EN245
Week 7: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray(1890)
- For the second part of the seminarwe will discuss John Paul Riquelme’s article ‘Oscar Wilde's Aesthetic Gothic: Walter Pater, Dark Enlightenment, and The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (2000) (pre-disseminated/on module webpage) so please ensure you have read and notated the article, drawing out key points and if necessary looking up aspects you are unsure of, perhaps familiarising yourself with Walter Pater and his theories.
[Note that Pater, and a passage from his The Renaissance was discussed in the lecture on Dialogues Between Image and Text.]
- For the first part of the seminar we will concentrate on the specific passagesbelow from the novel, which you should ensure to re-read and annotate. You should also draw in thoughts and examples from other parts of the text to enhance the discussion.
a)The passage fromChapter IV, starting "I don't think I am likely to marry, Henry. I am too much in love…” up until “…Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way.”
b)Analyse the passage below and consider the use of literature within literature, its influence on the reader’s character and psychology(also note the continued influence of the text in subsequent chapters):
[Chapter X] His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.
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 realise 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 ofargotand of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of some of the finest artists of the French school ofSymbolistes. 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. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.
c)The use of spectral imagery in Chapter XI starting“For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book…” to“…according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.”
d)Consider the connection between sin, disease, and madness, in the novel, aided by this extract from Chapter XIV:
“Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair, came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.
He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them; strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might strangle one itself.”
e)Consider the use of spaces, places, the weather, and the depictions of the people in Chapter XVI, from the beginning of the chapter“A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist…” to “…She tossed her head, and raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion watched her enviously.”
f)Re-read Basil’s reaction to the painting at the beginning of Chapter XIII, and then consider the ending:
But this murder—was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself—that was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the Square below, stopped, and looked up at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman, and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and watched.
"Whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.
They looked at each other, as they walked away and sneered. One of them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.
Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death.
After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows yielded easily; their bolts were old.
When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.
Suggested Further Reading
Carroll, Joseph. "Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in The Picture of Dorian Gray."Philosophy and Literature29.2 (2005): 286-304.
Clausson, Nils. "" Culture and Corruption": Paterian Self-Development versus Gothic Degeneration in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray."Papers on Language and Literature39.4 (2003): 339-364.
Duggan, Patrick. "The Conflict Between Aestheticism and Morality in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray."WR: Journal of the CAS Writing Program1 (2009): 2008-2009.
Lorang, Elizabeth. "The Picture of Dorian Gray in Context: Intertextuality and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine."Victorian Periodicals Review43.1 (2010): 19-41.
Nunokawa, Jeff. "The Importance of Being Bored: The Dividends of Ennui in"The Picture of Dorian Gray"."Studies in the Novel28.3 (1996): 357-371.
Sheehan, Paul. "‘A Malady Of Dreaming’ Aesthetics and Criminality in The Picture of Dorian Gray."Irish Studies Review13.3 (2005): 333-340.
Stern, Simon. "Wilde’s Obscenity Effect: Influence and Immorality in The Picture of Dorian Gray."The Review of English Studies68.286 (2017): 756-772.
Thomas, Ronald R. "Poison Books and Moving Pictures: Vulgarity in The Picture of Dorian Gray."Victorian Vulgarity: Taste in Verbal and Visual Culture(2009): 185-200.
Wainwright, Michael. "Oscar Wilde, the Science of Heredity, and ThePicture of Dorian Gray."English Literature in Transition, 1880-192054.4 (2011): 494-522
Womack, Kenneth. "‘Withered, Wrinkled, and Loathsome of Visage’: Reading the Ethics of the Soul and the Late-Victorian Gothic in The Picture of Dorian Gray."Victorian Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2000. 168-181.
Wilde, Oscar. "Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray.” 1891."The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings(2008): 236.