The Picture Of Dorian Gray (3 page)

The portrait of Dorian may be the vehicle for a fantastic plot device, the repository for ancestral memory, a metaphor or mask for erotic desire, or the alibi for a life of secret vices; but it is also a work of art, and therefore occupies an important place in Wilde’s text and
oetime
. For Wilde made his public debut as a ‘professor of aesthetics’, and made art, its relation to life and conduct, and its correct interpretation, the dominant theme of most of his writings and public pronouncements. These concerns are explored in
Dorian Gray
, a novel in which a painting rather than its subject is the eponymous character.

From the first pages, Basil’s painting is the object of interpretation and potential misreading. Basil, its creator, is also its first interpreter. As seen earlier, he believes that his portrait of Dorian actually reveals more about himself than the sitter. As he protests: ‘We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography’; and because he believes the portrait reveals ‘the secret of [his] own soul’ he resolves not to exhibit it. Dorian’s response to works of art is similarly subjective. When he encounters the curious yellow book which Lord Henry lends him, he sees in its hero ‘a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it’ (Chapter XI). Similarly, when he attends a performance of Wagner’s opera
Tannhauser
, he sees ‘in the prelude to that great work of art a
presentation of the tragedy of his own soul’ (Chapter XI). Dorian clearly demonstrates the maxim found in the Preface which Wilde wrote for the revised edition of the novel: ‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.’

Works of art therefore act as subjective mirrors in Wilde’s novel. This is pre-eminently the case with Dorian’s relationship with his own portrait. On one level this is obvious and understandable. After all, there is more reason why Dorian’s extremely lifelike portrait should mirror him rather than its creator. However, the reflection here is more ‘moral’ than physical; it serves as a moral ‘ledger’, recording his transgressions according to the pseudo-scientific beliefs of the day. Dorian, who as we have seen is apt to read art subjectively, is first and foremost a ‘critic’ of his own portrait. When he first believes that the painting has altered in response to his actions he is once again reading his own life into a work of art: ‘Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth. Cruelty! Had he been cruel?’ (Chapter VII). Given Wilde’s professed views on art and nature, art and life, and art and morality, it is significant that Dorian’s ‘monstrous’ reading is detrimental to the painting. Some of these views help to illuminate the central incidents
of Dorian Gray.

Wilde’s ‘The Decay of Lying’ (January 1889) is principally a ‘protest’ against realism in the aesthetic realm, disparaging ‘poor, probable, uninteresting human life’, while asserting that ‘All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them to ideals.’ For Wilde, art should be ‘a veil, rather than a mirror’.
²⁵
These strictures against bringing life to art find their ‘moral’ counterpart in Wilde’s portrait of the art critic and poisoner, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ (January 1889). Here he makes one of his first assaults on the tendency to bring ethics to aesthetics: ‘The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose. The domestic virtues are not the true basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement for second-rate artists.’
²⁶
Such views would become central to Wilde’s thought, being the principal theme of his Preface to the revised edition of his novel, and in many of his works of criticism published subsequent to it. As he protested to the reviewer
of the
St James’s Gazette:
‘The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.’ For Wilde, art is superior to nature and to life, and aesthetics are always higher than ethics. However, although his most forthright statements on this theme appeared as a consequence of his experience with the critics of his novel (especially those dealing with art and morality), the earlier works referred to above indicate that Wilde held these views prior to its publication. These views also inform his novel, which he called a reaction ‘against the crude brutality of plain realism’ (Mason,
74
). This is found in Wilde’s depiction of Dorian and his ‘criticism’ of the painting, for Dorian brings his moral life to the portrait, confusing art with life, and ethics with aesthetics. The result is disastrous for the work of art; what should have been hailed as ‘one of the greatest things in modern art’ is transformed into a horrifying record of corruption, ‘bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it…. He kept his youth – that was enough.’ For Wilde perhaps this destruction, a form of aesthetic ‘heresy’, is Dorian’s greatest ‘sin’. As he stated in the Preface: ‘Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.’

A similar illustration of the disastrous effects of life on art, and of confusing ethics with aesthetics, is found in the tragic tale of Sibyl Vane. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful young actress whom he discovers performing in a seedy, third-class theatre. From the outset it is clear that he is in love with Sibyl’s acting rather than the woman herself. As he enthuses to Lord Henry: ‘Tonight she is Imogen… and tomorrow night she will be Juliet.’ ‘When is she Sibyl Vane?’ asks Lord Henry. ‘Never,’ Dorian replies. Dorian intends to ‘take [his] love out of poetry, and to find a wife in Shakespeare’s plays… I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.’ Sibyl plays all the great romantic heroines of the Shakespearean stage, and while she remains within the sphere of art her performance enraptures Dorian. ‘Life’, in the form of the real passion she feels for Dorian, ruins her art: ‘‘‘Dorian, Dorian,’’ she cried, ‘‘before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life.… I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came…[and] taught me what reality really is.… I might mimic a passion that I do not feel,
but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire’’’ (Chapter VII). Dorian’s cruel response is consistent with his aesthetic code: ‘Without your art you are nothing.… A third-rate actress with a pretty face.’ That night Sibyl commits suicide, and Dorian detects the first changes in his portrait.

