Course Blog

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, should Dorian be omitted from the blame for his participation in Sibyl Vane’s suicide? Is he clinically insane? Does he understand the awareness that his actions/thinking are wrong? The narrative this novel seems to hold is that Dorian genuinely believes he is a good person who has done no wrong (up until the point where he kills Basil). Dorian can feel emotions of ecstasy or elation when he is complimented and questions his, “secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own” (Wilde 119). The dreamlike, detailed, and flowery language of this scene almost sets it up to be read as illusory, Dorian’s words can’t be trusted to reflect his honest emotions. Here we can notice a moment of slight remorse and guilt where Dorian acknowledges he is doing a wrong deed by not reflecting/working through his emotions. However, Dorian chooses to bury his emotions in the painting to deal with and rot.  

The death of Sibyl paired with Dorian’s selfish wrongdoings physically alter the painting and marks the beginning of the end for Dorian. Dorian did feel slight remorse for Sibly initially on his own accord before speaking with Lord Henry about his conflicting feelings. Although Lord Henry was not present for Dorian and Sibyl’s last conversation, he sure does have a lot to say when relieving Dorian’s guilty conscience. Lord Henry reasons Sibly, “never really lived, and so she has never really died… don’t waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are” (Wilde 89). ‘They’ meaning all the Shakespearean female lead characters she performed at the theater, such as Juliet, Ophelia, or Cordelia. Not only does Lord Henry dehumanize Sibyl to fictional characters, but he succeeds in relinquishing Dorian of any guilt for his wickedness towards Sibyl. What I really am trying to say here is: do these scenes illuminate a sort of ambivalence in taking a stance on whether Dorian is aware of the calamity of his actions in Sibyl’s death, and should he be absolved from them? The unreliable, hedonistic protagonist (+ antagonist?) demonstrates an ability to question his emotions but makes a conscious choice to bury them deep down. He can, at the very least, begin to understand his implication in Sibyl’s death before his best friend and idol, Lord Henry, guides him otherwise.

My original title was “Art is alive because art reflects life,” but I’ve seemed to go down a rabbit hole and bounce around ideas, so let’s just go with it! 

Casting the fantastical aside, the portrait exhumes Dorian Gray’s evilness and dooms Gray to be beautiful forever. Wilde writes of another piece of art, “who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain.” (128) Gray is describing his art collections, and he names this particular piece “The Bride of Christ,” followed by the previous description that seems to reflect himself. He describes “The Bride of Christ” as a woman who must hide her small, sickly body with beautiful, expensive dress. As mentioned in class, people in the Victorian Era believed that evilness presents physically on the body. Wilde addresses this concept by bringing up the image of “The Bride of Christ,” but ultimately pushes against this ideal through Gray’s beautiful exterior yet immoral, murdering interior. Gray is similar to the woman in that he is hiding something ugly with a beautiful exterior, but unlike the woman he is privileged with natural beauty and does not have to disguise himself in expensive dress, because gray has help from the portrait. The more corrupt and evil Gray becomes, the uglier the painting becomes. 

Gray is not the only person reflected in the painting. The artist himself, Basil, is also reflected in the deteriorating painting, symbolizing both muse and artist’s soul. Unlike Gray, Basil tries to redeem his soul. Although, when he seeks Gray for redemption, he is murdered as a result. Similarly, The Portrait of Dorian Gray is a work of art that ultimately causes his demise and lands him in jail. Gray is inspired by a real person, reflecting Wilde’s personal life as well as his own beauty standards as Gray is especially beautiful. Therefore, Wilde is the artist and, again, Gray is the muse. Gray is a manifestation of Wilde’s art. Through the overly complicated and contradictory The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Wilde asks the reader to consider “What does art contribute to society? Does art reflect life or teach lessons? Can art do both?” Even though Wilde claims “All art is quite useless” in the preface, the rest of the book proves his point wrong through the image of both human and portrait of Gray. Wilde is saying art derives from something; art comes from the soul, therefore art reflects life. 

