The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Sinful Consequence of Eternal Youth and Beauty - Essay Example

Your Teacher's Your 19 May 18, 2006 The Sinful Consequence of Eternal Youth and Beauty In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde presents the story of a young man who learns that beauty and youth are the highest ideals to which he can aspire. The respected men of his society, including artists and nobility, admire him solely for his good looks, and under the influence of their regard and morality, he makes a strange wish: he wishes that he should remain forever young and beautiful, while an exquisite portrait of himself painted by a master should instead grow old and ugly in his place. However, this novel proves that external appearances do not reflect what's inside a man. While Dorian himself appears to all as ageless and gorgeous, his actions are horrifying and scandalous. With every bad choice, his soul becomes more and more twisted, and the painting, hidden away in his attic under a tapestry, grows uglier and more demented. For Dorian, the appearance of beauty is all that matters, and many characters in the novel judge him solely on his looks, rather than his actions. It is the worship of youth and beauty for beauty's sake that leads to Dorian down the path of hedonism and from there to the embrace of sin. Early in the novel, Dorian is a somewhat innocent character, and the artist, Basil Hallward, feels protective toward the young man, and does not want others to intrude on their friendship, especially the cynical Lord Henry. The boy has had such a profound effect on Hallward's soul that it has influenced all his work, and he tells Lord Henry, "He is all my art to me now" (Wilde 11). To Hallward, Dorian's looks do reflect something beyond youth and beauty, an admirable personality. But once Dorian begins to associate with Lord Henry Wottan, he learns a new way of expressing himself. Lord Henry likes to play with the idea of morality, teaching Dorian that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it" (Wilde 21). In this, he is beginning to lead Dorian down a path of selfish immorality, one where he may do whatever he likes without consequence. He explains the route of hedonism, beginning by convincing Dorian that "youth is the one thing worth having" (Wilde 24), that beauty is more important than thought (Wilde 25), and that his life will be completely worthless without these two qualities. He also explains, "Nothing can sure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul" (Wilde 23), and Dorian, unfortunately, takes to heart only the first part of this maxim. Where Lord Henry's philosophy allows the beautiful young man to become a hedonist, it does acknowledge the importance of the soul, but Dorian doesn't understand this. As Martin Fido succinctly puts it, "Dorian's delight in his own beauty and youthleads him to place the stimulation of the senses through exotic beauty above every other value. This leads to his appalling corruptions" (Fido 85). Oscar Wilde was familiar with the aesthetics of both Hallward and Henry. As an artist, he was familiar with the ideal of beauty for beauty's sake, and he discusses this in his preface, where he explains the role of the artist as "the creator of beautiful things" (xxiii) and also that seeing beauty in beautiful things is the only way to be cultivated. However, we also see Henry's amorality in this preface, when Wilde dismisses the idea of morality or immorality in art (Wilde xxiii). Wilde must have examined this idea from many angles, due to the world he lived in. As he was writing The Picture of Dorian Gray, the culture he lived in was busy condemning his own behavior as immoral. Since he believed "his literary and social standing would protect him" (Nunokawa 12) from persecution, he became less discreet about his relationships with other men even as the English parliament was passing laws again homosexuality, and eventually he was convicted of being gay, and sentenced to two years of hard labor for this crime (Nunokawa 12). If Wilde had instead remained secretive about his actions, he would not have been publicly punished, but the attitude of this novel suggests that Wilde believed it was the secrecy surrounding his actions that truly corrupted his soul. Richard Ellman says, "Wilde put into the book a negative version of what he had been brooding about for fourteen years and, under a veil, what he had been doing sexually for four" (Ellman 315). His life as a homosexual in the hypocritical Victorian world greatly influenced the shape of the story. He can be seen as "a subversive or even a revolutionist" (Wheatcroft 130), but, like Dorian, Wilde was a man trying to live according to what felt right, in a world that often told him his natural inclinations were wrong and should be hidden away. These attitudes were very much at the fore of Wilde's mind as he wrote his novel. Writers such as Peter Raby acknowledge the apparent connection between Wilde's closeted activities and Dorian's transformation, saying, "there has been an understandable tendency to claim that the gothic transmogrifications of the picture that aims to preserve the protagonist's youthful beauty occurs because he cannot express his true desires in public" (Raby 210). In the novel, most of Dorian's