An Analysis of The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde was originally written and published in 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, but received very bad reviews saying that the only novel written by Oscar Wilde was immoral and scandalous. He revised his novel and re published it in 1891 with an added preface and six more chapters. In order to properly analyze this novel on must look at plot, main characters, and theme. (xiii, intro)
The story opens with Basil Hallward talking with his friend Lord Henry Wotton about a painting that he is working on, that he feels shows too much of his feelings for the subject. Lord Henry simply tells him that it is his masterpiece, and says that he would like to meet the youth he uses for his paintings. It is then that Lord Henry Wotton meets Dorian Gray.
Basil had met Dorian at his aunt’s house during a party, and immediately became entranced by his youth and beauty, thus making him his principal subject for all his paintings. The majority of Basils’ paintings were of Dorian as a Greek god or some other mythological being, but his most recently started was that of Dorian Gray, just as he was in all his beauty, youth, and perfection.
As Lord Henry meets Dorian, Basil fears that his friends’ hedonistic way of life will ruin the perfection and purity that makes Dorian Gray so wonderful. Basil was absolutely right to fear this, because within the few minutes of first conversation, Lord Henry has the young man fearing that without his youth and beauty he will have nothing in old age. Dorian Gray then curses the painting that Basil made for him, and wishes so hard that he could stay young and beautiful forever and the painting would take on the harsh aging of life. Little does he know that his wish was granted, and that he would stay as young as he was at the ripe age of nineteen, and that with each sin and corrupt move on his part the painting would grow ever more sinister and grotesque behind the velvet curtain that covers it.
Much to the dismay of Basil Hallward, Dorian begins his new life of sin following everything that Henry does. After a few weeks of following his life of pleasure, Dorian falls in love with a young actress, Sybil Vane, and tells both Basil and Henry that he would like them to come see her act. Dorian loves Sybil because of her acting, because she brings the old tragedies to life whether she is playing Juliet, Imogen, or Rosalind. He tells her he wants to marry her, but the reader feels he only wishes to marry her because of how she portrays characters, not because of how she is herself. Eventually the night arrives when Basil and Lord Henry are to join Dorian at the small theatre to see the young actress play her part in Romeo and Juliet. To Dorian’s dismay, her acting falls very short of the bar, she is down right terrible and Lord Henry makes a point to tell him she was. Furious, Dorian goes to her after the play is finished and demands to know if she is mocking his love for her. Sybil tells him that because she has felt real love, she no longer can act as if she is in love on stage; this causes Dorian to break his engagement to her and leave her in tears. Once he arrives home, he notices that the painting has changed, and that his once was smile is now a mocking sneer. Dorian quickly covers the painting and moves it into an upstairs room so that no one but himself can watch it change.
The following morning, Dorian is filled with regret and guilt about what he said to Sybil Vane. He begins to write her a letter apologizing and was going to give it to her when Lord Henry shows up and informs Dorian that after he left the theatre last night, Sybil had killed herself. Dorian falls into a pit of despair, but Lord Henry pulls him out of it by saying that Sybil personified tragedy, that her death of a sort of artistic triumph. With that, Dorian puts it in the past and carries on with his life.
Lord Henry gives him a book from the nineteenth century by a Frenchman; Dorian worships this book like a bible, furthering his life of corruption and sin. Over the following years Dorian begins hanging out in opium dens, and making his reputation suffer severely among the inner circles of English politics. Dorian has no regard for morality or societies standards of the time. When Basil comes to him late one night to question Dorian about the many rumors connected to Dorian Gray’s name, in which Dorian tells him that he would like him to have a look at his soul. By now the painting is monstrous and Dorian hates that Basil will have to see it. When Basil does see it, he is horrified, and in a fit of rage and anger, Dorian kills Basil and leaves him upstairs in his own blood, while he sleeps soundly. The next morning, Dorian blackmails an estranged friend who is a scientist or doctor to get rid of the body, and he does.
That night, Dorian goes to an opium den, where he has a run in with Sybil’s brother James, who swore to avenge her death. Dorian gets away by making the point that he should be around forty years old by now if he was the “Prince Charming” Sybil had committed suicide over, and that he was just barely nineteen. James does not realize the lie until one of the women who work there tell him that Dorian Gray had been a customer there for over thirteen years, and that he was indeed Prince Charming.
Dorian escapes to his country estate where he sees James Vane in the window of his home. Overcome with fear and guilt he does not go anywhere for a few days, then a hunting party goes out, and miraculously James Vane is shot on accident, this leaves Dorian elated and feeling safe. After this, Dorian feels the need to improve his life, but cannot bring himself to confess to the crimes he committed. He takes another look at the dreadful painting and sees the expression of his decision, hypocrisy. Overwhelmed with rage he grabs the knife he used to kill Basil Hallward with and stabs at the heart of the painting. His house servants hear a loud crash and when they break into the locked room upstairs, they see a beautiful painting of their master, and on the floor an old, decrepit man with a knife plunged into his heart.
As the reader can tell, Dorian Gray is the protagonist of the story. With the opening of the story, Dorian Gray is portrayed as an ideal of male beauty and perfection. His loveliness captures the imagination of Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton, and which within a brief conversation with Lord Henry decides that his most important characteristics, his youth and beauty, are diminishing each day of his life, thus causing him in vane to curse the painting Basil painted of him to take on the aging from a life of sin and corruption.
Lord Henry Wotton is the antagonist of the story. His persuasive tongue and charming wit convince Dorian to follow a life of pleasure without caring of the consequences. Lord Henry preaches a life of hedonism, but he himself does not live that sort of life. He attends parties of the polite English society, and the theatre, where as Dorian leads people to commit suicide and ruins innocent peoples reputations. Lord Henry does not seem to know the practical ways in which his words are translated to.
Basil Hallward is a painter, who is obsessed with Dorian Gray and the beauty he has. He uses Dorian for all of his paintings whether he is painting a Greek god, a mythological being, or Dorian himself. His obsession with the youth turns sour when Dorian decides he prefers Lord Henry’s company over his and essentially abandons him. Basil is an overly concerned friend who, on a last whim of hope decides to ask Dorian about the rumors in hopes of Dorian clearing his name. Instead Basil sees the horrors Dorian has indeed committed by looking at the painting he had done only a few years prior. Basil is killed because of his knowledge of Dorian’s true soul.
One would feel after reading this novel that it has an overpowering reliability on the fact that youth and beauty are everything you have. A possible theme would be that perfection in age and beauty is more than terribly difficult to achieve. Dorian Gray gave his soul in order to remain young and beautiful. Another reoccurring theme throughout the book is that of the color white. In chapter three of the story, it is said that Dorian has “the white purity of boyhood” (39), and that purity is what had Lord Henry Wotton so captivated. Another part where the color white is prominently used is when Basil goes to up to see his portrait of Dorian and sees the grotesque painting that was his. Basil quotes a line from the Book of Isaiah, “Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow” (162). The reoccurring theme of the color white seems to be a symbol for purity, and that everyone in their childhood state has a white purity about them, and that although ones sins may make ones soul as crimson as blood, with prayer and repentance one can bleach it white again and be pure once again.
In conclusion, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde is a novel about a young man’s obsession with his own beauty and youth; that with enough persuasion, anyone can wish so hard to stay young and beautiful forever, but that the only price to pay for such a wish is payment of ones own soul. The novel shows the reader that with enough encouragement a person can entirely change the person they are and murder a close friend and not care, which Dorian did with Basil.
Works Cited
- Wilde, Oscar. “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Print.