The conversation in class today made me think about the Victorian celebrity. Someone made a remark about how The Picture of Dorian Gray served as a warning against idolization, because Basil’s worship of Dorian and Dorian’s worship of himself caused Dorian to believe he could get away with anything (and he did get away with quite a lot). In the Longman Anthology of British Literature reading, it talks about how authors during the Victorian era became sort of celebrities. The circulating libraries and three volume novels allowed “…readers who wanted to see more of one character, less of another, or prevent the demise of a third,” to “badger” authors like Dickens, creating a new sort of relationship between author and audience (Longman Anthology 1067). At the end of the Age of Reading section, it is stated that “hero worship was yet another Victorian invention,” and idea which I think can offer some insight on The Picture of Dorian Gray (Longman Anthology 1068). 

Given this practice, I think it’s interesting that the novel focuses on art. Before this new relationship between authors and their audiences, authors (and publishers) had full control over the literary art people consumed, but once the three volume novels became a trend, the audience started to have more of a say over what they read, and the authors lost some of the control they had over their art. I think that kind of mirrors what happens in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Basil creates the portrait of Dorian which he claims to have put too much of himself into, which I think drives home the idea that the the art still belongs to Basil, and he still has control over his own creation, which would reflect the situation of authors before the Victorian era developments (Wilde 8). 

I think, looking at the novel in this lens, Dorian is the art. Even though he was a person before Basil painted his portrait, he was not a very interesting person, and almost immediately after Basil finished the portrait, it comes to reflect Dorian’s soul and Dorian comes to reflect Basil’s art. So in the same vein, I think that Lord Henry can be viewed as the audience or readership. Aside from Dorian, he is the only other person who ever sees the portrait. Like Dickens’ readers, Lord Henry also had a lot of influence over the “art” (ie Dorian) and takes full responsibility for it, thinking “to a large extent the lad was his own creation,” (Wilde 51). 

I also found the parallel between the novel and the idea from the Longman Anthology that “…readers experienced literature as an ongoing part of their lives,” (1067). Still reading Lord Henry as the audience to Basil’s art, this could explain why Lord Henry had a constant relationship with Dorian throughout the book while Basil kind of faded away and only returned to be murdered. Even the way Lord Henry viewed Dorian, as a specimen/psychological study, points to Dorian being less of a human and more of an object/text up for interpretation. 

https://blogs.dickinson.edu/britishlit/files/2023/08/Longman-Anthology-The-Victorian-Age.pdf  

“‘I don’t believe it is my picture.’ ‘Can’t you see your ideal in it?’ said Dorian, bitterly. ‘My ideal, as you call it…’ ‘As you called it.’ ‘There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr.’ ‘It is the face of my soul.’ ‘Christ! What a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil’” (Wilde, 132). 

In his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde paints a portrait of the dangers of idolatry in art and appearance. The above passage is from a conversation between Dorian and Basil in the middle of chapter 13, when Basil sees the portrait of Dorian as it has transformed to reflect his soul. Basil cannot “believe it is [the] picture” he painted of Dorian because it is now so ugly. Dorian asks Basil is he can still see his “ideal” in the portrait, to which Basil replies, “there was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful.” The “it” in the sentence could be Basil referring to the original painting as something that wasn’t “evil” or “shameful” when he first painted it. However, the “it” could also refer to Basil once considering Dorian to be his “ideal.”

Basil seems to be defending his idolization of Dorian when he says, “there was nothing evil in” this idolatry, “nothing shameful.” However, Basil reckons with his idolatry when Dorian confides that the portrait in its current state “is the face of [his] soul.” Basil’s own acknowledgement of having idolized Dorian is most apparent when he exclaims, “Christ! What a thing I must have worshipped!” Basil did not just admire Dorian, nor was he simply obsessed with him – he worshipped Dorian in a god-like way.

The passage seems to be suggesting that idolatry is dangerous because you can never fully know the ins and outs of who or what you are idolizing. Dorian’s appearance is beautiful, but as the portrait reflects, his soul is ugly. What you think could be “Christ!”, as Basil ironically says in his reaction to the portrait being a depiction of Dorian’s soul, could very well be the “devil.” Perhaps, the novel is making a broader statement about religion and art – that to put art in the place of God is a wrongful glorification of beauty and appearance.

