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.
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What’s in a Woman?
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?
Dorian’s Final Moment
One of the biggest outstanding questions I still have for The Picture of Dorian Gray is in regard to the end and what it all means. Where does this story leave us? What are we left with? When Dorian stabs his portrait, Dorian the man dies and the portrait reverts back to what Basil had initially painted. But what does that release signify? What does it mean for how we understand the relationship between Dorian and the portrait and who, of the two, was the real, or more real, entity? I asked this question in class and was really intrigued by the variety of different interpretations we all had — from postulating that Dorian was committing suicide to suggesting that this was his last displacement of responsibility for his actions onto the portrait. It is a compelling space to think about what the separation of body and soul means, and I’m inclined to think that in stabbing the portrait Dorian has released his soul from it, and in death at last body and soul were reunited.
Thinking more about the end, something about the very last paragraph of this story has always bothered me. It feels like less than it should be, somehow unfinished or at least unresolved, maybe a little spare compared to the rest of the text. After Dorian’s mad dash for the painting, the deep and twisting personal reflection that leads to the end, the sort of direct resolution of the text feels out of joint, or as if it hasn’t caught up with exactly what happened. Part of this effect comes from the fact that Dorian’s name is not to be found in the final paragraph. Dorian’s servants don’t find Dorian, they find “a dead man,” under a “portrait of their master.” (159) Even though we know who it is and that those that find the body eventually figure it out, Dorian himself seems sort of absent from these lines: “It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was” (159). That sentence, to me, feels like it’s missing its natural pair: It was Dorian Gray. Perhaps, the irresolution clues us further into the relationship between Dorian and the portrait, that the lack of identity at the very end suggests that neither the portrait or the man was anything at all, without the other.
Threads of Keats’ “Lamia” in An Ideal Husband
This is the first of Wilde’s plays we have read, and I found the stage directions to be almost more interesting than the dialogue. While plays are obviously meant to be performed live, given the detail in the stage directions, I wondered if Wilde really wrote An Ideal Husband to be read. Most stage directions come to life through the set design, movement, and dialogue of the actors, but he notes, “HAROLD, the footman, shows Mrs. Cheveley in. Lamia-like, she is in green and silver. She has a cloak of black satin, lined with dead rose-leaf silk” (557). The “Lamia-like” point colored how I interpreted the rest of the play, and an audience would have missed this in a live performance unless the stage directions were read aloud.
Keats’ poem, “Lamia,” is, at its core, a story of exposure. Essentially, Lamia is a serpent turned into a beautiful woman, which further connects to the snake brooch that Mrs. Chevely stole. Lycius falls in love with Lamia, and at their wedding, a blind prophet recognizes Lamia as the serpent. In the context of An Ideal Husband, the reference to this poem obviously reinforces Sir Robert Chiltern’s intent to find some secret about Mrs. Cheveley in order to protect himself. The threat of exposure extends beyond Sir Robert and Mrs. Cheveley to Lord Goring and Lady Chiltern as well. Lady Chiltern is the most interesting and puzzling character to make sense of when reading “Lamia” alongside the play. I expected, since Mrs. Cheveley represents the evil serpent, that Lady Chiltern is the most obvious beautiful and morally righteous counterpart. Sir Robert describes her as such: “She does not know what weakness or temptation is… She stands apart as good women do – pitiless in her perfection – cold and stern and without mercy. But I love her Arthur” (561). However, she ultimately turns into a different form of Lamia, threatened with the exposure of her letter to Lord Goring and attempting to end her husband’s career similar Mrs. Cheveley (578).
I think there is much more that can be done with Wilde’s use of “Lamia” in this play, but the main effect I walked away with was the deconstruction of morality. Even the morally righteous characters, like Lady Chiltern, have secrets, and despite her twisted approach, Mrs. Cheveley is really just in love with Lord Goring. Wilde explores morality in a lot of his works like “The Harlot’s House” and The Picture of Dorian Gray, but his exploration of morality in political and domestic spheres in this play is the most effective in proving that it is nearly impossible to label people as “good” or “bad.”
