Month: February 2022

Throughout Dorian Gray, I found the presentation of art to be incredibly interesting. Basil and Harry seem to fight over Dorian as opposing artistic forces. On a larger scale, Basil and Harry’s work and its relationship to Dorian may reflect Wilde’s larger body of work. 

For example, Basil’s relationship with Dorian emphasizes meaning. Basil worships Dorian’s appearance and recreates his image in his artwork. Against his better judgment, Basil reveals himself completely in his work. Just by looking at his painting, his feelings towards Dorian are apparent. One can look through the exterior to find depth without trying. Basil may represent one aspect of Wilde’s creative process and philosophy, which yearns for meaning.

Meanwhile, Harry’s influence on Dorian shows a conflicting artistic urge. Harry’s quick quips are impressive on the exterior but contain nothing of value. He insists that the book he gives Dorian is nothing but a well-written book, with no true meaning or message. The artist puts nothing beyond the surface, yet Dorian takes Harry’s remarks and the book he recommends incredibly seriously. After Harry gives Dorian the book, Dorian obsesses over it, buying copies in different colors to suit his mood. He views the work as predicting his own life and often accuses Harry of poisoning him. 

This difference between Basil’s style of providing art and Harry’s style of providing art resembles the range of Wilde’s work. When we talked about Wilde’s Happy Prince tales as outliers in Wilde’s work, we considered that they may not mean anything at all. Like Dorian’s reaction to Harry’s influence, those trying to find meaning in these stories may be digging for something nonexistent and providing their own meanings instead. This would mirror the “Harry” style of art. Meanwhile, works like Dorian Gray are transparent. The story holds meaning beyond the surface, and Wilde’s focus on meaning in art provokes the reader to search for these meanings. Similar to Basil, he puts himself in the work. Wilde divorces the urges in his creative process and personifies them in Harry and Basil. One urge is to create clever and outwardly beautiful work, while the other is to create work that conveys meaning.

Marriage is undeniably inescapable in Wilde’s play, An Ideal Husband. It seems that there are as many perceptions of marriage as there are characters in the play, as each main character views the prospect (or reality) of marriage completely differently. Though the institution is mocked constantly throughout the play, its importance is never understated, even by those desiring to be life-long bachelors. Even Lord Goring, one of Wilde’s more obvious insert characters, says to Robert, “No man should have a secret from his own wife.” Though he immediately follows this statement up with the qualification, “She invariably finds it out.” Even Goring is ultimately unable to avoid married life, as the play concludes to his marriage to Mabel, though their wedding is itself a parody of marriage itself, as Mabel expresses disgust at the very idea that Goring would be an ideal husband to her. 

It seems that, through heavily parodying the idea of marriage, but never reducing it to absurdity, that the play is recognizing that all things worth parodying must have at least some level of importance in society. In this way, An Ideal Husband is far from anti-marriage, just as The Importance of Being Earnest is far from being anti-posh, rather both seek to point out the absurdity of real life, without reducing real life to mere absurdity. 

This is not to say that An Ideal Husband is pro-marriage or even neutral on the subject, but rather that it is able to make its criticisms of marriage more effectively by recognizing its importance, something that would not be possible if Wilde painted the institution as wholly undesirable and negative. Overall, I think it is clear that there are a lot of moving parts in An Ideal Husband, and if you read past the incredibly rich and witty dialogue, you can see Wilde toeing the line of what can and cannot be said, or performed on stage. 

After reflecting upon on our class discussion, I wanted to think more deeply about Dorian’s death at the end of the novel. The ambiguity surrounding this event is very interesting to me, and I would argue that Dorian is really committing suicide rather than attempting to destroy his painting. Lord Henry’s final words to Dorian really help to contextualize Dorian’s thought process at this critical moment in his life. He tells Dorian that “art has no influence upon action…, [and that] the books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” (163). This statement seems to refute much of the textual evidence (i.e., the painting whispering murderous ideas to Dorian) for the corrupting power of art, which was often suggested to originate from the power of the yellow book or the painting itself. This shift away from external corruption implies that the culpability for the dark deeds in the novel belongs to Dorian and his own misguided choices. Here, the word “books” could easily be replaced with “paintings,” and, in either case, the second clause would symbolize how the art form is merely reflecting the immorality of Dorian’s actions – not directly causing them. In this way, Dorian is confronted by the duty to take responsibility for his own actions, which he has been trying to avoid doing during the entire plot (i.e., he refers to Basil’s corpse as “that thing” to make the murder seem less real and personal). Later on, we see that Dorian “began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said,” so the fact that Dorian was reflecting on these ideas shows the reader that he is really grappling with guilt (164). As art “shows the world its own shame,” Dorian may have originally attempted to destroy his portrait (in another attempt to avoid responsibility) before it reminded him of his agency and culpability, which results in him stabbing a “knife in his [own] heart” (potentially) to finally punish himself for his crimes ( 167).