“It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble, satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture.” (Wilde 131)
These lines reflect the tenuous ownership between artist and observer of the art itself. Basil sees his art pulled and twisted into a shape that, in his mind, he never gave it, but that it nonetheless grew into. Yet he still has to recognize his own art in the twisted image it’s become–his signature still scrawled in the corner. For Dorian, though, the painting has become a tool and a scapegoat that he can use to present a semblance of respectability to the world and be judged for that, much like many cults, criminals, and monsters in the real world can present their twisted views under the guise of a more beautiful piece of art. Moreover, Basil, the artist, thinks he has a right to his unchanging art being immortalized, while Dorian has, admittedly unintentionally, co-opted the artwork of himself to suit his own needs and desires. (It is literally his portrait after all.) We tend to understand art as being immortalized and timeless, but while the physical object may or may not deteriorate, vastly changing the way we view it (usually only through discolored varnish rather than a supernatural curse), but so does context. A portrait of a known murderer would become despicable to a viewer without supernatural interference.
When a parent “creates” a child, it may be with a design that determines their most indisputable content. But as they grow into individuals, they inevitably develop their own souls, regardless and sometimes in spite of their creators’ intentions. Is art any different? Does it have its own soul? Much like the meeting of Basil’s intent and soul meeting with Dorian’s soul animating the cursed painting, maybe only in the meeting of souls between the creator and the viewer can art be animated. In that case, the only difference between the souls of art and human is that art can grow infinite new souls that live in each person that experiences it. Wilde’s fantasy captures a thought experiment in which this endoparasite, the soul of an artwork, in some way becomes external and causes the host to become dependent on the leech, perhaps more real than himself.
The true irony, of course, is that Wilde’s own words do not belong to himself. The Picture of Dorian Gray will become his downfall when his own words are twisted and presented back to him, forcing him to take ownership of its now-distorted form.

this is soooo us – Dorian

“Romeo and Juliet” by Julius Kronberg (1886)

I think it is safe to say that heterosexual love is the most perennially popular of Western literature topics, for better or worse. Even the Odyssey is framed with a heterosexual marriage. And Taylor Swift has reportedly become a billionaire this week. All this love stuff has to make a mark on the psyche, and it certainly does for our lovebirds Dorian and Sibyl.

Dorian Gray becomes infatuated with Sibyl when he sees her acting in Shakespeare plays. Dorian says, “She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual… I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes to pain. I love her, and I must make her love me,” (Chapter 4). Dorian sees no value in Sibyl Vane herself, only what she can become in his and the world’s imagination. He hopes that when he makes her love him, he will become a part of this long and storied tradition of lovers. He may not be fully immortalized until he is part of a conventional straight narrative and must be the very best of these. There is also a sense of this making him prove his masculinity: to make Romeo jealous is to emasculate him, to cuckold him.

Sibyl also desires to be part of this tradition, but deeper, stronger emotions underly her affection. When thinking about her “Prince Charming,” “A rose shook in [Sibyl’s] blood and shadowed her cheeks,” (Chapter 5). By putting flowers (which have romantic and sexual connotations) in Sibyl’s very blood, Wilde already draws the deeper connection between Sibyl and this fantasy. Sibyl’s love is surely caught up in images, though, as she says she loves him because “he is like what love himself should be,” (Chapter 5). Dorian is an ideal, and being loved by this ideal makes her “feel proud, terribly proud.” Being the object of Prince Charming’s affection feeds her ego, like becoming Prince Charming feeds Dorian’s ego. She also echoes Dorian when she says “to be in love is to surpass one’s self.”

When Sibyl performs poorly, she cites the reason as her really falling in love with Dorian. But for Dorian that isn’t the case. He loses all love for her when she grows “sick of shadows,” (Chapter 7). When Sibyl becomes real, when Galatea comes to life, she disgusts Dorian. Real love, according to Wilde, makes convention feel like a sham, and Dorian is only interested in appearances.

