhibition as they promote and sell themselves through fashion and an exotic appeal. The body of the whore and that of the dandy are reduced to symbols and a social spectacle to delineate the tension between tradition and modernity, their beauty wholly arrested by the public eye as they “exist very much more for the pleasure of the observer than for their own” (36).

Art: Seductive Performance

             Furthermore, the dandy and the prostitute can be seen as “asocial” (Nord 5) actors who participate in the contemporary Parisian scene with the art of seduction. Paris is conceived as a glamorous stage where they play out their roles as a showman and an actress respectively. Unlike the detestable and mediocre artists who are merely “highly skilled animals, pure artisans, village intellects (and) cottage brains” (7), the dandy and the prostitute exercise their liberty as genuine artists and employ theatrical charms to arouse the public with enigmatic and deviant beauty. They perform as the denizens of the Parisian art realm created by Baudelaire, acting as the “spiritual citizen(s) of the universe” (7) in solitary and reckless forms and skirting around the corners of the city as carefree individuals. The dandy possesses a “burning need to create for oneself a personal originality” (27). He masters the art of originality with gifted imagination as he participates and generates a unique experience of the world. While the prostitute challenges the vexed sexuality with her artistic role likened to that of an actress, both as the projection of desire through theatricality. She initiates a titillating fantasy with her pulchritude and her raunchy quality asserts “a perfect image of savagery” (36) which attracts the public gaze. Thus the dandy and the prostitute elicit an aesthetic response from viewers who border on ambivalent attitudes. Just as we sympathise and triumph with the dandy dramatised as “the last spark of heroism and decadence” (29), we are also repelled and deeply intrigued by the “innocent and monstrous self-conceit” (37) of the prostitute, which subverts Nord’s worrying depiction of the actress who “falls from respectability by making herself a spectacle” (Nord 7). The dandy and the prostitute therefore redefine a public sphere of performance and entertainment with active imagination by producing an authenticity of artistic stimulation against sterility and banality, each of them “bears the distinctive stamp of his(her) trade, a characteristic which can be translated into physical ugliness, but also into a sort of ‘professional’ beauty” (37).

Art: Narcissistic Reflection

             Lastly, they are the Narcissistic reflection of Baudelaire as an artist, the symbolic attire he wears which “ends by looking like his ideal self” (2). The dandy and the prostitute are the bona-fide city dwellers who present themselves as the living work of art. They are also the painterly portrait which imprints the artist’s soul as “the duality of art is a fatal consequence of the duality of man” (3). Their bodies, gestures, adornments, manners and speech all constitute a mode of self-reinvention for Baudelaire, who identifies with their originality and anonymity. As his alter egos, the two deftly interweave with their fluid identities from physical, social to spiritual dimension. They are the eyes of Baudelaire, offering a voyeuristic gaze and sensual pleasures from which “few men are gifted with the capacity of seeing, there are fewer who possess the power of expression” (11). Here Baudelaire strongly insinuates his identity as the omnipotent God of artistic creation, the eternal soul of art, whereas the dandy and the prostitute are the variable, physical incarnations of his spiritual self. The two break away from their stereotypical representations (the prostitute as “‘doxies’, ‘kept women’, ‘lorettes’, or ‘biches’” (14) and the dandy as “‘exquisites’, ‘incroyables, ‘beax’, ‘(or) liones’” (28)) to form new archetypes coined by Baudelaire. He adopts their artistic personas and celebrates his literary heroes, poets of debauchery and profanity through writing. Both provocative and captivating, the dandy and the prostitute come to signify the paradox of pure art, establishing “the special beauty of evil, the beautiful amid the horrible” (38). The dandy, the male’s spectator is hailed as “a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito” (9). Baudelaire then stylises himself as a flâneur, a man-of-the-crowd, mixing incognito through roaming Parisian streets and sketching the manners of the immoral and the impoverished. He also resonates with the transgressive eroticism of the feminine prostitute and is drawn by her sexual temptation as the artist’s love of passion. Hence both the dandy and the prostitute become the object of curiosity and the mirror of the artist, lending pictorial and imaginative potential to his works.

Conclusion

             The Painter of Modern Life details a profound account of different people as a visual array of varied living styles in Baudelaire’s imagined portrait-gallery. Baudelaire offers a glimpse of the 19th century as a contemporary period of intense urbanisation which “transformed the urban public realm into ‘spectacle,’ gender, race, and ethnicity became ever more crucial and contested categories of identification and difference” (R. Schwartz & M. Przyblyski 287). Baudelaire provides a comprehensive portrayal of the artist as well as his fascination with contemporary fashion to elucidate his definition of modernity, illustrating the role of the dandy and the prostitute as both instrumental and exemplary. In addition, Nord’s argument provides a bridge for the analysis of Baudelaire’s treatise which attests the revolting energy from the two. Like the dandy, the courtesan plays the double role of a poetic and erotic object, as well as an artist. To conclude, the dandy and the prostitute can be seen as allegorical figures to articulate Baudelaire’s hedonistic lifestyle, artistic temperament and revolutionary ardour toward society, and the contemporary scene of Paris in the 19th century.