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Book beginning: page 5

The story’s development

• Dorian’s description of the object of his love (Sibyl) is a lot like the compliments Basil and Lord Henry give him at the beginning (p50). It is as if they have shaped his idea of beauty. Furthermore, Sibyl is dark-haired (p50) which Lord Henry coincidently advises Dorian to go after in this very conversation (p47).
• Dorian talks of all the loss in history brought about by fear (p126) but the only reason he isn’t afraid of loss is because the picture receives all the harm. Aside from this, when he is in the shady parts of London, he goes “under an assumed name, and in disguise” (p124).

Dorian’s character

• It is possible that while there is no denying Dorian’s beauty, he was not actually as beautiful as the painting. When Basil explains why he does not want to exhibit the painting, he reveals that it is more him than the sitter (p9) and given that this is when Dorian realises he is so beautiful, it is reasonable to think the painting was actually more beautiful than the real Dorian. However, Basil does retract his comment (p111) and Lord Henry says the portrait and Dorian share a “wonderful likeness” (p26).
• Many times before, Dorian had been described with the likeness of a Greek god, and when he decides on his new way of life, he says how he will “be strong, and fleet, and joyous” like the gods of the Greeks (p103).
• Another reference to Dorian being made "god-like" is when Lord Henry says to Dorian: “[the world] has always worshiped you” (p.207).
• By the end, everything is terrible in Dorian’s life: he has killed Basil; inadvertently he had killed Sibyl too; and even when he’s with Lord Henry, he isn’t really absorbing any information. The finer moments of his life aren’t really present in the novel, there is no detail to persuade you that his life was truly pleasurable.
• It is difficult to determine whether or not Dorian actually matured as a person, we know from Lord Henry he “changed” (p206) but given how many times he is caught “crying as one whose heart will break” (p192) and one time Lord Henry noted he had “the most curiously boyish moods” (p201), it is not clear if his personal growth was not stunted with the portrait.
• He did, however, gain much experience throughout his life. At the beginning he was so young and innocent (p19), but in Dorian's last conversation with Basil he states: "I know the age better than you do" (p146), showing how he surpassed the experience and understanding of an older artist.
• Although opium bought Dorian oblivion (again throwing money at his problems), he also physically wanted to be “where no one would know who he was” (p179). Opium did not actually provide Dorian with everything he needed, which is why towards the end he was visiting a small village (p209).
• Even in moments of desperation when he does not want anyone to know who he is and needs an opium fix, Dorian is still philosophising (p180). He has become addicted to his way of life, it’s his second nature, perhaps even as much of a drug for him as the opium.

Basil’s character

• There are two key moments in the story where Basil is seen to be god-like, firstly as the creator of the painting and such beauty, although he is not the one to create the exchange between the portrait and Dorian. And then again when Basil exclaims he would have to see Dorian's soul to see if he actually knew him "but only God can do that." (p146). And Dorian, through the portrait, is able to show Basil his soul, meaning Basil can now do something only God can.
• Basil knew that Dorian would never truly know Lord Henry, as this is the description he gave of Lord Henry at the beginning: “I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. […] You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose” (p8).
  
  Given how many times Dorian says he can’t stand Lord Henry’s cynicism, it stands to reason that Dorian never realised the façade Lord Henry put on, especially when he says “[Lord Henry] was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of” (p111).

Character connections and similarities

• The painting is a connection between Dorian and Basil in the sense that Basil believed it showed the secret of his soul (p9), and later Dorian believes if Basil exhibits the painting the world would be shown his secret (p109).
  At the same time, Dorian thinks Basil knows little of the reason why he doesn’t want Basil to look at or exhibit the painting, little does he know, the basic reason is the same: there’s too much of them in it. Although Basil’s case would be subject to artistic interpretation as opposed to Dorian’s blatant display of immorality, this still likely means Basil would understand.
• A lot of Dorian’s life story is told through other people’s stories, whether they be books Dorian has read and related to, or stories told by him and other characters. In particular, a lot is found out about Dorian’s irregular behaviour from Basil’s concern in chapter XII, when Basil tells of everyone else’s misfortunes.
• Dorian seems to drift from one person and place to another, much like Sibyl did, and to the same end, his destruction.
• Lord Henry became just as petulant as Basil did when Dorian was taken away from his company (p54), it even makes Lord Henry a background character for six chapters while Dorian is elsewhere, although it is made clear that Lord Henry didn’t feel the slightest bit jealous (p56).
• Dorian thinks he is experiencing life and finding things out for himself, however, it seems he still listens to Lord Henry rather a lot. The general impression is that although Lord Henry has a high regard for Dorian, he is really just a puppet acting out someone else’s experiments. Dorian never seems to realise he is only trying to find the terms Lord Henry had pointed out as worthy of investigation.
• Dorian’s connection between the medieval poisons he was reading about and the book which had been his own poison (p140), leads one to wonder if he knew the book would be his own death? If so, when did he know? It seems he was quite sure of the journey he was to embark upon after Sibyl’s death, so did he not in a way commit a long drawn-out suicide?
• Lord Henry’s opinion of "after sunset" was: “One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner” (p203). Whereas Dorian reference reads: “Such hideous things were for the darkness” (p155). Dorian believed that there were things that could be done during the night, although they could not be done during the day.
• Dorian's realisation of the connection between him and the painting wasn’t discovered until after he had left Sibyl, which is the moment he supposedly became destructive. As there was such a time lapse between Lord Henry imposing his theories on Dorian and the portrait’s change, one can assume that had Dorian stayed ‘good’ the portrait would never have reflected this by becoming more beautiful. At best it was destined to show graceful aging which can be argued by the fact that his genuine love for Sibyl did nothing to enhance it. The exchange was always condemned to show exclusively negative attributes in the painting, whether they be natural aging or flaws on the soul, this could be because he only wished to be as beautiful.
• From a place of devotion and even inferiority, Sibyl innocently names Dorian “Prince Charming” (p53), a name which he voluntarily preserved the use of throughout his life. Then towards the end of his days, when in a conversation to rename Lord Henry, he chooses “Prince Paradox” (p186) as a rather accurate title. But does Dorian do so out of affection to make a similarity between the two, showing them individuals but from the same pack? Or is it a more subconscious choice, also coming from a place of devotion and inferiority?

Dorian’s and Sibyl’s fairytale continued

• Shortly after finding out about Sibyl’s death, Dorian wonders “had [Sibyl] cursed him, as she died?” (p102) Given that the last character she plays is Juliet and he generally loves her as this character (p74), it is easy to see how Dorian believes she “died for love of him” (p102). But what if his momentary thought of her cursing him was right? Instead of dying as Juliet, she had taken on the role of Mercutio, setting a plague upon Dorian’s house, as Mercutio famously does in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This would explain why the first change to the painting doesn’t take place until after her death.
  
  Alternatively, the actor who played Mercutio, mentioned on p80, could have been the one to cause the portraits exchange, done so out of love for the innocent girl lying dead on her dressing room floor.

• Dorian feels he doesn’t have what it takes to keep himself out of trouble and reproaches Sibyl for being selfish as he believes she could have saved him (p97). However, her “selfish” instant suicide somewhat mirrors the theory Dorian lived by to lead to his prolonged selfish suicide. Where she suddenly awoke in the real world to find pain and killed herself, Dorian awoke to find pleasure and passion but still ended up killing himself. Whether the actual suicidal act was accidental or not, throughout his life he degraded himself and many of those around him, committing murder and becoming mixed up with drugs, this if nothing else, amounts to a social suicide.
  
  However, as Lord Henry points out, their ‘love’ was another fairytale and not the reality of their future, so it is highly unlikely that he would have been saved by her.

• The lovers were like Romeo and Juliet, Sibyl even played her on stage while Dorian pined for her from the audience. When the metaphorical time came to take their poison, she remained faithful to tradition and died instantly. However, he twisted the story to his own new version by poisoning his mind with the book Lord Henry gave him (p140), to live on without her.
• Their love ending was also the end of fairytales in Dorian’s life, it made him grow up as it were. He entered the real world and “loved” only as others loved according to the narration, which was about a girl a week, making himself ordinary in the process.