The Preface to Dorian Gray
As I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, I kept thinking back to its preface. As we’ve discussed in class, what Wilde writes in the preface seems to contradict the content of the novel itself. There are many potential reasons for this discrepancy. It could, as we focused on in class, be a means to protect Wilde from the content of the novel. The Picture of Dorian Gray is very personal and it does reveal Wilde in a variety of ways. Although Wilde’s queer identity was not my main focus as I read the novel, it is clear that Wilde’s queerness made its way into the story and shaped it in a revealing way. Perhaps the preface is a means of protection, a way for Wilde to tell a story of himself without being damaged by it.
That reasoning is compelling to me, but I think that there is another key value for the preface. In my opinion, the preface is intentionally ironic. It praises the values of aestheticism in order to open a story about a man whose obsession with his beauty leads to his downfall. Dorian values his beauty above anything else, to the point where he sacrifices his soul in order to stay physically beautiful together. More than anyone else in the story, Dorian lives the values of aestheticism. He buys into “art for art’s sake” so much that he starts to view his life as a kind of art. He considers joining the Roman Catholic Church because “the Roman ritual had always had a great attraction for him.” He loves Sybil because of her artistic talent, and as soon as that talent is gone, he loses interest in her. He says he would “give everything” for the portrait to grow old as he continues to be young and beautiful, and he does.
Dorian actively believes in the aesthetic values listed in the preface, unlike a character like Lord Henry who constantly contradicts himself and seems more interested in entertaining himself than anything else. Rather, Dorian embraces the value of beauty above anything else until it corrupts him so thoroughly that he ends up dead in his attic. To commence The Picture of Dorian Gray with a preface about art being valuable for its own sake and the danger of looking beneath the surface seems to poke fun at aestheticism in general and at the audience for taking what Wilde says seriously. How can it be that the artist’s aim is to conceal himself when the greatest art Basil ever did revealed too much of himself? How can there be no such thing as an immoral book when Dorian is corrupted by a book? Perhaps we are not meant to take the preface seriously, but to use it as a reminder of what aestheticism states and where it falls short.
A Queer Reading of Dorian’s Mobility and Immobility
I wanted to make another post related to my previous one. For those who didn’t read it, I made an argument that Basil keeps Dorian physically confined by demanding him to sit for his portrait. At the same time, Lord Henry, who is epitomized as “Life,” renders Dorian physically mobile (70). He gets integrated into society: attending plays, dinner parties, and other outings. Initially, I thought the argument was odd; I spent some time reconciling with it. Lord Henry is the one who influences Dorian, who is a significant contributor to his corruption. How is somebody who makes Dorian more mobile somebody who also makes him immobile by implanting his ideas of influence? After finishing the novel this week and thinking my argument did not make sense in the grand scheme of the story, I found out it did have a place with a queer reading. The discussion on Wednesday in class about concepts such as the closet helped me arrive at this conclusion and look deeper into the confession scene I pointed out in class.
Again, a lot of the language in the confession scene was overtly queer, with Basil making “a strange confession” about how he “was dominated, soul, brain, and power by [Dorian]” (93, 94). However, the most explicit part in this scene for me lies when Dorian says, “you and I are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so” (95). Basil then says, “You have got Harry” (95). I found it interesting that both of these situations are incompatible, according to Basil; Dorian, for some reason, cannot both be friends with Lord Henry and Basil. I also found it intriguing that Basil states he will be exhibiting the portrait in Paris close before the confession scene. Dorian is entirely against it: “Was the world going to be shown his secret? Were people going to gape at the mystery of his life?” (92). One could read it in the light that Dorian does not want the world to see his aged, disfigured self in Basil’s portrait. However, the proximity of both pieces of text in the narrative is too close not to correlate them together. I read it to be that Basil exhibiting the portrait to the world is an allegory for displaying his true self and homosexuality; Dorian does not want to be a part of this due to his fear and the “corruption” that life has inflicted upon him. This is supported because Basil says, “’ every flake and colour seemed to me to reveal my secret… I felt that I had told too much, that I had too much of myself in it’” (94). Since Dorian is hiding the portrait in his childhood schoolroom, where nobody can access, and only Basil sees, it operates similarly to the metaphorical closet. It reminded me of Giovanni’s Room (a fantastic novel, and James Baldwin is a great author!). At first, Dorian is confined to the studio with Basil, sharing a secret and creating a truly beautiful portrait. Then “Life” or Lord Henry comes in all his influence, and Dorian becomes corrupted in his integration into society, no longer confined to the room where virtually no public perception exists. Dorian’s killing of Basil reflects this decay of that part of himself, the part he wants to hide.
