Preface to Chapter Two

a) Character Study

• Lord Henry Wotton
  • clever and scandalously amoral
  • Basil warns Dorian that Lord Henry is a bad influence
  • exercises influence over other characters primarily through his skillful use of language
    • his brilliant speech is a much more influential force than Dorian's aesthetic beauty
    • witty and biting epigrams threaten to seduce not only the impressionable young Dorian but the reader as well
    • ironic speech cuts through social convention and hypocrisy to reveal unexpected, unpleasant truths
  • the characters whose lifestyles Lord Henry criticizes resist his extreme theories
    • their position and comfort depend upon the hypocrisies he tends to expose
  • to some degree, every character in the novel is seduced by Lord Henry’s philosophies
    • Dorian Gray more so than anyone else
• Dorian Gray
  • a gorgeous, golden-haired young man
  • an object of fascination and obsession for Basil
  • according to Basil, Dorian has a “simple and a beautiful nature” that could easily be spoiled by Lord Henry’s cynicism
    • Dorian seems intrigued by the idea that Lord Henry is a bad influence
    • Basil’s fear is well founded, as before the end of his first conversation with Lord Henry, Dorian is “dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him.”
  • beauty that seduces the characters with whom he associates
  • an incredibly impressionable young man
• Basil Hallward
  • a well-known artist
  • admits that he cannot bring himself to exhibit the portrait of Dorian Gray because the piece betrays the “curious artistic idolatry” that Dorian inspires in him
    • sees him everyday and claims that he is his sole inspiration
    • an object of fascination and obsession for him
    • admits that Dorian has had “
      
      ome subtle influence” over him
      • it is this influence that he is certain that his painting reveals
  • a serious artist and rather dull moralist

b) Notes

• Aestheticism
  • the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is a collection of epigrams that aptly sums up the philosophical tenets of the artistic and philosophical movement known as aestheticism
  • art need not serve moral, political, or otherwise didactic ends
  • denied that art must necessarily be an instructive force in order to be valuable
    • the romantic movement of the early and mid-nineteenth century viewed art as a product of the human creative impulse that could be used to learn more about humankind and the world
    • art should be valuable in and of itself
      • art for art's sake
  • flourished partly as a reaction against the materialism of the burgeoning middle class
    • assumed to be composed of philistines who responded to art in a generally unrefined manner
      • individuals ignorant of art
    • the artist could assert him- or herself as one leading the search for beauty in an age marked by shameful class inequality, social hypocrisy, and bourgeois complacency
  • Oscar Wilde's determination to live a life of beauty and to mold his life into a work of art is reflected in the beliefs and actions of several characters
• The Picture of Dorian Gray has often been compared to the famous German legend of Faust
  • immortalized in Christopher Marlowe’s sixteenth-century play Doctor Faustus and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s nineteenth-century poem Faust
  • legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities
    • Dorian Gray trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth
• The Picture of Dorian Gray was met with harsh criticism
  • many considered the novel dangerously subversive
    • overtones of supernaturalism
    • its refusal to satisfy popular morality
    • its portrayal of homoerotic culture

c) Quotes

We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. . . . 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. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

• Lord Henry begins his seduction of Dorian’s mind with these words
• Lord Henry advocates a return o the sensibilities of ancient Greece where the appreciation of beauty and pleasure reigned
  • believes that the present mode of living is marked by a morality that demands self-denial
• the outcome of denial is only a stronger desire for that which has been denied
• a bold challenge to conventional and restrictive Victorian morality
  • dismisses the notion of sin as a figment of the imagination
    • if sin is relegated to the mind then it should follow that the body is free from the effects of sin
      • Dorian’s tragedy, then, is that he is unable to purge his “monstrous and unlawful” acts from his conscience
• Lord Henry has failed to put his philosophy to the test
  • although he is a great advocate of sin, he is hardly physical sins
  • his understanding of the soul never incorporates the knowledge that Dorian gradually acquires
    • sickened or otherwise

