THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ANDTHE SEDUCTION OF THE READER

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely

fatal.1

Rezumat.

I intend to deal with what the critics consider the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde literary achievements, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is the masterpiece of a mature author, a fully grown-up aesthete philosopher. In the beginning I intend to reveal the ambiguity of The Picture of Dorian Gray and its author were accused of by some contemporary critics, by studying its reception.

An infinitely grater success and storm of indignation at the same time was to break over Oscar Wilde’s head along with the publication in the “Lippicott’s Magazine” of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The magazine had offered Wilde £200 for the serial rights and the money was more than welcome as indications can be found that his financial situation was precarious. To the burden of supporting his family and the house in Chelsea, was added that of his mother Speranza, whose legacy inherited from Sir William Wilde was running dangerously low.

However, The Picture of Dorian Gray was not written for money. The idea of a major novel had long appealed to Wilde, whose published works up to this time had been more than a little ephemeral. As early as 1884, he had taken to visit the studio of a painter friend named Basil Ward, and one day the sitter there was a young man of a great beauty who naturally, greatly impressed Wilde. “What a pity”, he said to Ward afterwards, “that such a glorious creature should ever grow old!” Ward agreed, adding fancifully that it would be wonderful if the boy could always remain young and the portrait aged in his place, and from those slight beginnings, as recounted by almost all Wilde’s subsequent biographers, was born the outline for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde called his artist Basil Hallward as a way of repaying the debt to Ward, and Wilde’s own philosophy falling from the lips of another character in the book, the exquisite Lord Henry Wotton:

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it; resists it and your soul becomes sick with longing for the things that it has forbidden to itself, with the desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful… Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing… Live the wonderful life that it is in you… Conscience and cowardice are really the same things – conscience is the trade name of the firm that’s all.2

1 Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, (introduced by Vyvyan and Merlin Holland), Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Glasgow, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994. p.9342 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. USA, Barnes and Noble, 1995. p. 45

As if these were not already enough to raise the hackles of Victorian middle-class morality, Wilde added to the hardback version of Dorian Gray, a preface, the famous preface, consisting of twenty-four epigrams ranging from the obvious “the artist is the creator of beautiful things” to the fatuous, one may say, “thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art”, also including the one which, more than anything else Wilde ever said or wrote, and which was to be held against him I the years ahead: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That’s all.”3

As expected, Dorian Gray provoked a gratifying storm of indignation. “Praise makes me humble” retorted Wilde, “but when I am abused I know I have touched the stars.”4

He even had some useful allies. William B. Yeats found it with all its faults a wonderful book and a number of other critics discovered strict underlying morality in the story’s end. After years of sinister and voluptuous living, Dorian is after all left on the ground, dead, a figure of senile decay, while the portrait reverts to its original beauty.But the attacks continued, and Wilde eagerly answered each and every one of them. “It was after all good for the sales, and the controversy had raised him overnight from the level of a journalist and a fairy-tale composer to that of a vilified author.”5 After all it was Wilde who once wrote “the good fortune of the author is to be misunderstood.” In a response he wrote to the editor of “Saint James’s Gazette” on 25 June 1890, to the criticism this magazine had published on Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde artfully managed to defend him and his work:

I have read your criticism of my story The Picture of Dorian Gray and I need hardly say that I do not propose to discuss its merits or demerits, its personalities or its lack of personality… Besides, I must admit that, either from temperament or from taste, or from both, I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.6

Victorian reviewers could not “stomach” Wilde for two deadly sins: his plagiarism ( The Picture of Dorian Gray holds certain similarities with Lord Byron’s works, as it will be shown later on in this work) they’ve said and his insincerity. They particularly attacked his witty epigrams which seemed to be written merely for artistic effect or for the sake of cleverness. As a result, critics accused him of sacrificing the sincerity of his art for cheap rhetorical effects. These accusations can mainly be explained by the dominant theory of literature at the time, which was the self-sufficiency promoted by the Victorian writers.

