Month: February 2022

What is Wilde trying to tell us?

Many of the writings of Wilde that we have read so far have all been rather straightforward in their praise of decadent ideas about morality and social life. The dialogues especially (“The Decay of Lying” and “The Critic as Artist”) make it clear that they are trying to convince you of a decadent ideal; it is their sole purpose. Because of this, it is very easy to read Wilde as a staunch defender of decadence and no more. However, The Picture of Dorian Gray complicates that idea.

Although the text is awash with decadent ideas (the worship of male beauty, the simultaneous rejection and desire for education and learnedness, the carefree attitudes towards social order), it does not seem to be defending those ideas. As Dorian grows more and more decadent, the painting of him grows more and more corrupted. His relationship with Lord Henry is seen as corrupting in the novel, much like Wilde’s relationship with Bosie was seen as by the public.

But the decadent ideals are not completely slandered either. To some extent, Dorian Gray is getting what he wants. He lives a life of luxury, enjoys whatever he likes, and is hardly even touched by the public’s perception of him. And if there are similarities between the relationships of Dorian and Lord Henry and Wilde and Bosie, then it is hard to believe that Wilde would view his own relationship as pure corruption.

All of this is to say that I have been grappling with the question of whether or not The Picture of Dorian Gray has some deeper moral or social message, and what that message might be. I have not found an answer yet, and Wilde is so slippery, I’m not sure I will. The one thing I am reasonably sure about is that this text feels deeply personal in a way that his other works have not.

Power and Art in Dorian Gray

One of the many fascinating aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray is the immense power Dorian and Lord Henry wield in the narrative, especially compared to Sibyl and Basil.  It’s particularly curious because Basil and, more minorly, Sibyl, are the text’s artists, but are simultaneously the ones most under Dorian’s spell and are relatively powerless to save their art from contact with him. Basil says that Dorian is “all my art to me now” and that “the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life” (23). He places a power and personal weight in Dorian’s beauty, noting the control it has over his art.  When Dorian will no longer sit for Basil, Basil claims that in refusing, Dorian will “spoil [his] life as an artist” (91).  This personal investment in Dorian, as his artistic ideal, eventually becomes his downfall.  In a similar way, Sibyl’s love for Dorian comes between her and her art. After she kisses Dorian, she proudly loses her ability to act — in finding real love for Dorian, all of her stage love seems to her a sham and Dorian is “more to [her] than all art can ever be” (71). As we know, however, Dorian values the Sibyl of the stage more, the ideal she portrays through her art, and so her investment in Dorian also becomes her downfall. Each is robbed of their life and ability to make the art that made them special, one because Dorian was art’s ideal and the other because Dorian became more real than art could ever be.  

It sort of echoes our class conversation on “The Ballad of a Barber,” that perhaps there’s a limit to what the artists can make more beautiful or perhaps that there’s something maddening about true natural beauty, despite the fact that Basil says “there is nothing that Art cannot express” (23).  This raises another question for me however — is Dorian really beautiful? Obviously he is physically beautiful and seems at first to have a sort of naive beauty of spirit too.  But as his soul degrades, does he stay beautiful? At what point does his outer beauty become a sham too, the beauty of his form robbed of the beauty of his soul? Is he fascinating simply because he is beautiful or because of the juxtaposition of the perfect exterior and corrupt, rotting interior and the way it is hard to reconcile those two? 

Class in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

I am interested in what The Picture of Dorian Gray has to say about class, particularly through the eyes of Mrs. Vane and her two children.  Mrs. Vane seems to have conflicting visions of the world.  On one hand, she seems excessively practical about money and supporting her son and daughter, but on the other, she seems deeply devoted to the world of theater and how she presents herself to the world from an artistic perspective.  She feels obligated to Mr. Isaacs because of the money she owes him and how he has given them the opportunity to work.  She thinks he has treated them very well (though Sibyl disagrees with this).  She is also obsessed with the idea that her daughter’s Prince Charming might be very wealthy, in which case “there is no reason why she should not contract an alliance with him” (Wilde 60).  In Mrs. Vane’s eyes, if Dorian is a member of the aristocracy, there could be nothing wrong with him. 

Her son, James, on the other hand, seems very distrustful of Dorian and other members of the upper class.  He worries very much about his sister’s safety and reputation as she pursues a relationship with a man she hardly knows.  He thinks that Dorian’s intentions in becoming involved with a poor actress is that he “wants to enslave” Sibyl (Wilde 62).  He worries that Sibyl will share the same fate as their mother, who is now a single mother in much debt after being wronged by a “highly connected” gentleman like Dorian (Wilde 64).  Sibyl seems very naïve in her approach to Dorian, not caring about the fact that she knows nothing about him other than that he adores to watch her act.  She cares not at all for money, exclaiming, “what does money matter?  Love is more than money” (Wilde 57), and “Poor?  What does that matter?  When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window” (Wilde 62).  It will be interesting to see how her relationship with Dorian plays out, and how her family and Lord Henry affect it.

