The Picture of Dorian Gray

He frequently visits the portrait, noting the signs of aging and of corruption that appear, though he himself remains unblemished. One evening he runs into Basil, who tells him that there are rumours that he has destroyed the lives and reputations of many people. Dorian, however, refuses to accept blame. Basil declares that he clearly does not know Dorian, who responds by taking him to the attic to see the portrait. The painting has become horrifying. Basil tells Dorian that if this is a reflection of his soul, he must repent and pray for forgiveness, and a suddenly enraged Dorian murders Basil.

He blackmails another former friend into disposing of the body.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Some weeks later Dorian tells Henry that he has decided to become virtuous and recently decided against taking advantage of a young girl who was smitten with him. Dorian goes to see if the portrait has improved because of his honourable act, but he sees rather that it has acquired a look of cunning. He decides to destroy the portrait and stabs it with a knife. His servants hear a scream, and, when they arrive, they see a loathsome old man dead on the floor with a knife in his chest and a portrait of the beautiful young man he once was.

However, for all its transgressive delights, The Picture of Dorian Gray could easily be read as a profoundly moral book, even a cautionary tale against the dangers of vice. Indeed, the beautiful boy is the least interesting character in the book that bears his name. Publication of the novel scandalized Victorian England, and The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence against Wilde when he was tried and convicted in on charges related to homosexuality. The novel became a classic of English literature and was adapted into a number of films, most notably a version that was directed by Albert Lewin.

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Dec 10, See Article History.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles: It was the most notorious novel of its time. He exchanges his soul for youth that never fades. Fantasy , imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting such as other worlds or times and of characters such as supernatural or unnatural beings. Novel , an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.

Within its broad framework, the genre of the novel has encompassed an extensive range of types…. 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—in other ages, perhaps. The main theme in The Picture of Dorian Gray is aestheticism and its conceptual relation to living a double life. Throughout the story, the narrative presents aestheticism as an absurd abstraction, which disillusions more than it dignifies the concept of Beauty.

Despite Dorian being a hedonist, when Basil accuses him of making a "by-word" of the name of Lord Henry's sister, Dorian curtly replies, "Take care, Basil. You go too far Dorian enjoyed "keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life", by attending a high-society party only twenty-four hours after committing a murder.

Moral duplicity and self-indulgence are evident in Dorian's patronage of London's opium dens. Wilde conflates the images of the upper-class man and lower-class man in Dorian Gray, a gentleman slumming for strong entertainment in the poor parts of London town. Lord Henry philosophically had earlier said to him that: I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations"—implying that Dorian is two men, a refined aesthete and a coarse criminal.

They then ask Socrates , "If one came into possession of such a ring, why should he act justly? The disfigured and corrupted soul antithesis of the beautiful soul is imbalanced and disordered, and, in itself, is undesirable, regardless of any advantage derived from acting unjustly. The picture of Dorian Gray is the means by which other people, such as his friend Basil Hallward, may see Dorian's distorted soul.

Disruptive beauty is the thematic resemblance between the opera and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

About the literary hero, the author Oscar Wilde said, "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust. In each story, the protagonist entices a beautiful woman to love him, and then destroys her life. In the preface to the novel , Wilde said that the notion behind the tale is "old in the history of literature", but was a thematic subject to which he had "given a new form".

Unlike the academic Faust , the gentleman Dorian makes no deal with the Devil , who is represented by the cynical hedonist Lord Henry, who presents the temptation that will corrupt the virtue and innocence that Dorian possesses at the start of the story. Throughout, Lord Henry appears unaware of the effect of his actions upon the young man; and so frivolously advises Dorian, that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing. In chapter five, he writes: When Dorian tells Lord Henry about his new love Sibyl Vane, he mentions the Shakespeare plays in which she has acted, and refers to her by the name of the heroine of each play. Later, Dorian speaks of his life by quoting Hamlet , a privileged character who impels his potential suitor Ophelia to suicide, and prompts her brother Laertes to swear mortal revenge. In the biography, Oscar Wilde , the literary critic Richard Ellmann said that:. The references in Dorian Gray to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate.

Some commentators have suggested that The Picture of Dorian Gray was influenced by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli 's anonymously published first novel Vivian Grey as, "a kind of homage from one outsider to another. The Picture of Dorian Gray originally was a novella submitted to Lippincott's Monthly Magazine for serial publication.

A note on the text

Stoddart, an editor for Lippincott, was in London to solicit novellas to publish in the magazine. Gill [18] at the Langham Hotel , and commissioned novellas from each writer. The literary merits of The Picture of Dorian Gray impressed Stoddart, but, as an editor, he told the publisher, George Lippincott, "in its present condition there are a number of things an innocent woman would make an exception to.

British reviewers condemned the novel's immorality, and said condemnation was so controversial that the W H Smith publishing house withdrew every copy of the July issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine from its bookstalls in railway stations. Wilde's textual additions were about "fleshing out of Dorian as a character" and providing details of his ancestry that made his "psychological collapse more prolonged and more convincing. The sub-plot about James Vane's dislike of Dorian gives the novel a Victorian tinge of class struggle.

Assessment

With such textual changes, Oscar Wilde meant to diminish the moralistic controversy about the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Consequent to the harsh criticism of the magazine edition of the novel, the textual revisions to The Picture of Dorian Gray included a preface in which Wilde addressed the criticisms and defended the reputation of his novel.

Earlier, before writing the preface, Wilde had written a book review of Herbert Giles 's translation of the work of Zhuang Zhou. The preface was first published in the edition of the novel; nonetheless, by June , Wilde was defending The Picture of Dorian Gray against accusations that it was a bad book.

The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. In the 19th century, the critical reception of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was poor. Yet, most of the criticism was personal, attacking Wilde for being a hedonist with a distorted view of conventional morality of Victorian Britain.

In the 30 June issue of the Daily Chronicle , the book critic said that Wilde's novel contains "one element After the initial publication of the magazine edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray , Wilde expanded the text from 13 to 20 chapters and obscured the homoerotic themes of the story.

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An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. The edition includes text that was deleted by JM Stoddart, Wilde's initial editor, before the story's publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

For other uses, see Dorian Gray disambiguation. For other uses, see The Picture of Dorian Gray disambiguation. Oscar Wilde portal Literature portal Novels portal. Archived from the original on 2 January Retrieved 23 August The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Retrieved 30 May No 11 — Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli ". Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 6 June Vivian Grey version ed. Longmans, Green and Co. Belknap Press Harvard University Press. Wilde's book review of Giles's translation was published in The Speaker magazine of 8 February Retrieved 9 March