"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

This famous story, rated 27th in The Guardian's 100 best novels of all time, is fundamentally a retelling of the story of Faust.

The bargain is made between protagonist Dorian Gray (DG) and the painting, and Lord Henry Wootton (LHW) is the tempter, Mephistopheles to Dorian’s Faust.

LHW is a knowing Mephistopheles. He realises that his influence will be to corrupt Dorian. “All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view. ... Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul.” (Ch 2) But he goes on to encourage Dorian to be tempted: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” (Ch 2) Later, LHW determines to possess DG’s soul: “He would make that wonderful spirit his own.” (Ch 3) Later, DG acknowledges their relationship: “I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.” (Ch 4)

But when DG falls, he falls: “If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture 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!” (Ch 2). This is a very explicit Faustian bargain.

Or is this novel a retelling of the story of Frankenstein?

If LHW is Mephistopheles and Dorian is Faust, what is the role for Basil Hallward, who actually creates the painting? In a sense, as creator, he is God. The story opens in Basil’s studio which is surrounded by a beautiful garden. Is this the garden of Eden? Is the artist in the act of creation a proxy for God? Or is he to be regarded as usurping the powers of God, as Victor Frankenstein did?

Basil is instantly afraid of what he has created. In chapter one, foreshadowing the eventual denouement, he tells LHW “we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.” He goes on to say that he will not exhibit the painting because “I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.” and finally, he warns LHW: “Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad.” Perhaps we can regard Basil as having foreknowledge, another god-like attribute.

Finally, Basil returns to Dorian to warn him about the rumours he has heard. In this sense he acts like Dorian’s conscience (in Freudian terms, the superego) which is another God-like property. Dorian shows Basil the disfigured painting which makes Basil urge Dorian to pray. Instead, Dorian murders Basil. God, as Nietzsche later said, is dead.

Dorian Gray is a paean to the importance of beauty?

There is a fundamental association in this book between beauty and moral goodness. The aesthetic movement in which Oscar Wilde was prominent was obsessed with beauty. In his preface, Wilde says: “The artist is the creator of beautiful things. ... Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. ... Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect.”

The trouble with idolising beauty is that it equates ugliness with badness. This happens repeatedly through the book. For example:

• One woman is described as “a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book” (Ch 3)
• “I can sympathize with everything except suffering,” said Lord Henry ... “It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing.” (Ch 3)
• The lower class characters are inevitably ugly. Sibyl Vane’s mother Is a “faded, tired-looking woman” with “thin, bismuth-whitened hands” (Ch 5). The theatre manager and usurer (inevitably, in those anti-Semitic days, a Jew) is “hideous” with “greasy ringlets”, a “soiled shirt” and “an air of gorgeous servility”. (Ch 4) Harriet’s brother “was thick-set of figure, and his hands and feet were large and somewhat clumsy in movement. He was not so finely bred as his sister.” (Ch 5) The audience in the music hall are described as “common rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures” (Ch 7)
• It’s not just that DG’s portrait grows old. It reflects his soul and here the equivalence of goodness with beauty, of wickedness with ugliness, is made explicit. “What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful.” (Ch 10)
• After rumours begin to circulate that DG is wicked and immoral, they are not believed because DG looks so pretty. “Even those who had heard the most evil things against him—and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs—could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world.” (Ch 11) Basil Hallward has heard the rumours but can’t believe them: “At least, I can’t believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.” (Ch 12)

This equation of prettiness with moral rectitude is hugely simplistic and highly prejudicial. Such shallow thinking undermines any suggestion that Wilde might have had some sort of insight into the nature of life.

Homosexuality

There are hints of homosexuality throughout:

• The reference to the Satyricon, whose narrator and protagonist is gay.
• The hero of the ‘yellow’ book imagines himself as Elagabalus, a notoriously gay teenaged Roman Emperor. (Ch 11)
• The ‘yellow’ book also mentions “the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who ... gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas” (Ch 11)
• In Chapter 12, Basil asks Dorian: “Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with him?” The book was written in 1890- 1891, shortly after the law criminalising homosexuality had been passed (1885) and very shortly after the Cleveland Street scandal when a male brothel catering to aristocrats was discovered in London. Suicide, self-exile, shame and ostracism were in those days the common ends of gentlemen in society who were outed as homosexuals.
• DG is described by LHW as “this son of love and death”. On a literal level it describes Dorian’s parentage: his mother ran away with a soldier and died in giving birth to him. He is also likened to Adonis, whose own birth came through the incestuous coupling of his mother Myrrha with her own (unknowing) father; he was discovered by Aphrodite, the goddess of love who later fell in love with him, and taken to be fostered by Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. He was also loved by Apollo, taking the feminine role in their relationship. So Adonis was bisexual.

But there are alternative interpretations. Adrian Singleton is revealed to be an opium addict.

The plot

The book starts in the painting studio of artist Basil Hallward, who is making the portrait of a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray. Lord Henry Wootton sits in on the sitting and points out that the portrait will stay beautiful while Dorian grows old: “there is such a little time that your youth will last” (Ch 2) Dorian wishes it was the other way around. “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture 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!” (Ch 2). Be careful what you wish for ...

Dorian then becomes infatuated with an actress called Sybil Vane. It is interesting that he becomes entranced by a person whose profession is to pretend, to make convincing fakes. He becomes obsessed with her and she falls in love with him. They become engaged. But then he watches a performance in which she acts badly; he sees through the illusion. He repudiates her and she, heart-broken, kills herself.

It is now that he notices for the first time that the portrait has changed.

