By Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) A Study Guide | ||
. Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings...© 2005 Revised in 2010.© .
Gothic Elements .......Although the work is not a true Gothic novel in the manner of the books of Horace Walpole and the Brontë sisters, it does contain characteristics of many Gothic novels, such as the suggestion of a supernatural presence, darkness and rain, murder and suicide, characters with mysterious pasts, and a secret room (the “old schoolroom"). The Gothic atmosphere of the novel even manifests itself in the brightness of a cheerful day, as the following passage in Chapter 14—describing events on the morning after Dorian's murder of Basil Hallward—demonstrates:
.......He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a morning in May. .......Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. .......The novel satirizes Victorian aristocrats. First, it ridicules them for having little more to do than gossip, attend parties, and dabble in the arts. They live on inherited wealth and/or on enterprises sustained by the underclass. Lord Fermor, for one, derives income from his Midlands collieries (coal-mining operations). He regards this “taint of industry" as excusable because it provides money for him to burn wood in his fireplace. Second, the novel ridicules these same aristocrats for prizing appearances over substance. They assay a person’s worth on his looks, his money, his social status. For example, Lord Kelso disdains his daughter’s husband because he is a lowly subaltern in the military. On the other hand, Wotton and Hallward extol Dorian Gray primarily for his physical qualities. Late in the novel, after Dorian descends into depravity and tongues wag against him, he continues to move in the highest social circles because of his money and unchanged looks. Tragedy .......The novel can be regarded as a tragedy in that the protagonist, Dorian Gray, suffers a downfall and dies because of a flaw in his character—inordinate pride, or hubris—about his physical appearance. Publication
Dates
Setting
Characters
.......Wilde tells the story in omniscient third-person point of view, enabling him to reveal the thoughts of his characters, as in the following Chapter 2 passage centering on Lord Henry Wotton: With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him [Dorian Gray]. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!Plot Summary By Michael J. Cummings...© 2005 . .......In his London studio on a pleasant summer day, artist Basil Hallward assesses a painting on an easel in the middle of the room. It is his life-sized portrait of an extraordinarily handsome young man named Dorian Gray. With Hallward is Lord Henry Wotton, a witty and cynical friend. Wafting in from the garden through an open door is the scent of flowers to compete with the smoke from Wotton’s cigarette, which is tainted with opium. .......Wotton declares that the portrait is the best painting Hallward has ever done and suggests that he submit it for display at the Grosvenor. But Hallward says he has put so much of himself into the painting that he plans to keep it. .......“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter," Hallward explains. “The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul." .......Hallward had met Gray at the home of society hostess Lady Brandon. There, while dowagers, academicians and other lofty personages stood around conversing, Hallward’s gaze met Gray’s, and the experience had an unsettling effect on the painter. .......“I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself," Hallward tells Wotton. .......Lady Brandon introduced Gray to Hallward, and the two men immediately became good friends. .......Wotton is eager to meet Gray. While he and Hallward are in the garden discussing him, Gray enters the studio and sits down at a piano, leafing through the sheet music of a Schumann piece. When Hallward and Wotton come in, Hallward introduces Wotton as an old friend from Oxford University, warning that Wotton is a bad influence. Wotton thinks the youth is "certainly wonderfully handsome," the narrator tells the reader, "with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity." .......Later, while Hallward continues to daub at the painting, Gray and Wotton talk in the garden. The narrator says Wotton's "romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested [Dorian]. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own." .......Wotton compliments Gray on his looks but then unsettles the young man when he tells him he has only a short time left to enjoy life to its fullest. “When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you. . . . You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly." .......A short time later, Hallward announces that the painting is finished. Wotton congratulates him on the excellence of the portrait. It is clear that Gray has awakened latent talent in Hallward, so good is the painting. But Gray is silent. “Don’t you like it?" Hallward asks. Wotton answers for him, saying that he indeed likes it, and Lord Henry then offers to buy it. Hallward says, however, that he will give it to Dorian.Gray says he is sad that he will grow old while the portrait remains young. If only the reverse were true, he says—if only he would remain young while the portrait grows old. “I would give my soul for that!" Dorian as Faust .......And
so Gray, it appears, becomes a sort of Faust, and that evening he goes
to the opera with his Mephistopheles, Lord Henry. In the following days,
Wotton indeed proves a “bad influence," for Dorian begins following him
in the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of pleasure. They engage in scandalous
activities which erode Dorian’s innocence.
Sybil Kills Herself .......Wotton
stops by to see him on an urgent matter, following up on a letter he had
sent Dorian earlier in the day. Dorian tells Lord Henry of his cruel behavior
toward Sibyl but says he plans to marry her anyway. Wotton realizes Dorian
has not yet read the letter, so he informs him of its message: Sibyl Vane
has been found dead. She had swallowed a concoction laced with prussic
acid. Dorian regrets her death, which he knows he caused, but apparently
only because he thinks Sibyl would have kept him from the dangerous, dissolute
life he has chosen to lead under Wotton’s influence. “She had no right
to kill herself," he says. “It was selfish of her."
Dorian Kills Hallward .......Hallward
concludes that Dorian must be even more evil than the rumors say, and he
urges him to recant his sins. “Pray, Dorian, pray." But by now, the devil
owns Dorian. Suddenly a feeling of deep hatred for Hallward seizes him.
In a rage he takes up a knife he had brought to the room days before to
cut a cord. He plunges it into Hallward again and again. Then he blackmails
an acquaintance, Alan Campbell—a man with a dark secret known to Dorian—to
dissolve Hallward’s corpse with chemicals.