In the 1890s, conventional literary criticism generally believed that fiction should hold a mirror up to nature and, thus, exposes the shortcomings of life (moralistic and didactic purpose). This metaphor went back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when Hamlet instructs the players:

3 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. USA, Barnes and Noble, 1995. p. 454 Peter Raby, The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 1815 Idem, p. 1766 Sheridan Morley, Oscar Wilde, Pavilion Books Limited GB 1997, p. 72

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.7

Like William Shakespeare in Hamlet (as it appears from the above quoted passage), the average Victorian critic expected a literary work to reflect reality in an authentic way, with the author attaching a moral message to this imitation of reality. In order to represent the world authentically, authors were only allowed to express their own experiences and personal observations of life. In this type of literary criticism, the sincerity of the author determined the value of the literary work, whereas the artistic form was considered to be a means and not the end. Not surprisingly, Wilde’s aestheticism clashed with this mimetic and moralistic view of literature. In his poetics, aesthetics dominated realism and morals. The artist is the creator of beautiful things without any concern for morals or an accurate representation of reality. Art is independent and not mimetic. In The Decay of Lying, Wilde declared that art should express nothing but its own beauty. He also believed that, if art does not reflect its creator or reality, it mirrors its spectator. Since the reader determines the moral content of a literary work, art could not have a moralising function. Indeed, virtue and vice are only used by the artist as raw material in his or her art.

About the above quoted passage in Hamlet, Wilde punned in The Decay of Lying:

They [realist writers i.e.] will call upon Shakespeare - they always do - and will quote that hackneyed passage forgetting that this unfortunate aphorism about Art holding the mirror up to Nature is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art-matters.8

Instead of “Hamlet’s mirror”, Wilde introduced the paradox of the sincere mask as the key concept for describing the role of the artist. If one looks in Hamlet’s mirror, one does not find a trustworthy reproduction of reality and the artist’s real experiences, but a “truthful lie” and the mask of the artist. This mask allows the artist to explore new modes of expression, thinking and morals in a sincere and detached way. As Wilde reversed the ideal of authorial sincerity in one of his epigrams: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”9

Consequently, critics often accused Wilde of insincerity and posing. For example in the following excerpt:

7William Shakespeare (edited by G.R. Gibbard), Hamlet, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 248, Act III, scene 2, lines 15 - 23 8 Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Glasgow, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994. p. 1082.9 Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1987, p. 273

His gaze was constantly fixed on himself; yet not on himself, but on his reflection in the looking glass. There is a vast difference between honest introspection, in which a man turns his eyes inward to search for what is there that he may develop to improve it, and the actor’s pose before his mirror to see that his make-up, his disguise, his semblance, is becoming and effective. ... Never being forced to search in himself for himself and develop what he found there into the firm basis of his life’s work, he continued to pose, to imitate, to build on sand. How long will it be before the sand covers all his building?10

Unlike Wilde, Victorian critics asserted that only sincere introspection and not the aesthetic form could give birth to enduring literary works. To exemplify this obsession with sincerity in Victorian reviews I quote this less known critic who praises the authenticity of The Ballad of Reading Gaol without knowing the author:

The document is authentic: hence its worth. The poem is not great, is not entirely trustworthy; but in so far as it is the faithful record of experiences through which the writer -C.3.3. [Wilde indicative number in prison] - has passed, it is good literature. According to its sincerity it is valuable: where the author goes afield and becomes philosophic and self-conscious and inventive he forfeits our interests; but so long as he honestly reproduces emotion he holds it. To feel and chronicle sensations is his peculiar gift: in the present work, at any rate, he is not a thinker.11

This critic plainly values the poem in so far as it reflects real experiences, while he excludes the aesthetic form from his evaluation. Hence, De Profundis was later praised to be Wilde’s first authentic and most sincere work, since he wrote it out of his own experiences in prison.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the discussion of whether art is sterile or “infectious” continues. Dorian Gray blames Lord Henry of having poisoned him with a book:

Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm.

Yet, Lord Henry stresses the sterility of art and replies:

As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act.

10 Karl Beckson (ed.), Oscar Wilde. The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970, p. 303. 11 Idem, p.211

It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.”12

To reconcile these opposite attitudes to art, the critic Richard Ellmann proposes the following union between the sterility of art and its influence on life:

Wilde never formulated their union [sterility and influence of art on life], but he implied something like this: by its creation of beauty art reproaches the world, calling attention to the world’s faults by disregarding them, so the sterility of art is an affront or a parable. Art may also outrage the world by flouting its laws or by indulgently positing their violation. Or art may seduce the world by making it follow an example which seems bad but is really sanctuary. In this way the artist moves the world towards self-recognition, with at least a tinge of self-redemption, as he compels himself to the same end.13

I agree with Richard Ellmann that Wilde thought that his art moves its audience to self-recognition, but this does not mean that his art urges its public to reproach and to reform the world. On the contrary, the insight which is gained by the contemplation of art is completely sterile as Lord Henry argued about this in his discussion with Dorian Gray.

