The Picture of Dorian Gray

Summary

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only novel, a moral fable told in the polished language of the London drawing room. In the studio of the painter Basil Hallward, the witty Lord Henry Wotton sees an unfinished portrait of an extraordinarily handsome young man and insists on meeting its subject. Dorian Gray, barely of age, listens in the garden as Lord Henry praises youth and beauty as the only things worth having and urges him to live for sensation. Looking at the finished portrait, Dorian wishes that the picture might grow old while he stays young, and that he would give his soul for it. The wish is granted. Dorian falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a seventeen-year-old actress playing Shakespeare's heroines in a shabby East End theater, and becomes engaged to her, though her brother James, about to sail for Australia, distrusts the gentleman she calls Prince Charming. When Sibyl, now in love with a real person, acts Juliet badly, Dorian rejects her with contempt. At home he notices a new line of cruelty about the mouth of the portrait. He resolves to make amends, but Lord Henry brings word that Sibyl took poison at the theater the night before, and he persuades Dorian to treat her death as an artistic tragedy. Dorian locks the portrait in the old schoolroom at the top of his house. Under the spell of a yellow-covered French novel Lord Henry sends him, he spends the next eighteen years collecting perfumes, music, jewels and embroideries, studying ritual and the lives of his ancestors, while rumors gather about the ruin of young men and women who have been his friends. His face stays young; the portrait ages and coarsens. On the eve of his thirty-eighth birthday Basil comes to plead with him, and Dorian shows him the picture. Basil begs him to pray, and Dorian kills him. He forces the chemist Alan Campbell, a former friend, to destroy the body. Seeking forgetfulness in an opium den by the docks, Dorian is confronted by James Vane, who lets him go because his face looks too young to be the man who wronged Sibyl; later Vane is accidentally shot by a guest at Dorian's country house, Selby Royal. Dorian tells Lord Henry he means to reform, having spared a village girl, but finds that the portrait shows only a new look of pretended goodness. He stabs the picture with the knife that killed Basil. His servants find the portrait restored to its first beauty and on the floor a withered, aged man with a knife in his heart, known only by his rings. A shorter version appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in July 1890; the library text is the revised and expanded book of 1891, with its Preface.

Plot or Argument

• The Preface

  A series of short aphorisms on art, beauty and criticism, ending with the claim that all art is quite useless, sets out the aesthetic creed Wilde defended after the magazine version drew hostile reviews.

• Chapters I–II: The portrait and the wish

  Basil Hallward tells Lord Henry why he will not exhibit his portrait of Dorian Gray: it shows too much of the painter's own devotion. Lord Henry meets Dorian and stirs him with a speech on youth and the new Hedonism, and before the finished canvas Dorian wishes that it might age instead of him.

• Chapters III–VI: Lord Henry's study and Sibyl Vane

  Lord Henry learns the romantic, violent story of Dorian's parents and resolves to shape the young man. Dorian falls in love with Sibyl Vane, whose mother hopes for a rich match and whose brother James vows to kill anyone who harms her; the engagement is announced to Basil and Lord Henry.

• Chapters VII–VIII: Cruelty and its first mark

  Sibyl acts badly before Dorian's friends, explaining that love has shown her the hollowness of the stage, and Dorian casts her off. The portrait shows a touch of cruelty about the mouth; Dorian writes asking her forgiveness, but Lord Henry arrives with the news of her suicide and talks him into calm.

• Chapters IX–XI: The hidden picture and the poisonous book

  Dorian refuses Basil's request to exhibit the portrait and has it carried to the locked schoolroom. A French novel sent by Lord Henry becomes the pattern of his life, and years pass in the pursuit of every refinement of sense while the picture records what his face does not.

• Chapters XII–XIV: Basil's death

  On a foggy November night Basil confronts Dorian with the rumors about him and asks to see his soul. Dorian shows him the portrait; Basil urges prayer and repentance, and Dorian stabs him. The next day Dorian blackmails Alan Campbell into dissolving the body with chemicals.

• Chapters XV–XVIII: Pursuit

  After a society dinner Dorian goes to an opium den, where James Vane seizes him and then releases him because he looks so young. At Selby Royal Dorian sees Vane's face at a window and falls ill with terror, until Vane is shot by accident during a shooting party in the woods.

• Chapters XIX–XX: Reform and the knife

  Dorian tells Lord Henry he has begun to be good and asks him about the soul; Lord Henry, unmoved, recalls a street preacher's question about gaining the world. Finding the portrait now marked by a look of pretended goodness, Dorian stabs it, and the servants find the picture young again and their master dead and changed.

Characters

• Dorian Gray, protagonist

  Beautiful, impressionable young heir whose wish lets his portrait bear the marks of age and sin while he stays young.

• Lord Henry Wotton, tempter

  Brilliant, idle aristocrat whose paradoxes and gift of a French novel shape Dorian's life, though he never acts on his own theories.

• Basil Hallward, painter

  Earnest artist who paints the portrait, worships Dorian's beauty, and is killed when he urges him to repent.

• Sibyl Vane, beloved

  Young actress of Shakespeare's heroines whose rejection by Dorian leads to her death.

• James Vane, avenger

  Sibyl's sailor brother who vows to kill the man who wronged her and hunts Dorian years later.

• Mrs. Vane, mother

  Sibyl's theatrical, impoverished mother, hopeful that Prince Charming is rich.

• Alan Campbell, former friend

  Chemist and musician whom Dorian forces to destroy Basil's body and who later takes his own life.

• Lord Fermor, informant

  Lord Henry's uncle, who tells the story of Dorian's mother and grandfather.

• Adrian Singleton, minor

  Young man of good family whom Dorian meets ruined in the opium den.

• The Duchess of Monmouth, minor

  Witty guest at Selby Royal who spars with Lord Henry.

Lessons

• Words that shape a life

  Lord Henry's garden speech and his yellow book change Dorian more than any event, yet Lord Henry himself lives a quiet, conventional life. Wilde shows the power of persuasive talk and the responsibility of those who give it, while leaving Dorian answerable for what he chooses.

  • What exactly does Lord Henry tell Dorian in the garden in Chapter II, and why does it move him?
  • Is Lord Henry guilty of Dorian's crimes, or only of his ideas?
  • Why does Lord Henry never notice what has happened to Dorian?

• Conscience made visible

  The portrait shows each choice as a mark on a face, and Dorian at last calls it conscience. The story imagines what would happen if a person could hide the effects of sin from others and from his own mirror, and it suggests that hiding them does not make them go away.

  • What is the first change in the portrait, and what caused it?
  • Why does Dorian keep the picture rather than destroy it at once?
  • What does the final scene suggest about who the real Dorian was?

• Beauty and goodness

  Dorian lives as if beauty excused everything, and the Preface claims that books are only well or badly written. The novel itself places those claims under strain, since its plot follows the moral consequences of Dorian's acts to the end.

  • Does the novel agree with its own Preface?
  • Why does Sibyl's acting fail once she loves Dorian?
  • Can a beautiful thing be evil?

• Late repentance and false repentance

  Basil tells Dorian that it is never too late to pray, and Dorian refuses. Later he tries to be good by sparing a village girl, but the portrait shows that he did it from vanity. Wilde distinguishes regret for consequences from true repentance.

  • What does Basil ask Dorian to do in Chapter XIII?
  • Why does the portrait grow worse after Dorian's good deed?

Context

The novel belongs to the London of the 1880s and 1890s, the world of the Aesthetic movement and its motto of art for art's sake, associated with Walter Pater, Whistler and Wilde himself. Its settings run from Mayfair drawing rooms and the opera to East End theaters and riverside opium dens. Lord Henry's talk of a new Hedonism echoes the conclusion to Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance, and the yellow French novel has often been identified with J.-K. Huysmans's À rebours (1884), though Wilde never named it in the novel.

