Setting. Setting. Setting. Oh how perfect the setting is for this novel.
This novel is set in the wealthy and influential circles of the Victorian era in England. The Victorian era is characterized by Victorian morality: a morality, or at least an appearance of morality, practiced by the people of England at this time. It was a morality that indulged in prudence, purity and a hard-work ethic in the day only to flock to the brothels and opium-dens as soon as the sun fell. This era ‒ one of social contradiction‒ was the era of Oscar Wilde and the backdrop for The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This book was a wild ride from start to finish. The synopsis is quite straightforward. Dorian Gray, the central focus of the novel, is a young, innocent and beautiful heir to a sizeable fortune. Basil Hallward is a painter who becomes infatuated with Dorian’s beauty and paints a lifesize portrait of him to memorialize his youth and innocence. Dorian, upon seeing the portrait, grows to realize his own beauty, becomes infatuated with the portrait’s life, and wishes for his own youth be as the painting, permanent, while the painting’s beauty to decay and wither with the passing of time. His wish comes true. As Dorian Gray destroys relationships, takes away lives, and pursues pleasure, passion and decadence, his own countenance stays young, innocent, and pure, while the painting, now a mirror of his soul, continues to decay into corruption. One of my favorite lines from the novel is this chiasmus:
“To cure the soul by means of the senses and the senses by means of the soul!”
This paradoxical nature of Dorian perfectly complements the social contradiction of the Victorian era mentioned previously.
One of Dorian’s friends, Lord Henry, comments on his beauty: “I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.” This is the great irony of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Everyone: Dorian’s close friends, acquaintances, even enemies, praise Dorian’s youth. Everyone except Dorian. Because only he realizes the shallow nature of his purity. A truly beautiful flower wanes over time. The flower’s scent and touch rises and fades with the season, but Dorian is in a state of constant bloom: beautiful from a distance, but without scent, delicacy, or purpose. He lives forever in state of imitation of beauty, never the real thing. Near the end of the novel, he comes to this realization: “His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.”
I think I liked The Picture of Dorian Gray so much because of how philosophical it was. I chose to reflect on youth and innocence, but I could’ve have discussed one of the other dozen themes that appear in the book: Victorian morality, Aestheticism, vanity, purity, culture, life, death, and sexuality. Since it’s Wilde’s own thoughts on culture and society that he gives through his characters, this novel is a fascinating window into the philosophical world of a legendary writer.
“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be — in other ages, perhaps.”
-Oscar Wilde
The book for the upcoming week is Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.