The Picture of Dorian Gray leaves us with a rather tragic ending. In a sense, there is no real sense of an ending other than the relatively expected demise of Dorian Gray. We are left with most of the main characters of the novel either dead or corrupted morally beyond fixation. Both Sybill and Basil Hallward are left dead by the corruption and degradation of Gray; they both end up as victims of his demise. In a sense, the ending of The Picture of Dorian Gray is quite bleak and without much of anything close to a happy ending. But perhaps Wilde was insinuating much more with the ultimate death of Dorian Gray. While his character does end up dying at the end of the novel, we are given an image of the untainted picture. The text reads, “When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage” (Gray 159). The physical Dorian Gray, who had corrupted beautifully and completely, confronts the realization of his sins and his wrongdoings; he attempts to destroy the painting in a burst of horror and regret over just how far his soul has corrupted. While such ultimately leads to his death, perhaps Wilde was utilizing this demise to show that the only true way Gray could return to his untainted, beautiful state, was through death or even, through death by his own hands. Although there is not many signs that point to anything other than a tragic ending for this work, there is respite among the fact that Gray accounts for his sins and ultimately, through his own passing at his own hands, his soul returns to the pure state it once was.

For the first time this semester, women play a large role in a work from Oscar Wilde. In the previous works we have read, women play a largely passive role often perceived with negative connotations in the eyes of the other characters in the story. In this play, women are not necessarily described better than in previous works, but they take a much more active role in propelling the story forward. Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Chiltern, and Mabel Chiltern are all principal characters in the story, and they each embody a different stereotype of femininity. Mrs. Cheveley is the sneaky gossip, always on the prowl for a new scandal, and orchestrating her own when there is none to be found. Lady Chiltern, ever the moralist, represents the perfect woman who does no wrong in contrast to Mrs. Cheveley. And finally, Mabel Chiltern, the bright eyed beauty, highlights the decadent woman with her looks and fascination with the unique. 

At the crux of the conflict, we find Mrs. Cheveley with her sticky fingers and stolen letters. She strides into the Chiltern household with her agenda and declares war on the happy life of Robert Chiltern because of his ruthless ambition in his youth. There seems to be a prevailing theme of the corrupting nature of youth throughout the last two pieces we have read from Oscar Wilde. Mrs. Cheveley is capitalizing on that fact to blackmail Robert. A curious mascuine air surrounds her because of her assertive and dominant countenance. She does not bow to the intellect of men, and places herself in a position of power over them, which is a distinctly masculine trait throughout the literature of this time. This stereotype is not meant to describe her as a respectable woman, but to highlight that when women grasp for power they end up scorned and hated. Robert’s ambition leads him to similarly morally gray actions, but in contrast, he enjoys an immensely successful life with the admiration of all those around him. This disconnect with what a man and a woman can achieve highlights Wilde’s own perception of women as subordinate to men. 

In contrast to Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Chiltern and Mabel Chiltern embody more feminine elements of a stereotypical woman. Lady Chiltern is lauded as the perfect woman, faithfully devoted to her husband and pure to the core. She is almost disgustingly feminine having it reflected even in the pink paper she writes her correspondence on. Mrs. Cheveley is particularly annoyed by this since the two women were enemies during schooling. Lady Chiltern also acts as the moral law throughout the play. Robert is forced to confront his sins because of her and her unwavering morality. All these traits define the ideal wife. A beautiful, faithful woman who adores her husband despite his faults leading him toward a better path in life. Mabel Chiltern represents a different version of the ideal woman. She is constantly pursued for her beauty, and enjoys the frivolous pleasures of life. She is drawn to Lord Goring for his decadent ideals, reminiscent of Lord Henry but with more concern for his friends, because he promises a truly unique and fantastic life full of material pleasures and experiences. Out of all the women in the play, Mabel is the simplest, in quest of a fitting husband to satisfy her luxurious lifestyle. Wilde would hold her as the most desirable woman because she seems to have the least concern with the serious points of life. Passion and pleasure are her aim for herself and her husband, and what’s more to life than that to a decadent?