Poisonous Books
Considering the preface of Dorian Gray in hand with the “poisonous book” that Lord Henry gives Dorian, I wondered where the “poison” in the story truly originated. In the preface, Wilde insists that “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book” and that “those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.” Later, Lord Henry echoes Wildes’s point: “As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that… The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” On the other hand, Dorian maintains that the book does poison him: “It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.” The narrator seems to confirm this by saying that “Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book.”
Wilde presents juxtaposing ideas: books can be poisonous, or they cannot. It is difficult to tell what Wilde truly believes or what he wants to communicate. While the preface does seem to state the author’s view explicitly, it also provokes the reader to look for meanings. What the preface says and what the preface accomplishes stand in contrast.
Likewise, while Lord Henry claims that books do not contain influence or convey meaning beyond what the reader brings, the text seems to contradict this at times, stating explicitly that “Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.” Simultaneously, the text informs the reader that “[Dorian] never sought to free himself from it.” This points to culpability on Dorian’s end. The book may not have poisoned him; rather, Dorian allowed himself to be poisoned.
Perhaps Wilde’s point is that art cannot actively “poison” or influence, but if humans choose to let it poison them, it will transform them. Humans must provide meaning that will work through art to change them. Wilde describes the relationship between Dorian’s life and the book: “The hero, the wonderful young Parisian in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of [Dorian]. And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.” This passage goes in hand with the idea we saw in Wilde’s other work: life imitates art. Humans bring meaning to art, which in turn influences life. Thus, life comes to imitate the meaning humans give to art.
Oscar Wilde: Morality and Ethics
The Picture of Dorian Gray, highlights/stresses Wilde’s own views on the concept of morality and ethics with a careful characterization of Lord Henry and Basil Hallward. There are distinct characteristics that create the aforementioned figures and it’s obvious that Lord Henry and Basil Hallward carry very different qualities. Lord Henry places much emphasis on the idea of pleasure and happiness, sometimes even skewing this idea/definition of happiness, as he influences the morals and viewpoints of Gray. He also distorts the idea of happiness by subtly connecting it with beauty and youth. In other words, Lord Henry interconnects pleasure and beauty while replacing the idea of happiness and morality with such ideas. He states, “Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about,” he answered in his slow melodious voice. “But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.” Lord Henry influences Gray with this hedonistic mindset throughout the novel, one that Hallward is uneasy about. The character of Basil Hallward represents a different look on morality. He is wary of Henry’s cynicism and his influence on Gray and actively voices such concerns. Where Hallward’s sense of morality falters is with his obsession with beauty. He carries a belief in the symbiotism of good and beauty, one that borders on ignorance and such is shown by his continued trust that Dorian Gray’s outwardly beautiful nature represents goodness and ethicality. Hallward states, “mind you, I don’t believe these rumours at all. At least, I can’t believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.” Such ignorance or refusal to believe that one could be corrupted and immoral ultimately leads to his abrupt demise.
Blossoms of Life
This week, we began reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde’s only novel. I had read this book in highschool and thought it was going to be a laid back read, but upon reading the first chapter I realized there was so much that I never picked up on before. In class, someone said that there was an analysis that said the three men of the story reflected the three versions of himself that existed within Wilde. I was intrigued by this idea, and wanted to examine it within the frame of the various flowers littered within the pages of the novel. Reading a novel by such an enigmatic author is both challenging and consuming. While there are so many avenues to explore, there’s always that underlying question of whether or not we should even look that deep. Maybe Wilde simply stumbled upon a pretty flower one day and decided to add that imagery to his work, or one of his fleeting passions of the time was flowers and their delicate beauty. Nonetheless, what could be the author’s whim becomes the subject of great conversation by those who read him.