Chapters Three and Four

a) Character Study

• Dorian Gray
  • comes from an unhappy family with a dark history
    • his mother, a noblewoman, eloped with a poor soldier
    • his grandfather arranged to have his daughter’s husband killed just before Dorian was born
      • mother died soon thereafter, leaving Dorian to be raised by his loveless tyrannical grandfather
  • falls in love with Sybil Vane
    • an actress who plays Shakespeare’s heroines in repertoire in a cheap London theater
  • discovered her by wandering through the slums because he was inspired by Lord Henry to know everything about life
  • Lord Henry’s hopes to dominate and influence him have more or less been fulfilled
    • gives his affections over largely because of Lord Henry’s conversational skill
• Lord Henry
  • argues the virtues of hedonism and selfishness and mocks his aunt’s philanthropic efforts
  • insists that one’s life should be spent appreciating beauty and seeking out pleasure rather than searching for ways to alleviate pain and tragedy
    • while guests were offended, his cleverness charmed them in spite of themselves
  • the possibility of having a profound effect on a person seduces him
  • in his mind, life and art are not only connected but interchangeable
    • considers the life of another human being a viable medium for artistic expression
      • “
        
        he new manner in art” that Wilde so tirelessly advocated
      • imagines that he will take his place among such masters as Michelangelo, with whom he shares the imperative to create something of beauty
  • willingness to watch Dorian’s development with practically no thought of consequence
    • heartless
    • Dorian's beauty is all that matters to him
      • behavior links Lord Henry to the tenets of aestheticism
        • beauty is of primary importance
        • vice and virtue are nothing more than “materials for an art.”
  • unlike Dorian, he acts on nothing that would damage his respectable reputation or life
    • only a great talker and philosopher

b) Notes

• Gothic fiction was tremendously popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
  • focused on tales of romance, cruelty, and horror
  • Dorian’s mysterious and melodramatic heritage alludes to conventions of the Gothic novel

Chapters Five and Six

a) Character Study

• Sibyl Vane
  • eems to fulfill Lord Henry’s observation that “
    
    omen are a decorative sex.”
  • little substance to her character
  • emerges as a rather foolishly romantic young woman
    • perfectly content to fall in love with a stranger whom she knows only by the fairy-tale name with which she has christened him
    • deliriously happy over her romance with Dorian Gray
• James Vane
  • Sibyl's younger brother
  • a sailor preparing to depart for Australia
  • cautious over his sister and Dorian Gray
    • doubts his intentions and his mother's ability to protect Sibyl from them
  • swears that if Dorian ever hurts Sibyl, he will track him down and kill him
• Lord Henry
  • ego-driven philosophy of women as ornaments
  • insistence on the necessity of individualism
  • advocates that nothing should hinder the freedom of the artistic individual’s development

b) Notes

• Homoerotic male relationships
  • relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian
  • relationship between Basil and Dorian
  • shocked contemporary readers who valued Victorian respectability
  • Wilde stops short of stating that Basil and Lord Henry have sexual feelings for Dorian
    • the language he uses to describe their devotion to Dorian is unmistakably the language of deep, romantic intimacy
    • language of irony facilitates dodging direct statements
  • the novel’s heterosexual relationships prove to be rather superficial and short-lived
• Male-centered focus of Wilde’s narrative gaze
  • misogynistic
    • most of the women in the novel are depicted with no real depth
  • men matter most in The Picture of Dorian Gray
    • particularly their relationships and the influence they bring to bear upon one another
• Individualism
  • took center stage as a mode of thinking during the nineteenth century
  • first celebrated by the Romantics
    • early 1800s
    • free and spontaneous expression of the self was the true source of art and literature
    • rejected the eighteenth-century sensibility that sought to imitate and reproduce the classical models of ancient Greece and Rome
      • too stylized to allow for the expression of anything genuine or relevant
  • the self as the center of creation
    • emphasized personal freedom, sensory experience, and the special status of the artist

c) Quotes

“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,” he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. “Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s own life—that is the important thing. As for the lives of one’s neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one’s moral views about them, but they are not one’s concern. Besides, Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality."