.
Themes . Self-worship leads to self-destruction. Dorian Gray’s excessive love of himself leads to an obsessional desire to preserve the moment—whatever the moral cost—in order to maintain his looks at the peak of their perfection and enjoy all the pleasures that they bring him. Of this obsession, the narrator says in Chapter 11, Sometimes when he was down at his great house in Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not been tampered with and that the picture was still there. What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made him cold with horror. Surely the world would know his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected it.Time will have its way. No man can defeat time; it marches inexorably toward old age and death. Dorian Gray ends up old and ugly and dead, physically and spiritually. Yes, he remained youthful looking for many years, seemingly cheating time. But time, in the form of the portrait, caught up with him and gained its revenge. In some ways, Gray’s attempts to preserve his youth resemble the attempts by modern men and women to forestall aging with lotions, special diets and exercises, cosmetic surgery, and youthful fashions. Beauty is only skin deep. Beneath his veneer of elegant good looks, Dorian Gray is monstrously ugly. As Shakespeare observed in The Merchant of Venice: “A goodly apple rotten at the heart: / O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!" Earthly pleasures can never completely satisfy a human being. Dorian Gray never is really happy because he never realizes that the things of the earth—physical beauty and the pleasures of the flesh—can never satisfy man’s insatiable desire for them. Evil appears in winsome disguises. Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray are both charming, each in his own way. But their outer charms disguise inner evil. An abused child becomes an abusive adult. Dorian Gray’s grandfather, Lord Kelso, reared the orphaned Dorian in a poisonous atmosphere. The old man despised Dorian and even had a special “schoolroom" built for the boy so that he could shut him up in it and not have to endure his presence. When Dorian grows up, he lashes out at Sybil Vane, driving her to suicide; murders Basil Hallward; and blackmails Alan Campbell, who also commits suicide. Ultimately, Dorian turns his wrath against himself. Implied homosexuality. Dorian Gray is admired by other males in the novel for his “beauty"—the word author Oscar Wilde, who was a homosexual himself, uses again and again to describe Dorian and the word these male characters use from time to time in dialogue in their praise of Dorian. Although Wilde never explicitly describes or refers to intimate relations between Dorian and other males, he indicates that Lord Henry Wotton and other characters either desired such relations or participated in them. Homosexuality apparently is one of the sins that corrupt Dorian and possibly other young men in the novel. . .......The climax of a narrative work can be defined as (1) the turning point at which the conflict begins to resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the final and most exciting event in a series of events. According to the first definition, the climax of The Picture of Dorian Gray occurs when Dorian first notices a change in the portrait, after the death of Sybil Vane. At this point, he realizes that he is sinking in a morass of evil. According to the second definition, the climax occurs when Dorian attempts to "kill" the portrait but instead kills himself. .. .......The Picture of Dorian Gray is easy to read and understand, thanks in part to long passage of witty dialogue passages that keep the action moving at a brisk pace—like that of one of Wilde's stage plays. (A notable exception in the use of dialogue is Chapter 11, written entirely in narrative paragraphs.) Here is an excerpt of the dialogue from Chapter 3. "We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really marry this fascinating young person?"Allusions and Other References Allusions or direct references to persons, places, and things from history, myth, and legend play an important role in the novel in that they help to reveal the interests of Dorian Gray and, in some instances, those of Lord Henry and other characters. For example, the following paragraphs tell of one of Gray's interests. .......On
one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume
ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in [an ensemble] covered with
five hundred and sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years, and,
indeed, may be said never to have left him. He would often spend a whole
day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that be had
collected . . . .
Adonis (Chapter 1):
In Greek mythology, an exceptionally handsome young man favored by the
goddess of love, Aphrodite. A wild boar kills him while he is participating
in his favorite sport, hunting. Shakespeare's Venus
and Adonis tells the story.
.......The Picture of Dorian Gray contains many symbols, including the following. Cigarette: Lord Henry's
"opium-tainted cigarette" represents his corrupt lifestyle.
.......Oscar Wilde indulges his witty pen again and again in epigrams loaded with paradox, irony, and antithesis, frequently couched in parallel sentence structure. Most of these witticisms occur in dialogue spoken by Lord Henry. Here are examples:
She is a peacock in everything but beauty. (Chapter 1) Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. (Chapter 2) I don't want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine. (Chapter 3) We have emancipated them [women], but they remain slaves looking for their masters. (Chapter 8) All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. (Chapter 19) Books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. (Chapter 19)
Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing what is improbable.—Dorian Gray. (Chapter 9) A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.—Dorian Gray. (Chapter 9) . .......Dorian Gray acts out the Faust legend, but unlike Faust he does not redeem himself. According to the Faust legend—told in the Faustbuch (1587) and retold in numerous literary works, including Goethe’s Faust in the early 19th Century—Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of pleasure. However, Faust redeems himself through good works and repentance. In the first chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian says, “I would give my soul" in order to remain young. Nearly two decades pass and Dorian does remain young—on the surface. Although he makes half-hearted attempts to reform, he ultimately fails to redeem himself. Novel Foreshadows Wilde's Religious Conversion .......Before he died, Oscar Wilde became a Roman Catholic. In a passage in Chapter 11, describing Dorian Gray's fascination with Roman Catholic ritual, Wilde perhaps is really writing about himself. It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.Wilde's Aesthetic Theory .......In the revised version of the novel, published in 1891, the preface articulated Wilde's "art for art's sake" aesthetic theory. "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book," Wilde wrote. "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." Author
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