From the very beginning, Dorian Gray is compared to a rose with its deep beauty and romantic connotations, but every rose has its thorns. That is to say, looks can be deceiving. This became increasingly clear with the chapters we read this weekend as Dorian realizes his material luck leaving his emotional and moral burdens to the portrait in his school room. We see Dorian begin his descent from purity slowly, then all at once when Sybil loses her artistic value blossoming in her true love instead of the theatricality of stage life. Here we see how his thorns pierce those who get too close to his intoxicating beauty. In a way, there is a perfect metaphor for the Decadents, who find their value in the material and art for simply art’s sake. Those who become useless to them, losing their artistry, get tossed into the garbage. Dorian, who is the unknowing worshiper of the decadent, destroys Sybil once she loses her artistic value. Although Dorian is lauded as this perfect epitome of beauty and youth, we are beginning to see how the outward vanity tarnishes the inward beauty. Like with the rose, it is dangerous to get too enraptured with the outward beauty because you will fall prey to the dangers below the surface. Duality plays a large role within this comparison with the allure of the facade to shield from the shallow ideals below.
While the other men in the story are not directly compared to flowers, there is imagery throughout the novel that I think connects back to these characters. When Lord Henry and Dorian converse in the garden, Dorian is playing with a spray of lilac, but once he hears Lord Henry’s ode to the importance of youth, the spray falls from his hand. Lilac itself is a symbol of purity, innocence and first love. At this point, we see Dorian being lured away by the pleasure Lord Henry preaches. Basil is left behind to his world of morals and passion, whereas Dorian is entering the world of pleasure. The spray that falls from his hand signifies his descent from purity on the inside, and in the social sphere. Basil clings to the idea of the pure hearted Dorian, but that man is no more. His first love, his fiery passion, his muse is fading away being corrupted by material pleasures.
Lord Henry, the manipulator, talks about his previous obsession with violets when Dorian speaks of cultivating poppies in his garden in remembrance of Sybil Vane. Violets symbolize truth, loyalty, and humility. A sense of irony forms when you think about Lord Henry being obsessed with these flowers for a time. We know that he is obviously not a humble person, nor does he have any care for the truth. He leads his life in pursuit of life’s pleasures and once they pleasure him no more they are useless, which seems to run in opposition to truth and humility. But if we look at this through the lens of Wilde, wouldn’t the truth be ever changing and contradictory? In that respect, these flowers perfectly signify Lord Henry’s vision of himself in the world. He does not have the answers, but he speaks out to the world as if he knows all. In his world, he is the truth, and he will impart his “truth” onto his new creation: Dorian. Lord Henry is quite loyal to his new creation because he was a blank slate to be written on.
Each of the principal men in the novel are complex characters which cannot be embodied by a singular representation, but these comparisons to flowers enhance the reading of this story, opening different avenues of analysis and the overall message Wilde is trying to impart on his readers. Beautiful imagery enhances a story of the dangers of beauty and pleasure. Everything is connected in one way or another, and these connections make life complex and messy leading us down dangerous paths of sin.
The Issue of Autobiographical Elements in Dorian Gray
One of the most interesting aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray is the artistic perspective of Basil Hallward. The painter states that an “artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them” (25). This passage reminds me of the decadent movement’s belief in the creation of art for art sake (in other words: for the sake of beauty), which also connects to the idea about the importance of art’s impression on the viewer. This impressionistic mindset purports that the artist should not try to infuse his or her work with meaning because all meaning is created from each individual’s unique reaction to art. In this instance, treating art “as a form of autobiography” would conflict with this decadent ideal by making art less about the viewer and more about the artist (25). This sentiment is echoed in the Preface as Wilde writes, “To reveal art and conceal is the artist is art’s aim” (17). This mantra is interesting in connection to Wilde’s own life because many of Wilde’s autobiographical details (i.e., interest in Catholicism, sexuality) would have been controversial in traditional British society and might have caused problems for him if more traditional readers were to find these themes in his work. However, despite this negative view of autobiographical influences on art, The Picture of Dorian Gray also seems to advocate for this practice. Basil seems to contradict his aforementioned views as he explains that “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist” (21). As the word “feeling” connotes passion and extreme effort (qualities that are essential for masterful art), Basil may be implying that all truly great paintings reveal something about their creator. This phenomenon is also reflected in the Preface as Wilde also writes, “The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography” (17). Since Wilde has previously described criticism as an art itself, this mantra may reveal how the “highest art” skillfully is skillfully injected with autobiographical details while the “lowest” art may rely too heavily on this practice. With the context of the negative contradictory view of autobiographical influences in mind, great art might also have to try to conceal its details about its creator in order to ensure that the reader is not overly distracted away from appreciating the formal impressionistic beauty of the work.