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The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
‘Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.’
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 22/12/2020 14:55
Introduction When an earlier and shorter form of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine in 18901, one reviewer described it in the following terms: a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French decadents – a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction – a gloating study of the mental and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden youth, which might be fascinating but for its effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophizings.2 It is worth pausing to analyse these criticisms with their allegations of insincerity, flippancy, effeminacy and dangerous immorality, and their startling imagery of disease and decay: what might they suggest to a modern reader about Wilde’s novel? We might also consider what these comments teach us – in their substance and in their style – about the social attitudes, cultural tastes and values of the novel’s first generation of readers (among whom the novel also found many admirers as well as detractors). Modern readers might also ask why Wilde’s novel subsequently proved to be such an enduring work. In the original 1890 version of the novel, same-sex attraction is portrayed in a more overtly homoerotic
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Introduction
manner than in the subsequent 1891 bound edition. ‘It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman … I quite admit that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly’, says Basil to Dorian in the original.3 Wilde’s rewritten version presents Basil’s adoration as that of the artist for his muse rather than as a would-be seducer of a younger man. The former would have been viewed by the Victorian reading public as a nobler, more chaste, more palatable relationship. However, references to love between men persist in the rewritten novel, albeit in a more covert way, through symbolism and literary allusion. For example, the novel makes several references to beautiful male youths from Greek mythology – to Adonis, Hylas, Ganymede and Narcissus.4 These allusions are not merely decorative or an example of a novelist wearing his considerable classical learning on his sleeve; they can be read as encoded references to love between men.5 Even in this more covert form, these references and their connections to themes of male beauty, sensuality, temptation and indulgence touch on taboo subjects. In this way, a novel that caused moral outrage among some late Victorians could simultaneously be viewed as a talismanic, fashionably modern and highly progressive text for other readers. The 1891 edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray also included a new preface by Wilde. In 22 aphorisms, Wilde shows he both anticipates and understands criticisms made against his work while taking a playful and provocative approach to moral judgements. The preface sets in motion questions that the novel itself also explores: Can art be moral or immoral? Can a book really lead to degeneracy? Can a work of art truly corrupt?
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
The reader may also detect a note of self-defence and protest in the preface, albeit in an elegant and epigrammatic style typical of Wilde. Wilde’s exhortation to his readers that a book should be judged on its artistic merits rather than its moral message – ‘Books are well written, or badly written. That is all’ – is thoughtprovoking on many fronts, asking the reader not only to consider notions of art and freedom of expression, of morality and immorality, but also to challenge simplistic ideas about a writer’s intention, teaching or moral message.6 This invites a more nuanced approach to exploring meaning and interpretation and, indeed, a more complex way of representing the ‘self ’ in art. In 1894 Wilde wrote to a friend: ‘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.’ 7 Wilde’s phrase ‘in other ages, perhaps’ suggests that Wilde viewed the attitudes and values of the society in which he moved to be at odds with his own impulses and desires, much like Dorian, who spends years ‘trying to realise in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own’ (p.151). Therefore, while Wilde’s remark to a friend may on the one hand be read as flamboyant and witty, even as flippant and teasing, it can also be seen to contain deeper truths about social unease, a splintered sense of self, and suffering.