sins, the ones that cause certain men to pointedly leave the room when he enters, are not mentioned by name, but only referred to as "strange rumors about his more of life" (Wilde 144). Since his involvement in the deaths of Sibyl Vane, her brother, and Basil Hallward is not known, we must assume that it is these unmentioned acts that cause the day-to-day degradation of his portrait. It is the secret expression of his hedonism that corrupts his soul, but it is still the tendency of his friends to worship his youth and beauty that allows him to continue along his path. This is further evidence that his culture's worship of beauty leads to sin, because even those who have heard these stories "could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. He has always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world" (Wilde 144). His appearance has more value for them than his actions. Even at the novel's end, when Dorian's soul is as perverted as it ever is, Lord Henry continues to believe that Dorian can do no wrong, simply because he still looks young and beautiful. He says, "You're quite perfect. Pray, don't change" (Wilde 238). Richard Ellman shows that this attitude must lead to sin because, "The life of mere sensation is uncovered as anarchic and self-destructive. Life cannot be lived on such termsdrift beautifully on the surface and you will die unbeautifully in the depths" (Ellman 315). Here again is the warning that the worship of beauty and youth and the embrace of pure hedonism based on this love, can only lead to sin. The novel's origins, recounted in many sources, relate Wilde's own love of beauty, and of male beauty in particular. In the novel, it is Dorian who, upon glimpsing his own exquisite portrait, exclaims, "If it were I who was to be always young, and the portrait that was to grow old!" (Wilde 29) and would relinquish his soul for the privilege. In reality, Wilde himself first made such a comment some time before the idea for the novel came to him. Here we see the central conflict of the novel. Lord Henry has told Dorian that youth and beauty are the only things worth having. Dorian follows his example, first adoring Sibyl Vane for her beauty, and then detesting her when he can no longer believe her beauty as special as his own. From there, his learned love of beauty leads to his love of hedonism, following Henry's assertion that there is no cure for the soul but the senses, and his introduction to the unnamed yellow book. The yellow book, which some critics identify as a French book called A Rebours becomes accessible to those who believe that beauty is the only thing worth having. The original book, "translated variously as In Revolt orAgainst Nature, tells the story of Duc John des Esseintes who, bored and disgusted by his fellow creatures, retreats from society; it anatomizes his search through ever more obscure paths for ever more refined and exquisite pleasures" (Calloway and Colvin 48). The love of pure beauty leads to the love of pure sensation, and causes Dorian to shed a little more of his humanity. As he believes that there is nothing but beauty, he leaves all morality behind him. This is the turning point of the novel. Prior to his discovery of the yellow book, Dorian's course is not completely set. He does not have an understanding of where his path might take him. But when he reads the book "Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed" (Wilde 141). With his new understanding, he can leave behind the idea of what is commonly seen as good and decent, and embark on a sinful path. After these revelations, Wilde skips ahead in time, allowing his character to mire himself in the excesses of his hedonism. He writes, "For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it" (Wilde 143). In other words, having embraced the idea that beauty and youth are everything, Dorian is content to follow this line of reasoning, even when the book itself suggests the sinful consequences of its proposed method. The character in the book undergoes the same transformation as Dorian's soul and portrait. He learns a "grotesque dread of mirrorsoccasioned by the sudden decay of beauty that had once, apparently, been so remarkable" (Wilde 143). But Dorian does not evidence these consequences; only his portrait does, and Dorian is so used to worshipping his own beauty that he too thinks himself perfect because he does not change. He thinks himself better than the portrait and "The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamored of his own beauty" (Wilde 144). While Dorian's culture certainly creates the atmosphere that allows him to develop these attitudes, it is Dorian himself who chooses to embrace them, and makes himself into the monster that he is. Donald Eriksen writes "The readeris usually puzzled if not repelled by the tenets of the New Hedonism espoused by Wilde's characters" (Eriksen 96) because Dorian's actions are more often than not, completely selfish. This is one interpretation of the "New Hedonism" but Wilde's intention is to show that, although Victorian England influences the direction of Dorian's corruption, Dorian is still completely responsible for his own degradation, because he worships his own beauty more than anyone else. Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, and all of society that admire his good looks certainly teach him that his beauty is worthy of admiration, but he is the one who takes these attitudes to their conclusion, equating the love of beauty with "the worship of the senses" (Wilde 146), seeking "some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses it highest realization" (Wilde 146). This is the decision of one who takes himself a little too seriously. Eriksen goes on to explain Dorian's own culpability, saying "It is Dorian himself who gradually paints the loathsome portrait. It might be further pointed out that although Lord Henry offers Dorian the dangerous knowledge of the New Hedonism, it is Dorian who fails to employ this knowledge properly and becomes corrupt. The issue of free will is important here" (Eriksen 101-2). Some critics dissent. Deborah McCollister, for instance, sees in the novel's language an allusion to the Victorian fascination for hypnotism. She studies that use of the word "charm" thought the novel and concludes that "most of the characters possess at lease some power to charm, as well as some vulnerability to mesmeric spells" (McCollister 21) Using Wilde's own words, she seeks to show that Lord Henry compels Dorian in some ways. She absolves Dorian of some responsibility even as she makes him answer for his sins, saying "Ultimately, however, no one has complete control; all humans are subject to even higher powers than their own" (McCollister 21) and we see that Dorian will be judged. Christopher Nasaar also points to Dorian's own guilt in choosing his path. He gives Dorian credit for trying, briefly, to stay on the moral path, but explains, "Dorian's determination not to sin is short-lived. He soons learns of Sibyl's suicide and changes course radically, becoming a disciple of Lord Henry Wotton. But the portrait, which he identifies as his conscience, continues to function as such" (Nasaar 217). So we see that Dorian himself has picked the direction of his life by choosing the worship of youth and beauty, even as his portrait shows him the sinfulness of his ways. As Wilde writes, "There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful" (165). His love of beauty and sensation causes him to believe that what he looks like on the outside is more important than the state of his soul, which is very ugly. Wilde himself bears this attitude out in the end. Dorian judges himself in the novel's last pages. He has worshipped youth and beauty. This has led to his embrace of an amoral hedonism that ultimately corrupts him and makes him into the most sinful creature. When he comes face to face with the truth of his spiritual ugliness and "the curved wrinkle of his hypocrisy" (Wilde 252) he thinks he can destroy the evidence of his crimes, but when he takes up Hallward's knife, he is really executing justice against himself. He wants to "kill this monstrous soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace" (Wilde 253), but he has so embraced the ideal of his own beauty that he no longer accepts the portrait as a part of himself. When he tries to destroy the evidence of his sins, he is really destroying his own wicked soul. The innocent portrait then retains its beauty, and Dorian's body reflects the true ugliness of his life. Many sources quote Oscar Wilde on his perception of the characters in the book. He said, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am, Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me; Dorian is what I would like to be." This means that in his own mind, Wilde was simply an artist, a man who worshipped what was beautiful without allowing himself to be corrupted by it. He believed that society saw him as a libertine, like Lord Henry, who was completely corrupted by his love of beauty, which led to his embrace of hedonism and a life of apparent sin. But Wilde wished most of all to be like Dorian, a man who could live his life under the influence of things deemed ugly and wicked by society, but still maintain the outward appearance of youth and beauty. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a complex novel, but throughout, it shows Wilde's perception that those who took the worship of youth and beauty too far might be led astray from the moral path. Dorian's belief in the supremacy of his own external appearance allows him to disregard what it good and become what is sinful. Bibliography and Works Cited Belford, Barbara. Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius. New York: Random House. 2000. Calloway, Stephen and David Colvin. Oscar Wilde: An Exquisite Life. London: Orion Media. 1997. Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf. 1988. Ericksen, Donald H. Oscar Wilde. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1977. Fido, Martin. Oscar Wilde. New York: Viking. 1973. Holland, Vyvyan. Oscar Wilde. New York: Thames and Hudson. 1988. Lawler, Donald. An Inquiry into Oscar Wilde's Revisions of The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Garland Publishing. 1988. McCollister, Deborah. "Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" Explicator 54.1 (1995): 17-21. McCormack, Jerusha Hull. The Man Who Was Dorian Gray. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Nasaar, Christopher, S. "Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" Explicator 57.4 (1999): 216-7. Nunokawa, Jeff. Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians: Oscar Wilde. New York: Chelsea House. 1994. Raby, Peter. The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Stokes, John. Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, and Imitations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. "Not Green, Not Red, Not Pink" Atlantic Monthly 291.4 (2003) 125-132. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Modern Library. 2004. Source cards A Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Modern Library. 2004. Fiction WILDE B Calloway, Stephen and David Colvin. Oscar Wilde: An Exquisite Life. London: Orion Media. 1997. 92 W644c 1997 C Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf. 1988. 92 W644E D Ericksen, Donald H. Oscar Wilde. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1977. 828.8 W64 CE E Fido, Martin. Oscar Wilde. New York: Viking. 1973. 828.8 W64f F Holland, Vyvyan. Oscar Wilde. New York: Thames and Hudson. 1988. 92 W644H G Nunokawa, Jeff. Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians: Oscar Wilde. New York: Chelsea House. 1994. 92 W644n 1995 H Raby, Peter. The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997. 828.809 W644r I Lawler, Donald. An inquiry into Oscar Wilde's revisions of The picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Garland Publishing. 1988. PR5819 .L38 1988 J Stokes, John. Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, and Imitations. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996. PR5823 .S68 1996 K McCormack, Jerusha Hull. The Man Who Was Dorian Gray. New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000. PR6013.R367 Z74 2000 L McCollister, Deborah. "Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" Explicator 54.1 (1995): 17-21. Ebsco M Nasaar, Christopher, S. "Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" Explicator 57.4 (1999): 216-7. Ebsco N Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. "Not Green, Not Red, Not Pink" Atlantic Monthly 291.4 (2003) 125-132. Ebsco O Belford, Barbara. Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius. New York: Random House. 2000. 92 W644b 2000 art/ beauty A "The artist is the creator of beautiful things" "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim" p. xxiii Beauty A "Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. TThose who find beautiful meaning in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope." p. xxiii beauty A "this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose leaves" p. 3 Art A "He is all my art to me now" p. 11 hedonism A "I believe that is one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream-I believe that the world would fain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal. p. 20 temptation A "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful" p. 21 hedonism A "Nothing can sure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul" p. 23 youth A "youth is the one thing worth having" p. 24 youth/beauty A "Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is onlyl shallow people who do not judge by appearance.You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When you youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you. p. 25 youth/beauty A "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be onlder than this particular day of June. If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the portrait that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that" 29 beauty/morality A "She is better than good-she is beautiful" p. 83 art/corruption A "Teach me to forget what has happened, of to see it from the proper artistic point of view" p. 124 morality/the yellow book A "Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed" p. 141 portrait as soul A "His own soul was looking out at him from the portrait and calling him to judgment!" p. 135 soul/remorse A "he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare." P 145. morality/yellow book A "For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it" p. 143 beauty/corruption A For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others beside him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard the most evil things against him, and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life crept though London and became the chatter of the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. He has always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room. There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain or an age that was at once sordid and sensual. 144 senses A "He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses it highest realization" 146 hedonism A a new hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. p. 147 evil A "there were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful" 165 society/corruption A "England is bad enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, goodness, or purity. You have filled them with madness for pleasure" p. 171 evil A "You have gone from corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime." p. 194-5 worship youth/beauty A "You're quite perfect. Pray, don't change" p. 238 hedonism/evil A "His soul, certainly, was sick, to death. Was it true that the senses could cure it Innocent blood had been spilt. What could atone for that Ah! For there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still" p. 210 corruption of the soul A "As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work and all that that meant. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. p. 253 Wilde on the characters (many sources) "Basil Hallward is what I think I am, Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me; Dorian is what I would like to be" persecution homosexuality G "entertained attractive young men ever more lavishly-and openly. Apparently Wilde thought his literary and social standing would protect him. And perhaps they would have, had he not dangerously overstepped p. 12 persecution homosexuality G "Wilde was then himself made to stand trial and was convicted and sentenced to two years at hard labor. After his release, he lives only three more years, deserted by family and friends, broken in body and spirit." p. 12 homosexuality/hypocrisy G "Dorian Gray's portrait allows the original to lead a double life, such as the one that Wilde and his friends know. Dorian Gray bears on his face none of the tell-tale signs of debauchery; the painting bears them for him, thus enabling him to appear as the walking picture of innocence among respectable people. p. 72 persecution G "Wilde's novel seemed to near real life that in the eyes of many, the exemption from censorship accorded a work of art did not seem to apply." P 75 morality D "The readeris usually puzzled if not repelled by the tenets of the New Hedonism espoused by Wilde's characters. The critic, on the other hand, has tended to see a contradictions between the artistic credo presented in the Preface and the body of the novel and the moral significance of the evens of the narrative. p. 96 morality D Wilde (quoted in source) "And the moral it this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment. The painter, Basil Hallward, worshipping physical beauty far too much, as most painters do, dies by the hand of one in whose soul he has created a monstrous and absurd vanity. Dorian Gray, having led a life of mere sensation and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at that moment kills himself. Lord Henry Wotton seeks to be merely the spectator of life. He finds that those who reject the battle are more ddeply wounded than those who take part in it. Yes; there is a terrible moral in Dorian Gray-a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but which will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy." P. 99 Evil D "At its simplest, the struction of the picture of Dorian Gray may be described as a variation of the Faust story, in which the main character sells his soul to the devil or evil" 100 Myth/religion D "The Garden of Eden myth with its temptation, fall, and redemption is strongly suggested" p. 100 Responsibility D "It is Dorian himself who gradually paints the loathsome portrait. It might be further pointed out that although Lord Henry offers Dorian the dangerous knowledge of the New Hedonism, it is Dorian who fails to employ this knowledge properly and becomes corrupt. The issue of free will is important here." pp. 101-2 beauty/corruption D "Dorian makes the same error his mother made: attempting to find beauty in one who is corrupted by reality" (on loving Sibyl Vane) p. 102 sin D "Basilspeaks to Dorian of the widespread rumour of his crimes. He speaks of the effects of immorality upon society and the doer. p. 105 beauty D Wilde's purpose in using such restricted settings is to convey a sense of limitation, stasis, and conscious form in order to realize one of the dominant motifs in the novel: that through art the welter and flux of life experience is given form and beauty. p. 110 morality/Victorian England F "The English Press was almost unanimous in its condemnation of the book. The ostensible objection was that it was prurient, immoral, vicious, coarse, and crude. But the real reason for the attack was that it did so much to expose the hypocrisy of Victorian Englishmen who, living in one of the most vicious cities of the world, kept priding themselves, sanctimoniously, upon their virtue." p. 70 sinful consequences H "The consequence of Dorian's insatiability, escalation of wants and formal equivalencing of all desires is, of course, his portrait, where the shame of his consumption is permanently, absolutely, recorded. At this price, he is given a beauty without limit, the scarcest commodity in a mortal world, that is his sole source of value to others, who commodify and consume him in turn." p. 23 the picture H "the portrait haunts because it contains all that is written: the portrait of the first chapter is the portrait of the last. But, between these two effigies, lies the history of Dorian Gray, composing, or rather decomposing, the portrait during its course." the soul H "The Asiatic style by which Dorian is described is that of the Soul detached from the Fisherman, the South without humanity or heart." p. 112 beauty/corruption H "From the moment he speaks his desire, Dorian himself becomes an artefact, neither alive nor dead; one of the fabulous undead, such as Dracula, who must draw life from others." 