Composition

Wilde wrote the first version for Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, which published it in thirteen chapters in July 1890. For the book edition, published by Ward, Lock and Co. in April 1891, he revised the text, added six chapters (including the Vane family scenes and James Vane's pursuit), divided the old last chapter, and prefixed the Preface, which had appeared in the Fortnightly Review in March 1891.

Reception

Several London reviewers attacked the magazine version as immoral, and Wilde answered them in letters to the press, insisting that the story had a moral. The book edition sold modestly at first. Passages from it were read aloud in cross-examination at the 1895 libel trial Wilde brought against the Marquess of Queensberry. The novel has since become one of the most widely read Victorian Gothic fictions and has been filmed and staged many times; critics have read it as a Faust story, a doppelgänger tale, a Christian parable, and a study of aestheticism, and they differ on how far Wilde endorsed Lord Henry's views.

Comparisons

• the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde

  Stevenson's 1886 novella also gives a respectable gentleman a second self that carries his vices; Jekyll's double is a drug-made body, Dorian's a painted face, and both end in a death that unites the two.

• frankenstein

  Both books follow a young man whose wish to escape natural limits produces a creature, a monster or a portrait, that turns his own guilt back on him.

• metamorphoses

  Ovid's Narcissus, who falls in love with his reflection, is the classical pattern for Dorian kissing the painted lips and growing enamoured of his own beauty.

• romeo-and-juliet

  Sibyl Vane plays Juliet on the night Dorian first sees her and on the night he rejects her; the contrast between Shakespeare's faithful lovers and Dorian's cruelty frames the novel's first tragedy.

• confessions

  Augustine's account of stealing pears for the pleasure of the sin and of his long delay in conversion offers a Christian anatomy of desire and repentance that can be set beside Dorian's refusal to pray.

• poe-tales

  Poe's Fall of the House of Usher and Masque of the Red Death share the novel's atmosphere of shut rooms, rare objects and a refined life haunted by corruption.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Lord Henry's speech in the garden in Chapter II and the moment Dorian makes his wish before the finished portrait.
• The first change in the picture after Dorian rejects Sibyl in Chapter VII.
• The yellow book in Chapters X–XI and how it shapes Dorian's way of life over the years.
• Basil's plea to pray in Chapter XIII, including the verses he tries to remember.
• What the portrait shows after Dorian's attempt to reform in Chapter XX.

Key terms and names

Aestheticism

The late-Victorian movement prizing beauty and art for their own sake, voiced in the Preface and in Lord Henry's talk.

New Hedonism

Lord Henry's name in Chapter II for a life devoted to the experience of the senses, which Dorian later tries to live out.

Paradox

A statement that seems self-contradictory but may hold a truth; Lord Henry speaks in paradoxes that the plot tests.

The schoolroom

The locked room at the top of Dorian's house where the portrait is hidden and where Basil dies.

Prince Charming

Sibyl's name for Dorian, whose real name she does not know, which later lets James Vane hunt him.

Selby Royal

Dorian's country estate, inherited through his mother, where the shooting party ends James Vane's pursuit.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Dorian wish for in Chapter II, and what makes him wish it?
2. Comprehension Why does Dorian break with Sibyl Vane, and what happens to her?
3. Comprehension How does James Vane find Dorian, and why does he let him go the first time?
4. Interpretation Basil says the prayer of Dorian's pride was answered. What does he mean, and is he right?
5. Interpretation Why does Wilde make Lord Henry a man who talks about sin but never seems to commit one?
6. Interpretation Dorian's last act is an attempt to destroy his conscience. Why does it kill him instead?
7. Big Question If no one could ever see the effects of your choices, would those choices still change you?
8. Big Question Can art be judged only by whether it is well made, or does it also answer to goodness?

Faith Connections

• Mark 8:36 (Scripture)

  Lord Henry half-remembers this verse in Chapter XIX; Dorian's bargain for unending youth is a literal case of gaining the world and losing the soul.

