According to Benjamin Morgan (Rhetoric), there might be more to British aestheticism of the 1880s and 1890s than the common caricature of the "naughty nineties" suggests. In his dissertation, Aesthetic Freedom: Individuality and Autonomy in Walter Pater, William Morris, and Vernon Lee, Mr. Morgan asserts that aestheticism's frivolity offers insight into how aesthetic practices serve political purposes. Aesthetes' selfish obsession with pleasure may in fact challenge retrograde conventions of sexuality; their ostensibly bad poetry may in fact subvert conservative literary forms. Mr. Morgan's project shows how the work of three aesthetes influenced major Victorian intellectual trends, discussing the relation of Walter Pater to scientific materialism, of William Morris to political individualism, and of Vernon Lee to early psychology. Analyzing these intersections between aesthetics and society, Mr. Morgan argues that British aestheticism's political significance is that it challenges the Victorian ideal of a self-governing, autonomous subject.