Sibyl before and after Dorian showed his true colors (smh)

The portrait of Dorian Gray, reflecting every year that goes by and every sin committed, could also be interpreted as a reflection of Lord Henry’s corruption of Dorian. Further, Lord Henry is reflected in this portrait, as he is also a physicalization of Dorian’s greed and negativity. After all, he is the one that imparted these views onto Dorian. Additionally, the portrait of Dorian seems to fill Dorian with negative thoughts and feelings in a similar manner to Lord Henry. There is a particular moment, right before Dorian kills Basil in the room where the painting hangs, that “Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas” (151). In this moment, Dorian is being influenced in a manner very similar to how he was influenced by Lord Henry. Additionally, the portrait is only the way it is because of Lord Henry’s influence on Dorian, therefore the emotions and thoughts Dorian derives from being around the painting are still a result of Lord Henry. Therefore, in a roundabout way, Lord Henry had a part in the murder of Basil Hallward, but that is neither here nor there – what is important is that the portrait is as much of a reflection of Lord Henry as it is Dorian, and when the painting is influencing Dorian’s actions and feelings, it is inadvertently Lord Henry influencing Dorian.

Just as the portrait is a physicalization of Dorian’s sins, so is Lord Henry. After all, Lord Henry’s life is what influenced Dorian in the first place to follow the treacherous path that led to the committing of so many sins. Lord Henry is the one constantly whispering in Dorian’s ear, whether literally or metaphorically through that odd French novel, influencing his every move in life. This is eerily similar to the way that is influenced by the painting when he is near it, whether that influence be paranoia, guilt, or murderous intent. Additionally, many if not all of the actions Dorian has taken in life that have led to the painting looking the way it does are actions that have been endorsed, encouraged, or inspired by Lord Henry. In fact, although it is not explicitly said, it can be inferred that many of those horrid actions were committed alongside Lord Henry. Therefore, even though the portrait may be a painting of Dorian, each sin committed that alters the appearance of the painting is a reflection of Lord Henry as well as it is Dorian, with their darkest actions intermingling on the canvas.

 

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray’s attractiveness makes others see him as a good person. This is why he was able to get away with the crimes he committed. During the Victorian era, they believed in a practice called physiognomy which is defined as an analysis of facial features to identify how they impact a person’s character or actions (Lennox). Throughout the novel, some moments indicate that physiognomy is an accepted way to understand people’s identity. Dorian Gray has a sense of pride as he compares his portrait to his actual appearance because he knows that he’s still valued by society. The type of ugliness that is reflected in Dorian’s portrait in comparison to the attractiveness he maintains is reminiscent of how physiognomy affected the period. 

Dorian Gray feels prideful as he witnesses the downfall of his character through his portrait. After Dorian discovers the portrait’s powers he hides it away due to his fear of anyone figuring out his secret (Wilde 104). However, he periodically goes back to the picture to view just how corrupt he has become with pride and dangerous curiosity, “He grew more and more…interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine…with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age” (Wilde 113). In this moment Doiran’s pride is exposed with his interest in viewing the “corruption of his own soul” through the portrait while still being able to remain physically unphased by his sin. The age of his face is depicted with words like “wrinkling”, but there are other harsh sounding words like “searing”, “hideous” and “sensual” that reference how both his soul and his countenance had changed. His “soul” in this case represents the essence of his being or the identity of his character. The descriptions of the picture support the theory of physiognomy as it is implied that along with Dorian’s aging his features also contorted into the evil person he has become. In the last part of the quote Dorian Gray questions what parts of his physiognomy are affected by the sins he has committed and his age. 

Dorian Gray can have pride in his appearance because he remains attractive and is in turn, valued by society. When Basil visits Dorian he confronts him about the rumors he has heard and admits that he doesn’t believe them because “‘Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face’” (Wilde 131). Basil believes that a sinful person will have unattractive features. Since Dorian is still as attractive as when he met him he assumes that he has not done any harm. This exemplifies yet another example of how physiognomy was an accepted way to understand someone’s character. Even though the term physiology is no longer in practice it is still prevalent in today’s society we still view attractive people like Dorain as morally good. This is an unchanging facet of society that is experimented with in The Picture of Dorian Gray in a way that makes it timeless.

Works Cited: 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/663140/summary#:~:text=For%20Victorians%20who%20believed%20in,story%20of%20a%20person’s%20identity. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

At the beginning of Chapter 9, Basil visits Dorian to console him about Sybil and is surprised to find him quite at peace. In his explanation of his quick emotional recovery, Dorian says of Sybil, “She lived her finest tragedy. She was always a heroine. The last night she played – the night you saw her – she acted badly because she had known the reality of love. When she knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might have died. She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her. Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty” (Wilde 93-94). In this passage, Dorian considers Sybil’s death as a final act of theater, which he finds pleasing. He continues to use theater terminology, framing her life as a “tragedy” and declaring that she “was always a heroine.” This is true, at least in Dorian’s mind. To Dorian, Sybil was never more than the characters she played on the stage. He reiterates this by once again comparing her to Juliet, suggesting that her death was merely a completion of her character arc. Looking back, Sybil’s death was certainly foreshadowed as her final performance was as Juliet, a character famously known for dying for love. In Dorian’s eyes, Sybil was inseparable from Juliet or whatever role she was playing; he only ever appreciated her as a piece of art and never saw her as her own individual person. Thus, in her dramatically canonical death, Dorian once again expresses his admiration because she fulfilled the narrative he expected. He also mentions her “wasted beauty,” which for him means not only her physical appearance but also the way in which she expressed beauty through her performance. To Dorian, Sybil simply is art, and he only loves her when she is conforming to that image.

This moment underscores the novel’s broader implications about Aestheticism and Decadence in the fin de siècle. Dorian embodies Aestheticism in his worship of beauty and art, which is channeled through Sybil. When she fails to perform art because of her individual human emotions, Dorian loses all interest. This reveals the dark side of Aestheticism, Decadence, because in reality Sybil is not a piece of art but a real person who dies a real death. Dorian’s moral corruption is exposed by the fact that he expresses no remorse for Sybil and instead is pleased that in her death she returned to art and beauty. Through Dorian’s character, Wilde implies the detrimental effects of an obsession with art. Sybil’s death was Dorian’s first sin, as it is the first flaw to show in the portrait, so it is this all-consuming Aestheticism which incites his own moral degradation, making him an embodiment of Decadence.

Oscar Wilde explores society’s idea that beauty, especially as it is understood though Westernized beauty standards makes someone inherently morally good. In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) the duality of the beautiful Dorian Gray’s life allows him to explore the moral complexities associated with living a double life. Which eventually alters narratives around the fact that beauty is crucial for a sense of morality. Wilde challenges this narrative, because Dorian Gray is able to separate his actions from his appearance through the guise of a haunted portrait, the intrinsic connection between beauty and morality is upheaved. With each evil Dorian commits, he somehow becomes more beautiful and youthful while his portrait, an actualized picture of his soul, becomes increasingly evil and hideous. 

The novel is riddled with metaphors and allusions to the double-nature of decadence, how beauty and consumption eventually leads to sin, and Dorian Gray becomes a sort of embodiment of this conundrum. Instead of his corruption showing on his own face, his portrait “bears the burden that should have been his own” leading to a “fascination of sin” (Wilde 156). The separation between Gray and his portrait allows him to ignore his own immorality as well as fetishize his “secret pleasure”  which idealizes the impacts of his sin on his conscience (Wilde 156).  The portrait becomes a sick fascination for Dorian where the contrast between the “corruption of his soul” and his beauty “quickens his sense of pleasure” making him in turn “ravenous” for further sin and corruption (Wilde 142). Because the portrait acts as a “presentation of the tragedy of his own soul” he is able to completely separate his terrible actions from his consciousness in the name of upholding his youth and beauty (Wilde 150). This acts as a dissection of the relationship between one’s conscience, one’s soul, and one’s appearance. Because Gray continues his corruption, he boosts his reputation and remains unstained by sin. 

Dorian Gray is able to get away with his acts of folly because of his beauty. People are enamored by his looks, and he understands the power he holds over society. Although he understands the portrait as a “hideous corruption of his soul” and views it as inherently sinful and shameful, he does not view those characteristics as becoming unto himself (Wilde 136). The link between the word “hideous” and “sin” appears consistently throughout the book, therefore further aligning the concept of “beauty” with “goodness.” However this narrative is changed when Dorian Gray rashly lets Basil into his sordid secret. Once he shares his soul with another, he is viewed for the first time as ugly and therefore evil in the eyes of another. This leads him to the ultimate act of corruption “the madness of murder” (Wilde 178). Having exposed his soul to another, he transferred his secret out of the private sphere causing him to break and eventually get his actual hands dirty. Because he was viewed by others as ugly and shameful for the first time, he can no longer hide from the truth of his soul and must take accountability for his actions.