Dorian Gray, for example, discovers his beauty through Basil Hallward’s portrait, but the knowledge of his beauty awakens his vanity. This does not mean that the painting makes him vain as Dorian Gray thinks would presume, but that the painting confronts him with his beauty and his reaction reveals his innate narcissism. If Dorian Gray had not been vain from the outset, he would have reacted to the discovery of his beauty in a more sound way. As one of the maxims in the Preface states: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde exposes the demonic side of art as he shows that its moral effects depend on the moral standards of its spectator. “Art may refine someone but also further corrupt weak people like Dorian Gray”.14 Because Wilde viewed art as potentially moral and immoral in its effects, it is hard to maintain that he believed in reforming his audience through his art. In Dorian Gray, Wilde’s aestheticism best exemplifies the decadent aspects. It is true that Wilde urges his readers to live up to the beauty of art, but he, at the same time, acknowledges that every form of beauty (in life and in art) is founded on evil and suffering. When Lord Henry has heard about Dorian Gray's unhappy childhood, he, for instance, concludes:

The mother snatched away by death, the boy left in solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. ... It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail that the meanest flower might blow.15

12 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, USA, Barnes and Noble, 1995 chapter 19, p. 15613 Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde…,p. 31114 Idem, p.33915 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, USA, Barnes and Noble, 1995, chapter 3, p. 39.

Moreover, the self-recognition which Wilde’s decadent writings (like Salomé and The Picture of Dorian Gray) impose on the reader or the spectator is that human nature is essentially demonic. Like a good Epicurean, Wilde urges his readers to recognise that both evil and good belong to human nature and that both are necessary to enjoy life.

The Picture of Dorian Gray warns against the narrowing interpretation of this ambivalence by the decadent. Dorian Gray cannot resist the temptation to explore his evil side, once “the musical voice” of Lord Henry has made him realise that his nature is both evil and good. Whereas the decadent like Dorian Gray decides to yield totally to his evil impulse and tries to find pleasure and beauty in evil and corruption, Wilde insists that one should keep one’s good and bad side in balance. “Like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart.”16 I would like to discuss now about some aspects regarding the reception The Picture of Dorian Gray had in the epoch.About the hostile reactions to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Vyvyan Holland, Wilde’s son, wrote:

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 in the world, kept priding themselves, sanctimoniously, upon their virtue.17

Vyvyan Holland assumed that the press attacked The Picture of Dorian Gray so severely because it exposed all the social vices that the establishment desperately tried to cover up. However, it seems to me that the critics were not so much annoyed by the novel’s exposure of the Victorian hypocrisy, as by the lack of moralising comment on this hypocrisy. Wilde’s “frivolous” aestheticism was responsible for the absence of moralising in The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was this moral ambiguity that most Victorian reviewers could not accept as it endangered the authority of all Victorian values.

This critic does not so much take offence at the criticism of society, but at Wilde’s airy levity and fluent impudence in his dealing with moral matters. In a playful way, Wilde analyses all sorts of conventions like marriage, duty, sincerity, etc. but without reaching any moral conclusions. This moral ambiguity of The Picture of Dorian Gray can be ascribed to Wilde’s aestheticism which affects the narrative devices like the narrator’s point of view, the subject matter and the message of the novel.Wilde, the aesthete, refused as a narrator to moralise. In his works, vice and virtue were just raw materials for the creation of beauty.

Moreover, the possible confusion between the views of the narrator and Lord Henry intensifies the moral ambiguity of the novel. In many ways, the narrator’s moral detachment resembles that of Lord Henry Wotton who states in chapter six:

16 Idem (Hamlet quoted by Dorian Gray), chapter 19, p. 153.17 Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde and his World, Thetford, Thames and Hudson, 1977, p. 72.

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.18

Like Lord Henry, the narrator refuses to air his moral prejudices in his story, but he is not afraid of “airing” his cutting epigrams. When the narrator, for instance, describes the feelings of James Vane for his mother, he cannot resist writing the following epigram: “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”,19 which Lord Henry could have invented, but is unfamiliar to the mind of a melodramatic character like James Vane. One could say that while classical writers wished to link up a moralising content with a delightful form, Lord Henry preaches everything that is demoralising, provided that it is delightful.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a third person narrative with neutral or godlike omniscience. For example, in the first chapter, when the narrator presents the characters to the reader, Wilde already predicts the disappearance of Basil Hallward in order to create suspense: “... Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.”20

In spite of this, Wilde, sometimes, restricts his godlike omniscience and invites the reader to interpret the blanks. This strategy is used especially when he could otherwise be accused of recommending homosexuality or other vices. Basil Hallward’s “curious idolatry” of Dorian Gray, which the reader now acknowledges as a homosexual affection, is vaguely described as “curious”, “wonderful” and “very strange”. The secret, with which Dorian Gray blackmails Alan Campbell, is only suggested by Campbell’s fear to be disgraced:

A groan broke from Campbell’s lips, and he shivered all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already come upon him.21

Except for the rejection of Sibyl Vane, the murder of Basil Hallward and a visit to an opium den, Dorian Gray’s vices and sins are never specified, but only exhibited by the deformity of his portrait and hinted at by vague rumours that he ruined the reputations of many women and corrupted various young noblemen. These various interpretations indicate that The Picture of Dorian Gray tries to reflect the different ideological views of the readers instead of proposing a new system of norms.

18 Oscar Wilde, The Picture…, pp. 63 - 6419 Idem, chapter 5, p. 5920 Idem, chapter 1, p. 1821 Idem, chapter 14, p. 125.

Like Wilde, I do not wish to exclude any interpretation. About the atmosphere of corruption surrounding Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote in a letter in reaction to the above quoted review:

To keep this atmosphere vague and indeterminate and wonderful was the aim of the artist who wrote the story. I claim, sir that he has succeeded. Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray’s sins are no one knows. He who finds them has brought them.22

Dorian Gray’s portrait aestheticises his moral conscience. Morality becomes a matter of aesthetics. Dorian Gray is only concerned with his sins insofar as they ruin the beauty of his portrait. Lord Henry is fascinated by Dorian's artistic immorality. When Dorian Gray cries:

I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.Lord Henry replies:A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you on it!23

To the accusation that Wilde desperately tried to profane morality in his novel, he said mockingly that he regretted that The Picture of Dorian Gray had such a plain moral and generously admitted that this was the only error in his novel:

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 those, whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book. […] That I want to say is that, so far from wishing to emphasise any moral in my story, the real trouble I experienced in writing the story was that of keeping the extremely obvious moral subordinate to the artistic and dramatic effect.24

The obvious moral for Wilde was that all excess, as well as renunciation, brings its own punishment. To escape the pride of excess, one must accept the duality of life in all matters. Good and evil, life and art, youth and old age, innocence and experience, beauty and decay, etc. are no absolute opposites which mutually exclude each other, but they need each other to be meaningful. Each term is defined by its opposite. There would be no understanding of good without the complementary term evil. Instead of preferring good to evil or life to art, Wilde’s paradoxes often reverse the order of terms to demonstrate their relativity.

It is precisely this fundamental duality in life and in art that Dorian Gray fails to understand. He cannot accept that youth and beauty depend on their frustrations, namely old age and decay. His attempt to escape the suffering of life is doomed to fail. Signs are only meaningful through their differences with other signs. The word black has no meaning without its opposite white. If the differences between the signs are decreased, the language system will break down in meaninglessness. Similarly, to enjoy the

22 Rupert Hart-Davis (ed.), The Letters of Oscar Wilde, London, Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd, 1962, p. 266.23 Oscar Wilde, The Picture.., chapter 8, p. 7824 Hart-Davis, Letter..s, p. 259

pleasures of life, one has to be prepared to accept the suffering and sorrows which are attached to these pleasures. Without its opposite pain, pleasure would be meaningless and degrading.

Oscar Wilde goes further by presenting evil as attractive, beautiful and essentially human. For example, Dorian Gray, the prototype of the decadent aesthete, endeavours to look for beauty in sin and the corruption of his soul. The Epicurean moral of The Picture of Dorian Gray refuses to prefer good to evil as Robert Stevenson (Wilde’s contemporary Scottish writer) still did, urging us to balance the good and evil side of human nature so that one would be able to enjoy life as fully as possible.