Contexts and concerns The rise and fall of Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Ireland and educated in Dublin and Oxford. He is perhaps best known for his witty comic plays such
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Introduction
as Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). These social comedies for the stage amused and entertained Victorian theatregoers while simultaneously satirising the foibles and hypocrisies of English society; they earned their creator ecstatic reviews and a devoted following. Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and in the two years that followed, they became parents to two sons Cyril and Vyvyan. However, by 1886 Wilde had begun to have intense friendships and affairs with men. In April 1891, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in its longer novel form. Many young men who moved in the same artistic circles as Wilde reacted strongly to the book, including Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945), who is said to have read it nine times. In June of that year, Wilde and Douglas (known since childhood as ‘Bosie’) met for the first time and went on to have a passionate relationship, which they made little effort to keep secret. This enraged Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, who vowed to ruin Wilde for the affair with his son. In an attempt to prevent this, Wilde took the Marquess of Queensberry to court, believing that Queensberry’s allegations would be discredited – but Wilde’s attempt to press libel charges against him failed. Worse still, Queensberry then pressed charges against Wilde, citing ‘gross indecency’ between men. During the Victorian period, the police generally turned a blind eye to sexual acts between men carried out in private, particularly when they involved members of the upper classes.8 The so-called Cleveland Street Affair in 1889, when the police discovered a homosexual male brothel in Marylebone, was just one of several scandals in the years that followed. Numerous establishment
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CHAPTER 1
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussoresilk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures. As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake. ‘It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,’ said Lord Henry, languidly. ‘You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.’ ‘I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,’ he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. ‘No: I won’t send it anywhere.’ Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whirls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. ‘Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to
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Chapter 1
gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.’ ‘I know you will laugh at me,’ he replied, ‘but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.’ Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed. ‘Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.’ ‘Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and 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, and you – well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I
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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.’ ‘You don’t understand me, Harry,’ answered the artist. ‘Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are – my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks – we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.’ ‘Dorian Gray? Is that his name?’ asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward. ‘Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.’ ‘But why not?’ ‘Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all
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Glossary Chapter 1 1
divan of Persian saddle-bags: The couch on which Lord Henry is lying is fashionably draped with an assortment of richly patterned textiles.
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tussore-silk: an Indian silk with a distinctive pale gold colour and coarse texture made from the larvae of a particular kind of moth
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momentary Japanese effect: a further example of the fashion at this time for Eastern (or ‘orientalist’) art and furnishings
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woodbine: honeysuckle, a climbing shrub with sweetscented flowers
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the bourdon note of a distant organ: the bass, or lowest-pitched, note from a pipe organ, a sound with a droning, buzzing quality (‘bourdon’ is French for bumblebee)
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the Grosvenor: London art gallery founded in 1878 that welcomed art by Aesthetic movement artists, whose work was less likely to find favour at the more conservative Royal Academy gallery (‘The Academy’)
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Oxford: Oxford University, where Wilde himself studied; Oxford and Cambridge universities were generally considered the preserve of the wealthy upper classes
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opium-tainted cigarette: Although opium was widely available in the 19th century, its intoxicating, addictive properties and associations with criminality were also widely recognised.
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Adonis: in Greek mythology, a remarkably beautiful young man loved by the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone, and killed by the goddess Artemis
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Narcissus: a beautiful young hunter in Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water
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Glossary
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the Duke’s: rooms or ‘chambers’ built in 1885 in St James’s Place, Regent Street in London and used by the sons of young aristocrats and other society gentlemen until 1908 (when the building became a luxury hotel)
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a crush: colloquial expression meaning a party
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dowagers: elderly widowed women with aristocratic titles, wealth or status
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Stars and Garters: those who have received a high heraldic honour known as the Noble Order of the Garter from the Queen
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the penny newspapers: The Penny Illustrated Paper was a cheap and popular daily newspaper that cost 1d (one penny) and ran from 1861 to 1913.
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précis: (French) concise summary
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salon: a gathering for conversation and the exchange of ideas, named after the French word for drawing room
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ravelled skeins: this simile describes the clouds by comparing their shape and sheen to silk threads wound into long coils
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the English democracy: the English people (as opposed to the aristocracy)
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When poor Southwark got into the Divorce Court: The reader may suppose from Lord Henry’s anecdote that this divorce case was notorious because of something it revealed about ‘the vices of the upper orders’ (p.10). The reference foreshadows upper-class Dorian’s descent into immorality and the consequent rumours and scandals about his conduct.
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Antinous: (c.ad 111–130) beautiful young man and lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian, whose image was immortalised in the form of statues, busts, coins and gems
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bric-a-brac: term for decorative objects, curios and collectables of lesser value; first used in the 19th century, the word derives from the French ‘à bric et à brac’ meaning ‘at random’
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the East End: known during the Victorian period as a poor area of London and so associated with charitable works and the efforts of influential social reformers
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