Dorian Gray viewing his portrait

Although I have read a few other books this year this is my first completion since setting my goal to read one book per month.  Ok, I was a little late on this one…but a few days hardly counts, right?  I just finished reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde.  I have been wanting to read some of the classics and picked this one up several months ago and finally got to reading it.  Wilde is typically known as a playwright but this, his only novel, is quite good.  It is full of social commentary, gender statements, and moral messages that are quite relevant despite the book being written over 100 years ago.

Plot Summary of ”The Picture of Dorian Gray”

The main characters, Dorian Gray, Sir Henry Wotton and Basil Hallward being introduced in the studio of Hallward, a painter.  The painter has developed a sort of infatuation with the striking beauty of young Dorian Gray and is completing a portrait that he feels is his best work to date.  Amidst the final stages of the painting, Lord Wotton engages in conversation with the two, and imparts much of his cynicism and seemingly shallows values as he can on the impressionable Gray.  Being somewhat indoctrinated with Wotton’s “beauty before all else” message, Gray wishes that the painting of his likeness would age in his place, so he might retain the looks that have won him so much favor.  This wish would become a great regret for Mr. Gray.

Over the coming chapters, Gray meets Sibyl Vane, a very young, and very poor Shakespearean actress.  Though Sibyl only knows him as ”Prince Charming” the two of them seem to madly in love and plan to run off together.  The girl’s mother seems all too happy to see her daughter off to someone above her station, despite not even having met the young man.  Sibyl’s brother however is much more protective, and in a chance meeting threatens Dorian not to hurt his sister, or else he will pay it back to him directly. 

Unfortunately, Dorian invites his friends along to what will be Sibyl’s last performance before leaving to be with him and her focus on her own love produces a dismal portrayal of her role as Juliet.  With his love of beauty, Dorian suddenly becomes disgusted with the girl and her poor performance and breaks her heart backstage that very night.  Tragically, the loss is too much for Sibyl to bear and we find out very shortly after she was found dead later that night, presumably by her own hand.  Dorian awakes the next morning regretting his actions against Sibyl but is informed of her recent end by Lord Wotton.  His despair is quickly averted by Wotton’s assurances that this was just a passing love and that beauty and pleasure should be his only pursuits.  This would be Dorian’s last love and over the next 18 years leads a hedonistic life guided by an unnamed novel given to him by Wotton.

Later in life, though not showing his age thanks to his wish for his portrait to bear the years and consequences of his actions, Dorian begins to realize that his life has not been of the quality it should have been.  Brought to a head by a visit from Basil, the painter, Dorian is shocked by the effects his life has had on the once beautiful painting.  In the process of unveiling it to Basil, Dorian comes to blame this on him, the originator of the work, and murders Basil in secret.  Using some extortionary threat against a former friend, he is able to cover up his act, and visits an opium den for relief from his guilt.  While there, by chance a whore refers to him as “Prince Charming” which is overheard by James Vane (Sibyl’s brother).  In a moment of irony, James is convinced not to kill Dorian by being asked to look at him in the light and assess whether the man who broke his sister’s heart 18 years ago could possibly appear so young.  Effectively saved by the very curse that lead him down this path, Dorian lives on.

After returning to London, Dorian becomes paranoid that James is stalking him, and perhaps rightfully so.  He believes he saw him outside his window and later, while out in the country, discovers it was James who was accidentally shot by hunters.  Believe he is safe, Dorian sets out to turn over a new leaf and live a better life, his first act being to spare a local girl the heartbreak of being in love with him.  Dorian hopes this new act of “mercy” will show in the portrait, a lessening of the horrible image it now bears.  Much to his dismay, the image is even worse, causing to doubt his own motives in the act.  Believing his only absolution would be public confession to his acts, including Basil’s murder, which he cannot bring himself to do, Dorian tries to destroy the reflection of his life, the painting.   In an rage, he stabs a knife into the painting, but is discovered in the locked room with the knife in his heart and the painting returned to it’s original form.  Dorian’s body is now withered and aged, and is only identified after examination.

Thoughts and Reflection

The book is quite good, and full of interesting thoughts on beauty, love, relationships and the consequences of one’s actions. Wotton spews anti-marriage, anti-female, and elitist remarks (see below), the qualities of art are commented on and the overriding theme of responsibility/influence is apparent.  Dorian is under the influence of Wotton from the beginning, then allowing the novel to sway his actions.  By ridding himself of the consequences of his actions, Dorian takes no responsibility and lives a life of moral abandon.  When he starts to become aware of the nature of the life he has lead, he lashes out, but still blaming anyone but himself.  Blaming Basil for painting what allowed him to be as he is, the knife for murdering Basil, the painting as the only consequence of his actions that can be erased.

To me, the message that lies within the story is that without consequences we do not learn and are not guided to the life we should lead.  Our mistakes teach us as much as our successes, and the ripples those mistakes have burn the lesson into our memories.  And should we try to destroy the traces of our actions, we really destroy ourselves.

Memorable Quotes from A Picture of Dorian Gray

  “The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I hope that Dorian Gray will make this woman his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by someone else. He would be a wonderful study.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There was purification in punishment. Not ‘Forgive us our sins,’ but ‘Smite us for our iniquities’ should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“ . . . there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray