The Invisible Mentor

Booked for Mentoring: Book Review – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

November 1st, 2011 |

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel, and was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazinein 1890. It appeared in book form the following year, and six additional chapters were added. The book is beautifully written, and filled with a lot of wit, but the more I read through the literary classics on my adventure in learning, the more depressed they are making me feel. During and after I finished reading this book, there was a feeling of “heaviness” inside me. I ask myself, “Is it better to read passively, or read so actively that you feel deeply and experience what the characters are feeling?”

Cover of The Picture of Dorian Gray

I honestly do not know how to answer that question – I feel what I feel.

Quite accidentally, after I had read only a couple of chapters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I found a website that had a list of 100 must read books, but what I did not zero in on, was that it was a list for men. On this list was The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I wondered why it would be on a list of books for men to read, as I got into the book, there were several sections that were quite sexist in the way women were described. For instance, “Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.” And there are many other instances throughout the book.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a story about three friends, Lord Henry Wotton, the ultimate aesthete, Basil Hallward, a gifted artist, and Dorian Gray, their beautiful young protégé. Though the book is about morality, it’s also about the loss of innocence and the dangers of vanity. The picture referred to in the book is a metaphor for the soul.

As I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, I was reminded of the Serpent that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat the forbidden fruit, which she did and gave some to her husband Adam. Adam and Eve lost their innocence and were banished from the Garden of Eden. Harry corrupted Dorian, who also lost his innocence, and became in love with himself – Harry opened the gate of vanity within the young man.

Dorian is Basil’s muse!

There is something about the young man’s beauty that inspires Basil and brings out his best work – the artist is infatuated with the 18 year old. One day while Harry (Lord Henry) is visiting Basil he meets Dorian. Harry corrupts Dorian by whispering “poisonous” words in his ear and destroys the boy’s innocence. “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

Basil painted a beautiful picture of Dorian and gives it to him, and to date that painting is among his best work. After Harry corrupts Dorian on their first meeting, the young protégé sees himself in a new light, and is taken up with his beauty in the portrait. “The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before…as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.”

Dorian is overcome with a deep feeling of sadness when he realizes that the painting will always be young and beautiful, while he will age. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young…If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture was to grow old! For that – for that –I would give everything…I would give my soul.” This was the beginning of the end for Dorian.

Dorian falls suddenly in love with Sybil Vane, a beautiful and talented actress, but quickly rejects her one day for bad acting. Later the day of his rejection, she commits suicide by consuming prussic acid, a poison. The picture of Dorian changes around the mouth area. When he notices the change it shocks him because pictures are not supposed to change, and he refuses to let anyone view the portrait.

From that time, Dorian quickly descends into a life of excesses. In addition, Harry also gave him a novel to read – and Wilde doesn’t give the name of the book – which further poisons the young man’s mind. “It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue…It was a poisonous book…”

Dorian grew closer to Harry, the bad influence, and withdrew from Basil who he now found to be boring. Over the years, as Dorian lived his life of excesses, he poisoned everyone who he associated with, and as his dark personality evolved, his portrait absorbed his evil inclination and immoral life, and changed to reflect his darkened soul. Dorian, who was once admired, has now become the subject of gossip.

When he was close to 40 years old – Dorian hadn’t aged in appearance – Basil could not take the gossip and confronts his former protégé. In the heated conversation, Dorian shows Basil the changed portrait, and he discovers that things are much worse that he first thought. Basil begs Dorian to let them pray and ask for forgiveness, but the younger man thinks it’s too late for him. He murders Basil to keep his secret and the painting once again changes and this time it shows blood on the hand.

By threatening a former friend and chemist, Alan Campbell, Basil’s body is disposed of without leaving a trace. Alan later commits suicide. In the end, Dorian decides to get rid of the hideous portrait of himself and plunges the knife he used to kill Basil into it. Instead, the knife kills him and he becomes grotesque looking like the painting, and the painting is returned to its former beauty – the way Dorian Gray was before he lost his innocence.

This is a dark book, but despite that I often liked and enjoyed the witticisms and sayings of Harry (Lord Henry). It’s interesting the way Dorian blamed everyone but himself for his evil deeds. He blamed Basil for painting the portrait of him, he blamed Harry for giving him the book that poisoned him, but he never took responsibility for any of his actions.

Witty Sayings in The Picture of Dorian Gray

Genius lasts longer than Beauty.
It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.
Practical men want to see things, not to read about them.
People are fond of giving away what they most need themselves.
The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.

Though there was a feeling of “heaviness” inside of me during and after I read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, I still enjoyed and recommend it. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Further Reading/Viewing

The Picture of Dorian Gray Trailer YouTube video please click here.
Discussion Post: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Everlasting Beauty – The Picture of Dorian Gray