The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - Dorian Gray character review

(Wilde 2013)

When I first read the list of the books we have to choose for the next semester I was really happy to see that 3 or 4 of them were already read in the past and 2 of them were one of my favourites. It was really hard to choose between The Picture of Dorian Gray which is one of my all time favourites, Wuthering Heights which I loved and read 2 times before and watched the film several times (just as I also did with Dorian Gray), and Dracula which I didn't really love, but it was fun to read and also was about a legendary myth about my country, more exactly about Transylvania region of Romania, about Count Dracula (alias Vlad the Impaler). Anyway, after researching a bit about all of these books, I decided on The Picture of Dorian Gray, as I was absolutely in love with the depths of this character and also wanted to create my own version of him (who wouldn't want to?!).

So to begin I have to admit that I didn't re-read the whole book as I've read it in the past about 2 or 3 times and I know that everytime you read a book the meanings change as you grow and change yourself, but that's where I used the internet sources to refresh my memory. Instead, I focused on reading the part that interested me the most to know more for the future development of my character.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was the only novel written by Oscar Wilde (SparkNotes 2016) and was first published in June 1890 and, as Richard Elmann has put it, "after this date Victorian literature had a different look". It was published in the last decade of Wilde's life, at the climax of his notoriousness, and made his name almost associate with the novel. Nowadays, this decade is recognised as fin de siecle literature, but also as a period of transition between Victorian and modern literature. 
The Picture of Dorian Gray is referred to as a novel, but in essence is entirely different from the mainstream nineteenth-century English fiction. Characters are described in certain respects in very much detail, named with usual names and accurate socially and geographically-located (even concerning clothes, furnishings, beauty ideals etc) (Page 1998).
 Oscar Wilde's novel is extraordinary complex and is a superb representation of late-Victorian Gothic fiction. "Dark desires and forbidden pleasure are at the centre of The picture of Dorian Gray." The novel examines the relationship between art and reality, morality, playing with the notions of both ethics and aestethics as well as with the relationship with the artist, the muse and artist's work. The book explores the darkest secrets,the private desires of the Victorian society that were well hidden in front of the world, "behind acceptable public faces". The idea of a double life, of the guilt but the gratification and the excitement of it, constitutes the main topic of the novel. Dorian Gray was able to enjoy the best of both worlds, the respectable and the decadent one. "The very definition of ‘decadence’ distilled into a single person and a disturbing example of the split between the wholesome public persona and the furtive private life." (Buzzwell), and that single person can be just the one and only Dorian Gray, "this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves".Dorian, as Oscar Wilde depicts him since the first page of his book, is "a young man of extraordinary personal beauty", an Victorian Adonis, "whose mere personality was so fascinating" and dominating at the same time. When speaking about pshysical characteristics, he was described as "a little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty", the representation of art for the artist "he is all my art to me now", but "certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair". He was "all the candour of youth" as well as "youth's passionate purity", "unspotted from the world". His hair was blonde, with "gilded threads" and "rebellious curls", and he had a "wonderfully beautiful face" with a healthy-pale complexion - that can be deduced when Lord Henry sais to him "You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming." (Wilde 1994).There are two really important characters that influence Dorian: artist Basil Hallward who painted him and represents somehow the good and Lord Henry Wotton, Basil's friend, who represents the decadence and the bad influence. When Dorian sees his own portrait, he realises that he will only remain like that in the painting and his youthfulness and beauty will fade and in the end dissapear, and terrified of this thought he offers his soul to keep him forever youthful and to make the painting age instead of him. At the beginning he was pure, untainted, the outside beauty reflecting the inside, but as he becomes aware of his beauty and takes advantage of it he starts changing into a monster, and the only reflection of his true self being the picture which reflected his soul, becoming his conscience. He lives a double life full of crimes, drugs, and other immoralities, but his appearance remains untainted, only the picture changes, becoming what Dorian adored and feared the most. He adored it because it have him pleasure to see that only the picture grows old and monstruous, and that his youth cannot be touched by his sins but also because of it he was always to be "burdened by his past". He feared that somebody, somehow will get to see the picture that he locked up in his house and eventually figure out how the real Dorian Gray was, so he wanted to destroy the painting, just as he did with the painter, Basil, his friend whom he killed. And he did it. He destroyed the painting, but the painting was his soul, the painting was his life. And that's how the story of Dorian Gray ends: with him found dead, stabbed with a knife in his heart and "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage", unrecognizable, with the painting "hanging upon the wall" showing him "in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty" (Wilde 1994). The spell was broken.


References:

1. Wilde, O., 1994. The Picture of Dorian Gray. England: Penguin Books.
2. Page, N./Wilde, O., 1998. Introduction. In: Page, N. ed. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Canada: Broadview Press, pp. 7-11, 14-18, 21-24, 27-29,           . Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=ro&lr=&id=SxQAr_rvRwMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=the+picture+of+dorian+gray&ots=uL9AJMi70S&sig=2WwawwN5FF79P73e-J9Pw97DXXY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false (Accessed: 2 January 2016).
3. Wilde, O., 2013. The picture of Dorian Gray. Available at: https://shop.rocksolidinc.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-p4508.aspx (Accessed: 2 January 2016).
4. SparkNotes, 2016. The picture of Dorian Gray. Available at: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/ (Accessed: 2 January 2016).
5. Buzwell, G. (no date) The Picture of Dorian Gray: art, ethics and the artist - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-art-ethics-and-the-artist#sthash.BxuQMMjW.dpuf. Available at: http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-art-ethics-and-the-artist (Accessed: 2 January 2016).