113 beauty/women H "This effusion of Dorian Gray places emphasis on the 'glamour' and 'mystery' of an actress, her ability to transport an audience out of its own place and time. What the actress can do for the male spectator-the qualities which make her 'the one thing worth loving' are for Dorian Gray the distinguishing and indeed the only worthwhile features of the performing woman" p. 185 homosexuality H "there has been an understandable tendency to claim that the gothic transmogrifications of the picture that aims to preserve the protagonists youthful beauty occurs because he cannot express his true desires in public." p. 210 youth/beauty H "analyzing his own proclivities with a rare precision: he recognizes the lure, the dangerous fetishising, the cruel use of the young, and shapes his fable to encompass that complex psychological and moral insight" p. 243 aesthetics C "For Wilde, aestheticism was not a creed but a problem. Exploring its ramifications provided him with his subject, and he responded to it with a mixture of serious espousal and mockery" 310 homosexuality/morality C "Now that he was firmly homosexual, he wondered if he had always been so. Dorian moves from innocence to guilt. Wilde did not feel particularly guilty, but he could wonder if he had ever been innocent. Had his youthful love life been only pretense" 312 homosexuality/morality C "Wilde put into the book a negative version of what he had been brooding about for fourteen years and, under a veil, what he had been doing sexually for four." 315 asthetics C "The life of mere sensation is uncovered as anarchic and self-destructive. Dorian Gray is a test case. He fails. Life cannot be lived on such terms. Self-indulgence leads him to vandalize his own portrait, but this act is a reversal of what he intense and he discloses his better self, though only in death. Wilde's hero has pushed through to the point where extremes meet. By unintentional suicide, Dorian has become aestheticism's first martyr. The text: drift beautifully on the surface and you will die unbeautifully in the depths. p. 315 the yellow book/morality B "A Rebours, translated variously as In Revolt or, mor to the point, Against Nature, tells the story of Duc John des Esseintes who, bored and disgusted by his fellow creatures, retreats from society; it anatomizes his search through ever more obscure paths for ever more refined and exquisite pleasures" 48 preface/censorship B "Wilde made sure of it continued notoriety by adding a preface of flippant maxims on art. Greeted by another chorus of outraged publicity, when WH Smith and Sons refused to stock the volume on the grounds of its questionable morality, the first edition was guaranteed to sell out" 60 Victorian hypocrisy B But Dorian Gray mortally shocked the reading public, and where once its author had been laughed at by the respectable, he now met more open enmity; he was blackballed from a West End club, and, as he had described the treatment meted out to Dorian, in an example of life imitating fiction, men would pointedly leave the room when he entered. 61 control L "Wilde strongly suggests that most of the characters possess at lease some power to charm, as well as some vulnerability to mesmeric spells. Ultimately, however, no one has complete control; all humans are subject to even higher powers than their own." Morality M "Dorian's determination not to sin is short-lived. He soons learns of Sibyl's suicide and changes course radically, becoming a disciple of Lord Henry Wotton. But the portrait, which he identifies as his conscience, continues to function as such." Morality M "The growing heaviness of the portrait is stressed in the episode when Dorian asks the frame maker to move the picture to the attic "The scene dramatizes the heavy weight of guilt that now burdens Dorian. It is crucial to notice, moreover, that the portrait is not hung in the attic, it is simply laid against the wall. Morality M "It is logical to argue that the crash was not only the fall of dorian's body but also the transference of all his sins onto him from the portrait. These come crashing down, destroying him in an instant, while the weight of the supernatural portrait is lightened dramatically, enabling it at last to rise up and hang itself on the wall in an assertion of its renewed innocence. Morality N In 1801 he published his ownly novel and the mood changed. "I think it will make a sensation," he predicted of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he wasn't wrong. He despaired of "the possibility of any general culture in England" when books were judged morally, but maybe he would have been better off if The Picture of Dorian Gray were judged on moral rather than literary grounds. Wilde N "Other admirers claim Wilde as a subversive or even a revolutionist. Wilde E "Wilde really liked other people, and valued their esteem and goodwill, so that whatever he might say about the artist owing no duty to the public, in practice he never made the mistake of imagining that artistic creations offered in the open market existed independently of any audience" p. 48 morality E "Wilde was beset by philistines, proclaiming he had written an immoral book" 84 worship youth/beauty E "Dorian's delight in his own beauty and youth (symbolically shown to be transient through the portrait which ages while he remains untouched by time) leads him to place the stimulation of the senses through exotic beauty above every other value. This leads to his appalling corruptions" 85 Read More