However, despite the moral censure suggested by the portrait’s reaction, Wilde discourages such a straightforwardly ‘sentimental’ response to these circumstances. To do this he points to the artificiality of Sibyl and her experiences. As Dorian exclaims to Lord Henry, ‘How extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.’ How is the reader, who
does
read about Sibyl’s death in a book, supposed to respond? Perhaps Lord Henry’s interpretation points the way:

‘… you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she never really died…. Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled…. But don’t waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are.’ (Chapter VIII)

Henry is being true to his cynical and amoral self, but he is actually speaking the literal truth, and offering a view that is consistent with Wilde’s own views on art and ethics. This is not to say that Wilde encouraged his readers to adopt Lord Henry’s amorality in their own lives; but he is pointing to the fact that Sibyl is a literary creation and should be regarded as such. To encourage this response, and detract from the pathos of her death, Wilde makes the scenes with Sibyl (especially in the revised version) as artificial as possible. In Chapter V, which he added in 1891, we find Sibyl living in a fairy-tale world, with a mother who ‘plays’ life as she once played the melodramatic stage, constantly adopting striking poses and acting to an imaginary gallery. Her brother James is also characterized in this way. As Sybil exclaims: ‘Oh, don’t be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in.’ Sibyl, who regards Dorian ‘merely as a person in a play’ (Chapter IV),
decides that he is really Prince Charming, and echoes Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott when she complains, ‘I have grown sick of shadows.’ This all points to her artificiality as a creation, suggesting that an ‘aesthetic’ rather than sentimental response to her death – for Dorian ‘one of the great romantic tragedies of the age’ – is more appropriate. In depicting the experiences of Dorian and Sibyl in this way, Wilde provides an illustration of the basic tenets he propounded in his statements on art – that art is destroyed by life and morality, and that ethics and aesthetics belong to separate spheres of thought and judgement. His novel is in part an allegory of interpretation, and an essay in critical conduct.

Despite the specific historical references and contexts (scientific, homoerotic, aesthetic) which can help to illuminate many of the themes of Wilde’s novel, providing a background to its reception, revision and subsequent history, it is a book that continues to fascinate readers of all ages over a hundred years after its first publication. For at the centre of the narrative is a study of an individual struggling with the consequences of his actions, and coming face to face with the reality of his ‘soul’. Wilde’s study of conscience and corruption can also be understood in both ‘metaphysical’ and ‘psychological’ terms. Dorian, who emulates Lord Henry’s cultivated cynicism and adopts the course of amoral hedonism the dandy prescribes, nevertheless is compelled to believe that ‘The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and barteredaway.It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it’ (Chapter XIX). It is a powerful and disturbing conceit that Wilde employs to depict this recognition:

… the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all.… here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls. (Chapter VIII)

Dorian decides to ignore the lesson provided by this recognition, choosing to believe that the portrait would free him fromthe consequences of his actions. But Dorian is never free. Thus despite his
worship of and unbridled indulgence in pleasure, he cannot escape from his fascination with the portrait, constantly examining his ‘soul’ with an obsessional intensity to rival the sternest puritan or the most ascetic anchorite.

He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. (Chapter XI)

‘Conscience’ (whether one reads that in sacred or secular terms) is strongly delineated in the novel. Dorian believes that he has destroyed conscience, but in truth it destroys him. The portrait

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. (Chapter XX)

Thus although the central conceit of the physical consequences of certain acts is informed by beliefs peculiar to the time, Wilde’s depiction of how this process affects Dorian has the power to fascinate and chill readers in an age that has discarded such beliefs, and can recognize in such descriptions an outline of what now might be termed ‘paranoia’.
Dorian Gray
is in part an acute study of obsession and psychological collapse, depicting a mind destroying itself with its own obsessions.

The Picture of Dorian Gray
is therefore a work that can be read in a number of ways. It is an enduring parable on the corruption of the soul and a study of psychological collapse, a compendium of the beliefs of its period, and an exercise in literary decadence, conspicuous in its exotica and esoteria, and defining the
Zeitgeist
of the so-called
fin de si`ecle
. Finally it is also in part a comic novel, and in the revised version especially Wilde the humorist (a role equal to homosexual martyr in the public mind today) perfected the arts of epigram and sparkling
dialogue before transferring them to the stage. In Chapter XV Lord Henry observes of Madame de Ferrol,

‘She is still
décolletée
… and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
edition de luxe
of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief

Wilde recycled this line for
The Importance of Being Earnest
, a practice he repeated often at this time. Such passages significantly enrich the novel, making it a more enjoyable and durable work of art, of comparable stature to anything he produced for the stage.

Lady Windermere’s Fan
(1892), which also re-uses epigrams from the novel, appeared the year after the revised version
of Dorian Gray
and launched Wilde’s extraordinarily successful career as a dramatist. At the time of his public downfall he had two plays playing to packed audiences in the West End. His ostracism was swift and conclusive. First his name was taken from the hoardings of
An Ideal Husband
and
The Importance of Being Earnest
, soon both plays were taken off, and an imminent US tour of
A Woman of No Importance was
promptly cancelled. On 25 May 1895 he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour; in November he was declared bankrupt. His wife changed her name to Holland, and on his release from Reading gaol Wilde changed his own name to Sebastian Melmoth (martyr and wanderer), and left England for ever. He died in poverty in Paris in November 1900.