History

As we discussed the first third of The Picture of Dorian Gray in class on Wednesday, I found myself struck by two details. First, the way in which Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) kept coming up in conversation felt notable because so many people saw him in the story. Second, the fact that Oscar Wilde did not meet Lord Alfred Douglas until the year after Dorian Gray was published would indicate that Bosie could not have been in the story in any intentional way. I was somewhat surprised by the way in which, even after we learned the chronology of their meeting–something I did not previously know–Bosie continued to be central to our conversation. It felt as if we were so tied to what we know of Wilde’s life that we see it in all that he does, regardless of whether or not we should.

This conversation felt like a good representation of a point that has been brought up throughout the semester: we project onto the past using what we know about the present. I am a history major, so I spend a lot of time–probably most of my day while school is in session–thinking about events of the past and the way in which we try to understand them in the present. Every historian has a different answer to the question, “why does history matter,” and their answer shapes the way in which they contextualize the past. For me, history is a study in compassion. I believe that most of history can be summed up by saying, “people tried to do what they believed was good and failed.” That failure comes from a variety of factors from prejudice that blinded historical actors to the true cruelty of their behavior to an inability to see the side effects of a decision. Of course, there are exceptions to this narrative, but I think that it works as a general rule. For that reason, it is important to study and understand the past in order to build empathy in the present. We must look at historical actors with compassion in the hopes that the people who come after us view us the same way. Part of that process is actively studying the way in which one event led to another, and remembering that historical actors did not have the full picture that we now do.

When it comes to talking about Oscar Wilde, it is important that we remind ourselves that he did not know the trend his life would take before it happened. It is easy for us to view Wilde with compassion, but it is sometimes hard to get the idea of inevitability out of our heads. When Dorian Gray was published, Wilde had not met Bosie and did not know what the long term effects of that meeting would be. For that reason, I believe that we should try to read The Picture of Dorian Gray with the chronology of Wilde’s life in mind. After we do that, we can take the next step and try to explain why Dorian Gray was used against Wilde at his trial without using that fact as indication enough that Bosie is–even accidentally–in the text.

Corruption of Beauty

After reading the “The Ballad of a Barber,” and some of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I started to think again about the idea of creation of beauty, artist as creator, and corruption of beauty.

In “The Ballad of the Barber,” the barber is known for his abilities to make things beautiful. Just as much as an artist in any other sphere of art, the manipulation of hair and one’s face with makeup is an act of creation. But the barber suddenly loses his ability to do so when he is confronted with the young princess, an already stunning girl. The princess is naturally beautiful. Perhaps, like in “The Decay of Lying,” one’s natural state being beautiful is something hard to understand. If it is not man-made, then it can’t be beautiful. But since the princess already is, perhaps that is why she was killed by the Barber. His act of murder may be a sort of morbid creation itself. He could not understand or handle her natural beauty, and so had to get rid of it, or one-up it with her murder, in a twisted way.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is also already beautiful. With Basil, he is admired for such beauty. He is confined to the inside world, where he sits for portraits and enjoys his influence over Basil. He’s like a princess sitting in a castle. But Lord Henry gets him out of the castle. Again, this sense of twisted manipulation comes in. Lord Henry enjoys corrupting Dorian, he has this power over him that he utilizes. Dorian is described using flower-like imagery, showing he is beautiful, pure, fragile, and corruptible. Henry likes to think that he created Dorian out of his influence, like I’m sure the Barber felt he created beautiful things out of his influence. Perhaps, like the Barber, Lord Henry does not know what to do with something so naturally beautiful except to corrupt it. That is the only thing you can do to something that you can’t make any more beautiful: try to ruin it. Or maybe, to try and make it one’s own. Murdering the princess gave the Barber a tie to her. I’m not sure yet if Lord Henry is really trying to “ruin” Dorian, but I get the sense that he has this compulsion to corrupt, and a compulsion to make Dorian his own.

I’m interested to see how Lord Henry and Dorian’s relationship develops throughout the rest of the story, and if it is going to go down a similar path as the princess’s fate.

Dorian’s Immobility and Mobility

Our discussion today had me thinking a lot about the philosophies that Wilde is portraying through his characters, as well as how Wilde himself fits into the narrative of his own novel, but then I started thinking about the physical world in The Picture of Dorian Gray. I brought up the point in class that the whole reason for Basil’s downfall becomes his trust in Lord Henry. He believes that Dorian will become influenced by Henry, and “the influence would be bad” (26). At the end of chapter six, Basil mourns the “strange sense of loss” of Dorian becoming influenced by Henry and then states that “life had come between them” (70). I’m not going to be focusing on the word strange and the homoerotic implications it has in this blog post (although it’d be cool if somebody commented on it!), but rather I want to talk about how we can understand the relationships through their physicality and mobility. I find it interesting that at the beginning of the novel, when first introduced to Basil and Dorian’s relationship, the artist and the art, Dorian is physically immobile. He stays confined and seems satisfied simply being inside his studio. There is a part after where Dorian goes out to the garden because he is impatient with posing, but it happens after he meets Lord Henry. After Lord Henry, Dorian cannot be confined to the studio anymore, as a subject of art. He creates the subjects now; he goes from dinners to outings to the theater with Lord Henry, who makes Dorian into somebody physically a part of the world, somebody that can move around unlike when Basil confined him to the art studio. This makes sense with the line that “life had come between” Basil and Dorian, and life is Henry personified because Henry is integrating Dorian into all of the societal outings and sensory experiences that life has to offer over the studio.

            I’m not quite sure what to make of this argument as well as the level of nuance that Basil is creating backdrops and environments in the portrait that are not a part of the physical realm since they are birthed from his artistry and his mind, which is also an interesting perspective to consider. I think that the material and physical world will start to tell us some things about the contradictory philosophies we are reading that come from all the characters. What does it mean that Basil is “confining” Dorian? Is it a bad thing to become integrated into the society of dinners, outings, and theater? How does Basil’s trust become his downfall; what does it say about him?

Choice of Form in The Happy Prince Tales

One thing that I found particularly interesting about The Happy Prince stories was their similarity to fairy tales. This literary form seemed out of character for Wilde, whose works tend to cater to an educated and upper-class audience. Many of his poems, essays, and stories have the pre-requisite of being “in the know,” referencing other decadent works and making allusions to texts with which the average person would not be familiar. Additionally, some of his work comes off as classist. He treats the poor as predisposed to a certain lifestyle and favors the educated and bored wealthy as the main subjects of his work.

The Happy Prince tales took on a completely different mode of communication. They were generally straightforward stories that were easy to understand. They featured talking animals, mythical creatures, and even anthropomorphic rockets. Most seemed to contain a moral. Some even seemed to criticize the wealthy and upper class, like The Remarkable Rocket, The Happy Prince, and The Devoted Friend.

While reading these stories, I wondered why Wilde would choose to write in this form. One reason could be that he was reveling in contradiction. Wilde eschews consistency for fear of becoming boring and deliberately runs from the familiar in The Happy Prince tales. The morals he presents throughout the story may be true beliefs as much as his seemingly contrasting beliefs in other stories. His use of a simple form may be an appeal to the uneducated as he makes his work more accessible. This great contrast in his work could have been appealing to Wilde’s aesthetic of difference and contradiction.

On the other hand, the stories may mean nothing at all. Wilde might be following a different belief and creating art for art’s sake, in which case the fairytales are merely beautiful. According to Wilde, art for art’s sake should lack meaning completely, voiding the morals throughout the collection of stories. 

Lastly, the stories may have been a personal challenge for Wilde, who stressed the importance of letting the genius shine by constraining them within a form. Wilde may have been challenging himself to work within the fairytale form to produce greater beauty and genius. Whatever his motive, The Happy Prince stories were an interesting break from Wilde’s usual style and revealed a range of creativity. 

Finding the Douglases in their art

What interested me the most about the readings for this week was what can be inferred about the relationship between some of the poets and the Decadence movement. Though many of these same artists would detest the very idea that the artist can be found in their art, I do not think it can be denied that some of the poetry we read this week was deeply personal. 

This is seen perhaps most clearly in Lord Alfred Douglas’ works, as his works seem to often reflect his personal feelings about his own sexuality, and the Decadence movement as a whole. The first poem of his we read, “Apologia,” seems to me to be a representation of Douglas’ inner conflict between his sexuality and religion, as he seems to understand that they are not compatible, though he longs to indulge both. The closing lines of “Two Loves” talk of a True Love which, in its own words is “the love that dare not speak its name.” These closing lines and the poem as a whole seem to reflect how difficult it is for Douglas to keep his true feelings hidden from the world, and to not feel shame for indulging in a love that the rest of society says is morally wrong. Both of these themes are prevalent in many of Wilde’s works as well, and it is quite telling how influential they both were to each other. 