• Lord Henry chastises Dorian for dismissing, in the face of love, all of his “wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories"
• expounds on the virtues of individualism
  • dictate that one develop according to one’s own standards
  • outlook relies on Darwinism
    • a fashionable theory at the time
    • asserted that an organism’s development would be altered or impaired if it were made to adjust to the standards of another organism
    • he and Dorian are creatures that require different standards than the masses in order to develop fully
    • contrary to the principle, he not only does his best to insinuate himself between Dorian and Sibyl, but he also takes up Dorian’s proper social development as his pet cause.
• Lord Henry readily rejects modern morality, which governs the many, in favor of a self-determined morality that applies only to himself

Chapters Five and Six

a) Character Study

• Sibyl Vane
  • realizes that her pretend emotions she plays as an actress no longer interest her, since they pale in relation to her real feelings for Dorian
  • her devotion to Dorian and her grief over losing him is a bit melodramatic
    • a rather thinly drawn character
  • serves two important functions
    • forces us to question what precisely art is and when its effects are good
    • shows the pernicious consequences of a philosophy that places beauty and self-pleasure above consideration for others
  • tragic fate enables us to be as critical of Wilde’s philosophies
    • as he himself was at the end of his life
  • claim that Dorian gives her “something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection” stands in undeniable contrast to Lord Henry’s philosophy
• Dorian Gray
  • romance with Sibyl represents the possibility that he will not accept Lord Henry’s philosophy
    • will instead learn to prize human beings and emotions over art
    • love for her allows him to resist Lord Henry’s seductive words
  • the extent of Lord Henry’s influence is painfully clear as Dorian heartlessly snubs Sibyl
    • just as Lord Henry appreciates Dorian as a work of art rather than as a human being, what Dorian values most about Sibyl is her talent as an actress
      • her ability to portray an ideal, not her true self
  • feels numb rather than anguished about Sibyl's death
  • Sibyl’s philosophy of art as a reflection of grand emotions is echoed in the very portrait of Dorian
    • it is a reflection of Dorian’s true self
• Lord Henry
  • believes that art is the highest experience
    • life imitates art rather than vice versa
  • delights in ignoring the significance of human emotions
  • convinces Dorian not to wallow in guilt but to regard Sibyl’s suicide as a perfect artistic representation of undying love and appreciate it as such

b) Notes

• The aging of Dorian’s likeness in his portrait
  • ultimately contradicts some of Lord Henry’s—and Wilde’s—beliefs about art
    • the painting does not exist in a moral vacuum
    • the painting both shows the deleterious effects of sin and gives Dorian a sense of freedom from morality
      • it influences and is influenced by morality
  • acts as a “visible emblem of conscience”
  • reflection of Dorian’s true self

Chapter Nine and Ten

a) Character Study

• Dorian Gray
  • Sibyl’s death compels Dorian to make the conscious decision to embrace Lord Henry’s philosophy of selfishness and hedonism wholeheartedly
  • uses many of the same phrases and arguments that Lord Henry favors
  • evokes a similar air of unaffected composure
  • Dorian thinks of Sibyl’s death as he would the death of a character in a novel or painting
  • chooses not to be affected emotionally by her passing
  • passes “into the sphere of art” when his portrait reflects the physical manifestations of age and sin
    • while it is usually paintings that never age and people who do, it is the other way around with Dorian
      • he has become more like a work of art than a human
• Basil
  • blames Lord Henry for Dorian’s heartless attitude
    • horrified at the change
  • translates his highly emotional and physical feelings for Dorian into his art
    • his act of painting is an expression of his love
    • romantic devotion to Dorian becomes clear when he admits his reason for not wanting to exhibit the painting is that he fears that people will see his “idolatry"
    • this love might have saved Dorian from Lord Henry’s influence

b) Notes

• The "yellow book"
  • given to Dorian by Lord Henry
  • traces the life of a young Parisian who devotes his life to “all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own"
  • acts almost as a guide for the journey on which he is to travel
    • like the protagonist of that novel, Dorian spirals into a world of self-gratification and exotic sensations
  • Dorian finds the work to be “a poisonous book"
    • one that confuses the boundaries between vice and virtue
  • based in part on the nineteenth-century French novel À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans
    • Against the Grain” or “Against Nature
    • a decadent and wealthy Frenchman indulges himself in a host of bizarre sensory experiences
  • has profound influence on Dorian
  • one might argue that it leads to his downfall
    • occurs not because the book itself is immoral but because Dorian allows the book to dominate and determine his actions so completely
      • becomes a doctrine as limiting and stultifying as the common Victorian morals from which he seeks escape
      • Lord Henry is a great fan of the yellow book, but he does not let it dominate his life or determine his actions
        • it is no greater or more important than any other work of notable art
        • allows him to retain the respectability that Dorian soon loses
• Basil’s declaration of his obsession with Dorian is in many ways a defense and justification of homosexual love
  • in 1895, Wilde was famously convicted of sodomy for his romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas
    • five years after Dorian Gray was published
    • defended homosexual love as an emotion experienced by some of the world’s greatest men
      • insisted that it had its roots in ancient Greece and was, therefore, fundamental to the development of Western thought and culture
      • testimony is strikingly similar to Dorian’s reflection upon the kind of affection that Basil shows him

Chapter Eleven and Twelve

a) Character Study

• Dorian Gray
  • character begins to change under the influence of the “yellow book”
  • remains young and beautiful, but he is trailed by rumors that he indulges in dark, sordid behavior
    • people cannot help but dismiss these stories, since Dorian’s face retains an unblemished look of “purity” and “innocence.”
    • delights in the ever-widening gulf between the beauty of his body and the corruption of his soul
  • intellectually curious
    • keeps up on the theories of the day
      • mysticism, antinomianism, Darwinism
  • devotes himself to the study of beautiful things
    • perfumes and their psychological effects, music, jewelry, embroideries, and tapestries
  • fears that someone will break into his house and steal the painting
    • many men would delight in his downfall
  • many of his friendships have ended disastrously
    • one boy committed suicide
    • others had their careers or reputations ruined
  • he exhibits inhuman behavior as he carelessly tosses aside his protégés
    • he never completely sheds his conscience
    • does not simply devolve into a villain
  • search for artistic and intellectual enlightenment is an attempt to find refuge from the struggle between mindless egotism and gnawing guilt
  • lives a life marked by fear and suspicion
    • finds it difficult to leave London for fear that someone will find the portrait in his absence
  • greatest reason for indulging is his disenchantment with the age in which he lives
  • Dorian is supposedly the personification of a type who lives his life as an individualist
    • a perfect blend of the scholar and the socialite
    • paradoxically, even the tenets of Dorian’s “new Hedonism” prove constricting

b) Notes

• Dorian's behavior is, in part, a function of the Gothic nature of Wilde’s tale
  • mysterious, potentially dangerous behavior contributes to the novel’s darkness
• The 1890s in England and Europe were marked by a world-weary sensibility that sought to free humanity from “the asceticism that deadens the senses.”
  • commonly called the fin-de-siècle (French for “end of the century”) period
  • referred primarily to artistic styles known as naturalism and realism
    • both of which aimed at reproducing the world as it is and ascribed a moral purpose to art
  • as Dorian lives his life under the rubric of aesthetic philosophy, he comes to appreciate the seductive beauty of the darker side of life

c) Quotes

Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to re-create life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.

• describes how Dorian devotes himself to acquiring as many experiences as possible
  • adjusting to the strange privilege that his portrait affords him
  • in order to discover “the true nature of the senses,” Dorian studies rare musical instruments, the arts of jewelry and embroidery, and the psychological effects of perfume
  • begins to devote his time to more sordid affairs, the nature of which is never perfectly clear
    • connected with the downfall of numerous youths whom have been brought to shame by their associations with him
      • some even driven to suicide
• the outcome of these experiences is not the point of the philosophy by which Dorian lives
  • the experience itself is what matters
• This “new Hedonism” is a form of resistance against the conventional morality that Lord Henry spends so much of his time criticizing

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrées, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

• the novel’s only lapse into first-person narration
  • Wilde appears from behind the scenes to comment on civilized society
    • asks the reader if the insincerity necessary to conduct oneself in polite society is “such a terrible thing,” and admits that, in his opinion, it is not
    • points, rather unapologetically, to the surface nature of the society in which he lives and repeats a favorite epigram that he also includes in his play Lady Windermere’s Fan
      • “manners are of more importance than morals.”
• Despite the corrupt nature of Dorian’s soul and despite his utter lack of an acceptable moral code, he continues to be welcomed into society merely because he looks good.

Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen

a) Character Study

• Dorian
  • decides not to brood on his actions for fear of making himself ill or mad
  • hatred for Basil
  • remains worthy of sympathy because we see clearly the failure of his struggle to rise above a troubled conscience
    • wants nothing more than to be able to shrug off his guilt
      • draws and soon remarks that “every face that he drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward.”
      • the hedonistic Dorian betrays his gnawing conscience
• Basil
  • acts as a sort of moral ballast
    • reminding Lord Henry and Dorian of the price that must be paid for their pleasure seeking
  • provides a fascinating counterpoint to the philosophy by which Dorian lives
    • refuses to believe that the dissipation of a soul can occur without notice
    • “
      
      f a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.”
• Alan Campbell
  • a young scientist
  • Dorian's former friend from whom he has grown distant
    • the two were, at one point, inseparable
    • undertones of a homosexual relationship
  • introduced and rather quickly ignored
    • a seemingly inconsequential character
    • like the other secondary characters in the novel
    • his appearance, however, plays a vital role in establishing the darkening mood of the novel.
  • the macabre experiments that he is accustomed to conducting as a chemist provide him with the knowledge that Dorian finds so necessary
  • the secrets that surround his personal life contribute to the air of mystery that surrounds Dorian
  • serves as an important indicator of the social prejudices and punishments in Wilde’s time

b) Notes

• The murder of Basil root the novel firmly in the Gothic tradition
  • the gruesome way it is reflected in the portrait
    • “as though the canvas had sweated blood”
  • darkness and supernatural horrors reign
  • in this setting, it becomes a challenge for Wilde to keep his hero from becoming a flat archetype of menacing evil
    • he manages to keep Dorian a somewhat sympathetic character
• Wilde’s love of contradiction
  • “The Truth of Masks”
    • wrote that “
      
      Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.”
  • the truth of The Picture of Dorian Gray, if one is to be found, emerges from oppositions
    • art depends as much upon horror as it does upon “marvelous beauty"
    • one’s being is always the synthesis of a “Heaven and Hell"
• It is significant that the reader never learns the details of the circumstances by which Dorian blackmails Campbell.
  • the reader can assume that Campbell’s transgression is of a sexual nature
    • Wilde’s increasingly indiscreet lifestyle
    • increasingly hostile social attitudes toward homosexuality that flourished at the end of the nineteenth century
  • In 1885, the British Parliament passed the Labouchere Amendment
    • widened prohibitions against male homosexual acts to include “gross indecency”
      • oral sex
      • carried a two-year prison term
      • Wilde himself was eventually found guilty of this offense
    • originally only applied to sodomy
      • punishable by death until 1861
    • commonly known as the Blackmailer’s Charter