• Isaiah 1:18 (Scripture)

  Basil tries to recall this promise that sins as scarlet may become white as snow, offering Dorian forgiveness at the very moment Dorian turns to murder.

• 1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)

  Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart; the novel splits Dorian's appearance from his heart and lets the portrait show what God sees.

• Augustine, Confessions II (Church Fathers)

  Augustine's theft of pears for the sheer pleasure of wrongdoing anatomizes the love of sin for its own sake that Lord Henry recommends and Dorian practices.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If the outward effects of sin could be hidden, a person might believe himself free of them; but the soul still bears them, and an attempt to destroy conscience destroys the self.

Rhetorical device: paradox. Lord Henry's line in Chapter II that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it reverses ordinary moral wisdom, and the novel's plot tests it.

Debate: Resolved: that Lord Henry bears moral responsibility for Dorian Gray's crimes.

Memory Work

The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also.

It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue whether the Preface's claim that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book is supported or contradicted by the plot of the novel.

Comparison with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Compare Jekyll's potion and Dorian's portrait as ways of hiding a second self: what does each story say about whether the hidden self can be kept apart?

Medical Lens

The novel is steeped in late-Victorian ideas about mind, body and inheritance. Lord Henry treats people as subjects for what the narrator calls the experimental method, describing a psychology of impulse and sensation that reflects contemporary physiological psychology. In Chapter XI Dorian wonders whether he inherited his ancestors' passions as if by contagion, a theme close to the heredity and degeneration theories then current. Opium appears from Lord Henry's opium-tainted cigarettes in Chapter I to the riverside den in Chapter XVI, where the narrator describes Dorian's craving in physical terms and the ruined Adrian Singleton shows its cost. Sibyl Vane dies after swallowing a theatrical preparation that Lord Henry guesses was prussic acid or white lead, and Alan Campbell, a chemist, later takes his own life. The portrait itself works as a figure of the body bearing what the mind conceals; readers sometimes describe Dorian in modern psychological terms, but such readings interpret a supernatural fable rather than a case history.

• Chapter IV

  Lord Henry reflects on studying Dorian by the experimental method and on psychology as a science of the passions.

  Psychology Unconscious Mind Body
• Chapter VIII

  Lord Henry reports Sibyl's death at the theater from a swallowed substance he supposes was prussic acid or white lead, and the inquest that will follow.

  Suicide Pharmacology Poisons
• Chapter XI

  Dorian walks the portrait gallery at Selby and imagines inheriting the sins and passions of his ancestors.

  Heredity Degeneration
• Chapter XIV

  Alan Campbell, a chemist with his own laboratory, is forced to destroy Basil's body with chemicals; a smell of nitric acid remains.

  Pharmacology Poisons
• Chapter XVI

  Dorian drives through the night to an opium den by the river, gripped by a physical craving; he meets Adrian Singleton there.

  Opium Laudanum Addiction
• Chapter XX

  Dorian's body, found beside the restored portrait, is withered and aged beyond recognition.

  Aging Senescence Mind Body

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Take three aphorisms from the Preface and test each one against an event in the novel. Does the story support or unsettle them?

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Basil and Lord Henry after Dorian's engagement to Sibyl, each predicting what the marriage will do to Dorian.

• Fiction

  Retell Chapter VII from Sibyl Vane's point of view, from the moment she steps on stage until Dorian leaves.

• Classroom

  Trace each change in the portrait through the novel and match it to the act that caused it, then discuss what the last change, a look of feigned virtue, means.

Further Reading

• The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

• The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Oscar Wilde

  Wilde's fairy tales, which share the novel's concern with beauty, sacrifice and the soul.

• Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellmann

• Studies in the History of the Renaissance, Walter Pater

  Its conclusion on burning with a hard, gem-like flame lies behind Lord Henry's creed.

• À rebours (Against Nature), J.-K. Huysmans

  The French novel often identified with the yellow book Lord Henry sends Dorian.