In his review of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which he published in the Bookman of November 1891, Walter Pater made this remark concerning the Epicurean message of Wilde's novel:

Clever always, this book, however, seems to set forth anything but a homely philosophy of life for the middle class - a kind of dainty Epicurean theory rather - yet fails, to some degree, in this; and one can see why. A true Epicureanism aims at a complete though harmonious development of man's entire organism. To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance, the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr. Wilde’s heroes are bent on doing so speedily, as completely as they can, is to lose, or lower organisation, to become less complex, to pass from a higher to a lower degree of development.25

Since Wilde’s Epicureanism and his aestheticism refuse to place good above evil in life as well as in art, the novel leaves unclear whether its author prefers wickedness to moral behaviour. This produces the novel’s ambivalence in its morals; a manner that Victorian reviewers could not accept.

The philosophy of hedonist Epicureanism and decadent aestheticism crashed with the Victorian mimetic and moralistic view of literature. Most Victorian reviewers disapproved of The Picture of Dorian Gray for its immorality and condemned it as “the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart.” Eloquent for this is the following annoyed reviewer’s opinion in the magazine “Theatre of June the First”, 1891:

Looking at it from the point of dramatic possibilities, we are bound to recognise in great attractions, saving, alone, in its almost utter lack of humanity. As a book, it is from cover to finish, an elaborate work of art, extremely clever, wonderfully ingenious, and even fascinating; but not convincing, from the same absence of human interest.26

As this critic admitted no matter what, The Picture of Dorian Gray, finally, became itself the ultimate evidence that beauty and good art does not necessarily reflect the moral conventions of its time. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim,” writes Oscar Wilde in the famous Preface of his classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. One might find it a bit ironic 25 Karl Beckson, The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970.26 Idem, p. 84.

the fact that posterity always has looked upon this book as being more or less an autobiography.

Wilde was surrounded by scandals until his death, stirring the strict, Victorian society he lived in with his libertine views on life. The Picture of Dorian Gray was therefore also regarded by many people as “highly immoral” and has probably earned the title “classic” years after the author’s death.With rarely less than two cogent aphorisms per page, it is hard not to find myriads of subtle meanings in the text, that why I am only focusing on the main themes I found interesting.The obsession of aestheticism and beauty runs all through the story in a kind of contradictory way. Oscar Wilde states in the Preface:

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.27

With this he means that one should not, for example, judge a piece of art on a moral base; the art is only there for being aesthetically admired and one should only be enchanted with its beauty, not let oneself be misled by a deeper idea behind it. At the same time, he lets his protagonist Dorian Gray suffer the penalty for his narcissistic behaviour by killing him at the end of the book, giving the reader the opposite message - that beauty after all is nothing to strive for. Also, Wilde lets the painting of Dorian become a symbol of the young man’s degeneration, showing very well the immorality of his life through a work of art. It is like Wilde means to tell us that art indeed has its important place among people, and beauty is seducing to the viewer. However it is temporary, dangerous, and powerful enough to spoil the life of a man. One must know how to look upon beauty to be able to love it without succumbing to it. As Oscar Wilde was a confirmed aesthete himself, this conclusion may appear paradoxical, but it should be mentioned as not many in this book are.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely,” asserts Wilde, and this turns on to another apparent theme in the book, being the main characters’ idea of living for pleasure. “I have never searched for happiness,” says Lord Henry Wotton. “Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.28

It is Lord Henry who best impersonates this pursuit for indulgence, leading a true upper-class dandy life where every act is superfluous and beauty is exalted for being the most important matter in life. One may be inefficient, idle, unwise, sinful or just indifferent to the important issues of life, as long as one fully enjoys it - this both being a fresh idea of individuality given to the stiff society of Wilde’s time, and the advice triggering Dorian Gray’s personal decline. Since Henry believes that the only aim in life is self-development and that satisfaction of all desires is the only thing that counts, he draws the conclusion that conscience and morality are the two main obstacles that keep people away from achieving these goals. That man’s vices could be justified in such a 27 Oscar Wilde, The Picture…, Preface, p. 3.28 Idem, chapter 1, p. 7

shallow way was one of the main reasons the book was considered immoral by the author’s contemporaries. But Lord Henry’s always very sharp observations must also be seen as greatly invigorating and perhaps Wilde's attempt to stress on individuality and complexity.In the beginning of the novel, when Lord Henry first meets Dorian, he states:

...to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.29

This is an interesting assertion, because later on Lord Henry himself turns into the “bad influence”, pulling the boy’s strings. The more time the two spend together, the more Dorian is affected by Henry’s striking statements and is gradually transformed until barely anything remains of his own personality. Henry’s vices become Dorian’s and as a reader, one starts to wonder which words or thoughts are really Dorian’s and not just something Henry has put into his head. This all shows the feebleness of the mind; how easy it is to unconsciously be controlled by others, mixing other people’s impressions and thoughts with one's own, never being able to tell the difference.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, reality sometimes appears strangely unreal. There seems to be an invisible surrealistic filter attached to each and every page, as if Dorian’s opium fumes also intoxicate the reader from time to time. It is indeed a fairy tale, although it may take a while before one notices that. It does not contain princes (well, Prince Charming, that would be...) or frogs, but it has enough mysticism and symbolism in it to obtain a saga-like atmosphere. It also includes the moral of a fairy tale, however it is far more complex than in a children’s story and one might have to look carefully to pick the right one; there seems to be several.

Besides the book’s message that I, going against Oscar Wilde’s advice, have tried to take out by looking for symbols beneath the surface, one cannot escape the fact that The Picture of Dorian Gray is also a very entertaining novel. It is usually the dialogues, often between Lord Henry and Dorian, which carry the story forward. Every word coming out of the indifferent but witty Henry is wicked and hilarious, it is also from him most of the paradoxes that so significantly colour the text in the first place. I could give an endless list of examples. The Picture of Dorian Gray is to be considered as nothing but a masterpiece and not many books have impressed and puzzled me as this one. I would have been interesting for one to read it when it was first published in 1891, to understand it with the “social eye” of the time and see what all the protest was about.

The good books that I have read are commonly divided into two groups: badly written ones with a fantastic message or literary pleasures with a total lack of meaning. The Picture of Dorian Gray belongs to none of these. It is amazing how much Oscar Wilde has to say and how well he does it.

All in all, all biases aside, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an ardent novel, filled with love, death, sin and dark human psychology. Nonetheless, it is very elegant and it

29 Idem, chapter 15, p. 118

does not “jump” onto you in any way, rather you are absorbed into it through seducing wordings.

For a better understanding of all mentioned above one should take a closer look into the novel itself, to get familiar with Oscar Wilde techniques and try to participate in the actual plot developing and writing process as a good critic would assume the role of the writer adding new meanings that perhaps not even the author has thought of. The plot develops gradually. As Basil Hallward artfully put the finishing touches on his full-length portrait of an extraordinarily beautiful young man, Lord Henry Wotton paid him a visit. Lord Henry much admired the painting and desired to meet the subject. The artist objected, knowing the poisonous influence of which Lord Henry was capable; young Dorian Gray was his ideal of purity and had inspired Basil to the most expressive artwork of his life.

Just then, in walked Dorian Gray. Against Hallward’s wishes, the two met, and Dorian was immediately taken by Lord Henry's fascinating words, presence and wittiness. Henry flattered Dorian with his comments on the virtues of beauty, the charms of youth, and expressed his sadness at the thought that such youth should fade into the ugliness of age. This caused Dorian to plummet into melancholy.

Seeing his portrait for the first time, Dorian gasped at his own beauty. He lamented that the picture would mock him his entire life; age would indeed steal his colour and grace: “I know, now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything ... Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”30 Then he wished instead that the picture might grow old while he remained forever young: “I would give everything. I would give my soul for that!”31 Alarmed by these passions in the young man, Hallward attempted to destroy the painting, but Dorian stopped him and he had taken it home that very evening. After that first meeting, Dorian and Lord Henry became fast best friends and frequent partners at local theatres. Henry presented Dorian with a gift - a book about a young man’s passions, sins and vileness. Dorian became captivated by its plot. For years he leafed through its pages - and the book became an unshakable, tragic guide in the life of Dorian Gray. Dorian met and fell madly in love with Sibyl Vane, a beautiful and talented actress who was portraying Juliet in a cheap theatrical troupe. But the night Dorian invited Lord Henry and Basil Hallward to meet his new love, her performance was rather lifeless. She was hissed and booed by even the uneducated audience. Afterward, she joyfully explained to the disappointed Dorian that her love for her “Prince Charming,” - as she knew him - had transformed her from a mere actress into a real woman. Dorian coldly shunned her, admitting that his love for her had been killed, and vowed that he would see her no more.