Lord Henry’s theories

• “We want to have something that endures” (p15) – Lord Henry capturing the main point of the story. For Dorian, it was his youthful beauty; for Basil, it was Dorian's "goodness"; for Lord Henry it was his genius and "place".
• Dorian’s rant about the picture mocking him some day by not growing old (p28), mocks him anyway by growing old. So it is a no-win situation that Lord Henry presented him.
• In the opening pages of the story when Lord Henry is talking to Basil, Henry shares a theory as to why certain men age and others stay youthful in appearance. He seems to think that those who do not think during their lifetime will retain their youthful looks and feels that Dorian is one of these people (p7). Consequently, he gives Dorian the perfect excuse before he even needs it as to his unchanged appearance.
• The end of chapter XIX explains Lord Henry's views on a book poisoning a mind, or art provoking action, which he says neither are possible. But did Lord Henry really believe Dorian to be incorruptible when he gave him the "yellow book"?
• Lord Henry’s theory of painters: you can either live and not be good, or, not live and be good (p56). It is the balance of the world – Dorian brings out the esthetical beauty in Basil’s art and all of life’s horrors are left for himself. He is a new art movement that is beautiful, and a new manner of living that is ugly.
• “Harry is never wrong” (p189) when Dorian says this he is somewhat distracted from the conversation, but it seems that more than actually believing this himself, he uses it as a façade to protect his own reputation from prying eyes. However, by the time the novel reaches an end, Lord Henry has already had more than one theory of his proven erroneous by Dorian’s behaviour. Adding to this, in chapter XVII the Duchess openly challenges Lord Henry and his way of thinking.

Dorian theorising

• Lord Henry said he had “known everything” (p77) but Dorian goes on to prove him wrong when talking of Sibyl’s death, as he had never had someone kill themselves for love of him (p98).
• Dorian seemed to think that the picture “could grow bestial” (p118), it makes one wonder what he had planned from the beginning.
• Dorian wondered about which was worse, “the signs of sin or the signs of age” (p124). Reality has to be quite lost on you if you need that much time to ponder over it.

Sin

• When Dorian confesses to Lord Henry about his act of kindness towards Hetty, he is quite convinced that he has done the right thing, although he does point out it will sound vain (p200/201). However, Lord Henry tells him that it was merely a selfish act, planting doubt in Dorian’s mind and when he goes to check the picture he sees Lord Henry was right (p211).
  
  Given that Dorian instantly believes all of Lord Henry’s theories, it could be said that the idea of sin and his belief of committing it, is shaped by Lord Henry, much the same way his sense of beauty seems to be shaped by him and Basil. Since Dorian had not looked at the picture until after he spoke to Lord Henry, what might originally have been a good deed had then been turned into a sinful act through debate. Once the mind believes something, it shows on the soul. Of course, this theory depends on one’s beliefs of who chooses the definition of a sin: if it is arbitrary by a higher force, or if it is a subjective connection between the mind and soul.

• In the last chapter, Dorian makes references to two separate incidences that were committed in the moment, the first on p210: “What a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days”, and the second on the following page: “[Basil’s] murder had been simply the madness of a moment.”
  
  If we take only the first incident, it makes one wonder if it wasn’t just one unfortunate moment in Dorian’s youth that had caused his life long destruction. Could this maybe reflect real life pressures to decide your life’s ambition at such an inexperienced and impulsive age? If we take both incidents into account, it would seem that the loathing Dorian experienced actually came from the fact that Basil had made this decision possible. Basil at the time was a trusted adult, he should have known better than to indulge a young boy.

• It is pointed out that Dorian had “consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade” (p136), said in the same chapter that lists all the items he became obsessed with and “collected / possessed / studied”. Is this a subtle way of saying he in fact stole many, if not all, of these expensive items, as it does not explicitly say he bought them?
• “[Dorian] knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy” (p179). This line is taken from the chapter in the opium den, where Dorian is so desperate to be. Can he perhaps understand their journey between Heaven and Hell so well because his knowledge of their existence is why he is there in the first place?

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin Classics, 2009.