{"id":769,"date":"2018-10-29T13:31:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T17:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=769"},"modified":"2018-10-29T14:49:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T18:49:54","slug":"dorians-decadence-and-desire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2018\/10\/29\/dorians-decadence-and-desire\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorian’s Decadence and Desire"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Dorian Gray rejects and verbally abuses Sybil Vane after her one (and only, may I add) horrendous performance, he declares that she has killed his love: \u201cI loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadow of art\u2026.You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name\u201d (85). In short, Sybil\u2019s bad acting in the role of Juliet ripped the rose colored glasses off of Dorian Gray\u2019s vision of her. Without her artistry, and her decadence, she is nothing to him. He really drives his cruelty home with the repeated use of \u201cnever,\u201d which is really just very dramatic for the moment\u2014afterwards, he still thinks of her and even contemplates returning, but it is these words that deliver Sybil to death\u2019s door. <\/span><\/p>\n

Much like Dorian is objectified by Basil and Lord Henry, the objectification of Sybil Vane is even more severe. For Dorian, she was just an object of artistry and desire. For Basil and Lord Henry, when they see her, she is only a pretty thing, and she is not even described as human to them: \u201cthe curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory\u201d (81). This objectification of the woman places further emphasis on the idea of materiality and decadence in the Victorian era, as Sybil here is placed among the men\u2019s collection of exotic objects\u2014alongside the Japanese tea table and Georgian urn, as well as Dorian himself (unbeknownst to him). With the decline of Queen Victoria\u2019s reign, the people of England developed all consuming anxiety about the state of their affairs, looking to the accumulation of wealth and beautiful things to drown their feelings. Now lacking intellect and genius, Sybil no longer upholds Dorian Gray\u2019s upper class standards of decadence, despite her remaining beauty. Theater itself is a decadent industry, and Dorian even expressed his desire to exploit Sybil\u2019s image as an actress with his own fancier, more refined theater production geared towards a higher class audience. Without theater, Sybil lacks any valid substance for Dorian, who loves to collect pretty, decadent things.<\/span><\/p>\n

This scene of The Picture of Dorian Gray <\/i>relates to Lionel Johnson\u2019s poem \u201cA Decadent\u2019s Lyric\u201d in the subject matter and form. Decadence is demonstrated in the poem through alliteration and rhyme, as well as the repetition of \u201cshe and I.\u201d Dorian\u2019s dismissal of Sybil is decadent in its word choice, repeating \u201cnever\u201d and using words with grander meanings such as \u201cmarvellous,\u201d \u201cgenius,\u201d and \u201cintellect.\u201d The same can be said for Johnson\u2019s poem with the alliterations of \u201cardour and agony\u201d and \u201cdesire, delirium, delight,\u201d all of which are strong words on their own. <\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cshe\u201d of the poem is attributed to a sense of performance, just as Sybil is an actress: \u201cHer body music is: and ah, \/ The accords of lute and viola!\u201d Like Sybil, without the artistry and musicality that this woman exudes, there is no performance, and there is no sex. It bolsters the act with the idea of romance. Johnson\u2019s poem begins with the idea of the \u201cvery joy of shame,\u201d as sexual acts were often seen as immoral at the time, but goes on to justify such thinking in the idea of decadence\u2014if something is beautiful, it\u2019s okay to indulge. Selfishness is justified as it demonstrates one\u2019s appreciation for art, which is a major aspect of The Picture of Dorian Gray <\/i>overall. Dorian is really quite selfish in his disposal of Sybil Vane, as he does so without any sympathy for her feelings and merely scowls at her. His foul treatment of Sybil is validated by both Dorian and Lord Henry, who claims that such behavior, which resulted in her suicide, returned her to her art form by aligning her own life with a melodrama to mirror that of Shakespeare’s Juliet.<\/span><\/p>\n

In both Johnson’s poem and Wilde’s character of Dorian Gray, decadence is used as a form of legitimization for one’s shameful actions.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Dorian Gray rejects and verbally abuses Sybil Vane after her one (and only, may I add) horrendous performance, he declares that she has killed his love: \u201cI loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadow … Continue reading Dorian’s Decadence and Desire<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3882,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3882"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}