On returning home, he was surprised to notice that the face in his painting had changed. A touch of cruelty now lined the mouth. His wish, that the painting might be seared with suffering and guilt while his own face was left untarnished, had been granted! But now he pitied the portrait and resolved to live a pure life. He would return to Sibyl and marry her. He would see no more of the selfish Lord Henry. Dorian wrote Sibyl a

30 Idem, chapter 10, p. 88.31 Idem, chapter 1, p. 8

passionate letter and fell asleep, confident that he would make amends to Sybil the following day.

However, that next morning Lord Henry brought bad news: in grief, Sibyl had killed herself during the night. Lord Henry charmed the devastated youth, urging him to imagine the tragedy as a drama, with Juliet or Ophelia the victims, not the flesh-and-blood Sibyl. No, she will never come to life. In fact she was never alive. She has only played her part, this time the last part... To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare’s plays ... But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are.

Now Dorian forgot his good resolutions. If fate would deal unjustly with him, he, in turn, determined to give himself up to a life of pleasure and let the portrait bear the burden of his corrupting soul. Eternal youth, wild joys, infinite passion would be his. Horrified at Dorian’s lack of remorse and feeling, Basil Hallward tried to reason with him. But Dorian was unmoved. He continued to guard the secret of the portrait from Basil, first covering it a with a sheet, and later moving it to an upstairs room, unopened since his grandfather had died mere five years earlier. Separated by this chasm of secrecy and scorn that Dorian had created, the two could no longer be friends. For years Dorian lived in cruel joy; yet he kept the look of one unspotted by the world. He derived pleasure from comparing his own virtuous face with the gruesome one appearing on the canvas. Dorian consorted both with the town’s thieves and its social elite. He collected jewels, fine clothing and art. And when he would appear on the street, “men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were determined to discover his secret.”32

At age thirty-eight Dorian was again visited by his old friend Basil Hallward. It was on the eve of Hallward’s departure for an extended stay in Paris. He came in hopes of persuading Dorian to finally change his ways, hardly believing the rumours concerning the young man’s evil deeds. By this time, Dorian had become totally corrupt, as vile and morally ugly as the figure in the portrait was actually. Through some strange quickening of inner life, the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.

One day, Dorian invited the elderly Hallward up to the room to see his filthy soul, face-to-face. As he drew back the curtain from the portrait, Hallward stood shocked at the hideous figure on the canvas; yes, there was his own signature that one time stood out beneath the portrait of a handsome young lad. Basil immediately begged Dorian to pray and repent. Instead, Dorian seized a knife and plunged it again and again into the painter’s neck and back. Then, relocking the door, he left the slumping figure in the room, feeling sure that Basil would not be missed for months. After all, no one knew he had come to the house, and he was expected to be in Paris from that night forward. A few days later, Dorian coerced a former acquaintance, a chemist, Alan Campbell, to destroy Basil’s body using chemicals and fire. He threatened to expose a past crime Campbell had committed if he refused. That night red blood stained the hands of the loathsome image on the portrait. Late one evening, as Dorian was leaving an opium den, a drunken woman called him “Prince Charming.” A sailor standing nearby turned out to be Sibyl Vane’s brother,

32 Idem, chapter 1, p. 9

James. Overhearing this familiar nickname, James seized Dorian with the intent to kill him and avenge his sister’s death. But Dorian’s youthful appearance and smooth tongue saved him; when the crime had occurred Dorian could have been no more than a mere infant. When James returned to the den however, the woman swore before God that Dorian was indeed the ruinous Prince Charming. After destroying her life too, he had once boasted that he had sold his soul to the Devil years earlier in exchange for a beautiful face; and he had not changed in appearance since then. For months Dorian imagined himself being hunted - tracked down by a vengeful sailor. His mask of youth had saved his life, but not his conscience. Then, during a hunt at Dorian’s country home, an unknown man in sailor’s garb was accidentally killed. Dorian rushed to where the body was taken and there discovered James Vane, dead. At last, they were all dead: Sibyl; Alan Campbell - a mysterious suicide victim; and Basil Hallward, though, lately, people were inquiring about his strange disappearance. Only Dorian knew the truth. But now he would welcome death for himself; his only terror lay ill the waiting. In his final, poignant visit with Lord Henry, Dorian admitted that, despite his unchanged features, he no longer thought himself handsome - his zest for life was shattered. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul?”(the famous bible verse, taken from Ecclesiast, employed here with great deftness by Wilde) Lord Henry righteously quoted. Dorian begged Henry never to be the “devil’s advocate” again, never again to poison another soul with his book or his evil thoughts.