A complicated relationship to the Decadence movement can be seen in Lady Alfred Douglas’ works, as it seems to me that her relationship to the movement is one of both appreciation and criticism. In her first selection, “Peacocks: A Mood” she characterizes the decadents of her age as the titular bird, clearly in appreciation of their aesthetic qualities. However, though she recognizes the peacocks as “gorgeous,” she criticizes them because “They trample the pale flowers, and their shrill cry/Troubles the garden’s bright tranquility.” It seems that the poem is recognizing the beauty that can be found in the art of the Decadence movement, but also seems to warn that such a focus on art for arts sake can ultimately destroy the artistic landscape of the time. 

The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name

What I found most interesting about “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” was the references to Plato’s Symposium. It’s a collection of speeches about the nature of Eros, the god of love and desire, and a lot of it focuses on pederasty—the relationship between an older man and a young man. The older man was meant to act as a mentor for the young man and help him develop as a person, but there was also a sexual aspect to this relationship. It was fairly common practice among the elite of Ancient Greece. 

In my copy of the Symposium, it mentions that when the Symposium was studied in the past, the sexual aspect of the relationship was ignored, and it was just interpreted as a mentor and mentee relationship between men. When I read the first part “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” I thought that the relationship between Shakespeare and Willie Hughes was meant to be seen as romantic. However, on pages 324 and 325 Wilde references the Symposium and says that the Platonic conception of love is “nothing if not spiritual” and is removed from “gross bodily appetite.” This leads me to believe that Wilde included the references to the Symposium as somewhat of a defense against critics who might interpret the relationship between Shakespeare and Willie Hughes as indecent. Wilde might be using the references to say that it’s perfectly natural for Shakespeare to admire Willie Hughes’ beauty because that’s what the Greeks did, and it’s actually one of the higher forms of affection. 

Wilde even alludes to the Symposium at his trial. When questioned about the line, “the love that dare not speak its name” from one of Bosie’s poems, Wilde replied that, “There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him.” This defense had mixed results at the trial, but it’s interesting to see the ideas of the Symposium get referenced in multiple works of Wilde’s.

What is the Point of it All?

Our talk about “The Happy Prince” and other tales on Wednesday stuck with me a lot after class because, weirdly, they allow us to have a framework about what art is. We read Wilde’s essays about art through “The Critic as Artist” and “The Decay of Lying,” but even then, his philosophy of art is difficult to pin down when we place them in the contexts of his poems, short stories—and soon—his plays and only novel. On Wednesday, we talked a lot about how we were unsure whether the tales could be classified as an accurate “fairy tale” or whether they were Wilde’s twisted version of a fairy tale. We also discussed whether children could understand everything Wilde placed before them or if the tales were meant to evolve and grow over time with the reader. Why did we read the short stories we read (“The Canterville Ghost” and “Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime”)? What is the point of it all?

Professor Kinyon’s argument that Wilde is playing with us makes the most sense to me, admittedly, but it’s hard to justify this with the religious elements peppered throughout each story. “Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime” is mostly humorous; that’s the value I see in it, at least. Yet I can’t overlook the message about predestination, as well as the attack on “duty” that the Victorians upheld. It is the same with “The Canterville Ghost,” where nationality undoubtedly plays a role in the story with Wilde’s poking fun at Americans. But then I pose another question: Why do I take religion seriously but everything else not seriously? My current view is that I find great entertainment value in Wilde’s art; it makes me laugh in all its cleverness and the jabs at his characters. Suddenly, when we talk about religion in Wilde’s art, everything takes a deeper, more serious dimension—but why does it suddenly become deeper than just entertainment when religion is introduced?

We’ve also already discussed that Wilde’s philosophy of art is contradictory; some of the philosophy he puts forth in his essays ends up contradicting elements in his stories or poems, such as the strictness of form he adheres to in the poem as well as his introducing “moral imperatives” through “The Happy Prince,” “The Nightingale and the Rose,” “The Selfish Giant,” and possibly “The Devoted Friend” arguably introduce moral imperatives. Yet the contradictory part of this lies in the last closing paragraphs of “The Devoted Friend”:

“‘I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,’ answered the Linnet. ‘The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.’

     ‘Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,’ said the Duck.

     And I quite agree with her.”

This blog post is all over the place because Wilde’s philosophy is also all over the place, and I find with these beginning tales we have been reading that it’s challenging to see Wilde in his art. All in all, I am super excited to start reading The Picture of Dorian Gray and compare my theses and arguments with Wilde’s treatment of the novel, because Professor Kinyon has argued that Wilde shows too much of himself in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the preface protects himself as the artist against being identified in the art.