He realises that the portrait, like the scapegoat laden with the sins of the community and driven out into the desert, or like Jesus, crucified for the sins of mankind, the portrait represents for him a ‘get out of jail free’ card. It will suffer (there is a hint that we might be talking about STIs such as syphilis) while he will lead a charmed and charming life. Not only that, but he could monitor his rake’s progress through the image it portrayed: “This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. ... Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.” (Ch 8)

Now he embarks upon his wicked progress through the world. He hosts lavish parties. He is inspired by a ‘yellow’ book which LHW has given him to host lavish parties and become a connoisseur and collector. His early dissipations involve little more than collecting beautiful objects: Gothic art, perfumes, music, jewels, embroideries, ecclesiastical vestments etc. These things don’t seem so terribly wicked in themselves, although one might argue that Dorian’s incredible wealth might be put to better use. Perhaps the wickedness lies in the intemperance. In Dante’s Inferno, the sinners in hell include those who are misers and those who are extravagant; Dante, like most mediaeval thinkers, was following Aristotle's lead in saying that virtue lies in not going to extremes.

Basil Hallward, disturbed by the rumours about Dorian (though he can’t believe them), comes to warn Dorian that he is in danger of losing his good name. They argue and Dorian shows Basil the picture. Horrified, Basil tries to make Dorian pray, instead Dorian murders him. He pays someone to dispose of the body.

He revisits scenes of dissipation and begins to regret his lifestyle choices. Finally, after another discussion with LHW, he returns home and stabs the portrait. He is discovered dead with the dagger in his own heart. The portrait has reverted to its beauty; Dorian has, in death, become old and disgusting.

The parties

There is a reference to the Satyricon. Dorian hopes that he will become to London what Petronius, thought to be the author of the Satyricon, was to the Rome of Nero, its style guru, its Beau Brummel. But the Satyricon is also famous for the section describing Trimalchio's banquet and this could well be the inspiration for Dorian’s parties (Trimalchio is also referenced by F Scott Fitzgerald when talking about the parties thrown by The Great Gatsby). Furthermore the Satyricon's hero is openly gay which reinforces the homosexual theme.

The yellow book

He reads a 'yellow' book that LHW has given him. There has been critical discussion about which book this was. It can't refer to the "Yellow Book" magazine since DG was published in April 1891 and the YBmag was published between 1894 and 1897. Rather, the yellowness probably refers to the fact the lascivious French novels were often wrapped in yellow paper.

Wilde tells us: “It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediæval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book.” (Ch 10)

Also: “The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible tædium vitæ, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the circus and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.” (Ch 11)

Many critics have opted for À rebours by French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans whose single character, Jean des Esseintes, is eccentric and reclusive, the final descendant of an aristocratic family. He retreats into an aesthetic world of literature, painting and religion. The title, which means Against Nature, might refer to the author's reaction against Naturalism, the Zola dominated style in which he had previously worked, although he retained the use of minute detail to achieve verisimilitude.

Evaluation

While the ‘yellow’ book is described as “a novel without a plot”, Dorian Gray is fundamentally an allegory with little more than plot. The characters are mostly puppets playing their preordained roles. Dorian is sometimes interesting but his soliloquies are marred by melodrama. I found LHW a most unsatisfactory character. He is a character who seems to speak entirely in epigrams, which makes him a witty and charming dinner party conversationalist, according to the book, although to me he sounded shallow. His typical gambit is to voice a paradox or a controversial view. There is no attempt to justify his platitudes, or to offer any evidence in their support. He just spouts, like an oracle, and then moves on. Even Dorian criticises him for this telling him: “You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.” (Ch 8) I quickly became bored of his interminable witticisms. Basil, who has the advantage of an interesting perspective on life, is missing for the bulk of the narrative, only required to start the whole thing off and then wheeled on later to be murdered. The lower-class characters are unsurprisingly stereotyped. It is the failure of characters that undermine the claims of this book to be considered a masterpiece. Its position in the canon is due to the conception, which is brilliant.

Selected quotes:

• “The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.” (Ch 1) The bourdon note comes from a stopped organ pipe and is a very low note, strong in fundamental, which creates a sort of humming buzz; its name derives from the French for bumblebee. OW is at once separating London from the beautiful garden surrounding the beautifully decorated artist’s studio that he has so far described, and simultaneously making London the background for the work of art he is creating. It’s also interesting that he has chosen an unusual word, as though to emphasise his own vocabulary.
• “I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus” (Ch 1)
• “beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.” (Ch 1)
• “The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.” (Ch 2). This is a very egotistical perspective on life.
• “Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.” (Ch 2)
• “His father ... had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure.” (Ch 3)
• “the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth” (Ch 3)
• “In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals.” (Ch 3)
• “Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.” (Ch 3)
• “The mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real ... Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analyzed it?” (Ch 3): The Platonic Theory of Forms.
• “Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.” (Ch 3)
• “Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things.” (Ch 3)
• “I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says” (Ch 4)
• “Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.” (Ch 9)
• “he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system” (Ch 11)
• “The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert’s grace, and Chopin’s beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear.” (Ch 11)
• “Society—civilized society, at least—is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.” (Ch 11)
• “The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? ... we are in the native land of the hypocrite.” (Ch 12)
• “Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault.” (Ch 16)
• “all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.” (Ch 16)
• “His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.” (Ch 20)

Dorian Gray is an allegory rather than a novel. Although the concept is brilliant, it lacks complex characters and is further undermined by its social snobbery and aesthetic elitism. 

I first read this and blogged about it in March 2016. This post is the result of a re-reading and re-evauation in March 2024.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God