Disheartened, alone, and longing to be at peace with himself, Dorian contemplated his situation. Should he confess and atone for his evils? No, the only evidence against him was that horrid, hidden pictorial record of his debauchery. “A new life! That is what he wanted.”33

Resolving to kill that “monstrous soul-life” in the portrait, Dorian hurried upstairs, seized the same knife he had used on poor Basil, and stabbed the picture. A horrible cry brought the house servants creeping up to the barred room. Finally gaining entrance, they found upon tile wall the splendid portrait of their master, as fresh and beautiful as the day it was painted. On the floor was a dead man, “a withered, wrinkled, and loathsome man,”34 with a knife in his heart. Only the rings on his fingers revealed his identify. It was Dorian Gray, who, in a miscarried struggle to kill his conscience, had killed himself.

Following Wilde’s advice to participate in the act of creation one might add that the beauty of Dorian Gray lies within his youth, but ugly of sin. It is said that something is beautiful than it’s not confined to realm of morality and immorality. Beautiful people can as easily be immoral. So he rewards his curiosity of pleasure by using his body. As a temple of beauty his body it used for exotic pleasure for his perverted mind. Also he tried to evade other moral laws to the purse of pleasure.

His soul is unclean of sin and ugliness of a pleasure life. Dorian Gray’s innocence of youthful mind is destroyed. Yet ideal influence of passion counterbalanced him. There is a contrast in that of age and youth to good vs. evil. The author himself represents a theme of corruption. Dorian Gray’s life goes back and forth of moral and immoral perspectives. Dorian Gray’s life style and mind is corrupted as a result of a sinful life. The Picture of Dorian Gray presents the relationship between beauty and morality, between life and art. Dorian Gray is beautiful but immoral, young but wicked 33 Idem, chapter 13, p. 9334 Idem, chapter 13, p.98

and corrupt. The immoral body of Dorian Gray is beauty. For example, he is immorally beautiful, and the portrait morally ugly. This dual nature as I mentioned before is to be felt all over the novel. His physical body though extremely beautiful is the highest form of immorality whiles his soul, mirrored in his portrait, exceedingly ugly but of an exquisite moral beauty.

Dorian Gray is a complete aesthete, living his life in search of beauty and pleasure to the exclusion of all moral responsibility. He places no limits on the kinds of pleasures he allows himself. Every act he made was craven and selfish acts. These searches ensure his beauty. He is very aware that youth and beauty is all he is and has therefore he lives. There is a moral conflict between good and evil which results in innocence temptation. The portrait is his conscience in art so it’s the moral life of Dorian Gray. Basically it holds the guiltiness of his mind in the form of a painting. The portrait imitates the life of Dorian Gray by a distorted face express symbol. The value of the portrait lays in everyone’s right to have a moral consciousness and not in its usefulness. It’s aimed as a mirror image of his sins and like any other mirror it does not clean you. It merely shows you the naked truth. It is up to you to do or not something about it. Dorian Gray tries to run from this ugliness of age and sin throughout the novel, but resulted in the death of him.

Epicurus, the famous Greek philosopher, active during the Hellenistic period, and who had a defining influence on all who considered themselves decadents and aesthetes, found pleasure to be highest good and although he rejected pain as an evil, he knew that some pain was necessary as means to achieving pleasure. He taught that just as someone does not unconditionally choose the largest amount of food but the most pleasant food, in the same he was genuinely convinced that those who least need extravagance, enjoy it the most. Hence, Dorian Gray’s greatest sin is not surrounding himself with beautiful things - on the contrary, these objects encourage pleasure, the supreme good - but depending upon those objects to retain interest in life. In other words this would mean that not the fact that he was obsessed with beauty was wrong, but his total lack of morality. However, those who least need beauty will enjoy it most, and those who least need morality with obey it most. This statement has become by now a well known truism when speaking about Oscar Wilde.

The Aesthetes follow Epicurus not only abstractly in the subject matter, but literally in the master-disciple relationship that Wilde uses to enlighten their fictional students. Epicurus himself established a school of philosophy in a beautiful garden in which older men taught younger men and this format also clearly takes shape in Wilde’s idealized Oxford, in Hallward’s garden, in which for the first time the master personalized here by Lord Henry Wotton and the future disciple young Dorian Gray.

If it was to epitomize all the main recurrent ideas presented in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian using only two of his epigrams, published in the Preface, I think these would be:

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.35

35 Idem, Preface, p. 3