The Picture of Dorian Greyness is Oscar Wilde'south one novel, published originally in 1890 (every bit a serial) and then in book form the post-obit year. The novel is at once an example of late Victorian Gothic horror and, in some ways, the greatest English-language novel well-nigh decadence and aestheticism, or 'art for art's sake'.

To bear witness how these themes and movements observe their way into the novel, it's necessary to offer some words of assay. But before we analyse The Picture show of Dorian Gray, information technology might be worth summarising the plot of the novel.

The Picture of Dorian Greyness : summary

The three primary characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray are the title grapheme (a beautiful immature man), Basil Hallward (a painter), and Lord Henry Wotton (Basil Hallward's friend).

The novel opens with Basil painting Dorian Gray's portrait. Lord Henry Wotton takes a shine to the young homo, and advises him to be constantly in search of new 'sensations' in life. He encourages Dorian to drink deep of life'southward pleasures. When the picture of Dorian is finished, Dorian marvels at how immature and beautiful he looks, before wishing that he could always remain as young and attractive while his portrait is the one that ages and decays, rather than the other way around. When he proclaims that he would give his soul to have such a wish granted, information technology's as if he has made a pact with the devil.

Basil's finished portrait is sent to Dorian's house, while Dorian himself goes out and follows Lord Henry'due south advice. He falls head over heels in dear with an actress, Sibyl Vane, just when she loses her ability to human action well – because, she claims, now she has fallen in love for real she cannot imitate it on the phase – Dorian cruelly discards her. He had fallen in honey with her fine art every bit an actress, and now she has lost that, she is meaningless to him.

Sibyl takes her own life before Dorian – who has observed a change in his portrait, which looks to have a slightly meaner expression than before – can apologise to her and beg her forgiveness. Just Lord Henry consoles Dorian, arguing that Sibyl, in dying immature, has given her last beautiful performance.

Dorian, shocked by the change in the portrait, locks information technology abroad at the top of his house, in his onetime schoolroom. Inspired past an immoral 'yellow book' which Lord Henry gives to him, Dorian continues to experience all manner of 'sensations', no matter how immoral they are. When he next takes a expect at the portrait in his attic, he finds an old and evil face, disfigured by sin, staring out at him.

The novel moves forward some 13 years. Dorian, of form, is still young and fresh-faced, only his portrait looks meaner and older than ever. When Dorian shows the portrait to Basil, who painted information technology, the artist – who had worshipped Dorian's beauty when he painted the picture – is shocked and appalled. Dorian stabs Basil to death, before enlisting the help of someone to dispose of the torso (this human, horrified by what he has done, volition afterward take his own life).

Dorian slides further into sin and evil, until one twenty-four hour period, the brother of the dead actress, Sibyl Vane, bumps into Dorian Grayness and intends to verbal revenge for his sis's mistreatment at the easily of Dorian. Just when he follows Dorian to the latter'south state manor, he is accidentally shot by one of Dorian'south shooting party.

Dorian becomes intent on reforming his character, hoping that the portrait will start to meliorate if he behaves better. But when he goes up to look at the painting, he finds that it shows the face up of a hypocrite, because even his abstinence from vice was, in its own way, a quest for a new sensation to feel. Horrified and angered, Dorian plunges a knife into the canvas, but when the servants walk in on him, they find the portrait equally it was originally painted, showing Dorian Gray as a youthful human being. Meanwhile, on the floor, in that location is the body of a wrinkled erstwhile homo with a 'loathsome' face up.

The Picture of Dorian Gray : analysis

The Motion-picture show of Dorian Grayness has been analysed as an example of the Gothic horror novel, equally a variation on the theme of the 'double', and as a narrative embodying some of the key aspects of late nineteenth-century aestheticism and decadence.

Wilde's skill lies in how he manages to weave these various elements together, creating a modern take on the one-time Faust story (the German figure Faust sold his soul to the devil, via Mephistopheles) which also, in its depictions of late Victorian sin and vice, may remind readers of another work of fiction published just four years earlier: Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which nosotros've analysed hither). Indeed, the discovery of the body of Dorian Gray as a wrinkled and horrifically ugly corpse at the stop of the novel recalls the discovery of Jekyll/Hyde in Stevenson's novella.

To find the novel's value as a book of the artful motility, we need look no further than Wilde'south preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which he states, for instance, that 'there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book' (what matters is whether the book is written well or non) and 'all fine art is quite useless' (art shouldn't change the world: art exists as, and for, itself, and no more than).

Lord Henry Wotton is very much the voice of the artful move in the novel, and many of his pronouncements echo those fabricated by the prominent fine art critic (under whom Wilde had studied at Oxford), Walter Pater. But whereas Pater talked of 'new impressions', Lord Henry (or Wilde, in his novel) took this up a notch, calling for new 'sensations'.

We tend to speak conveniently of 'periods' or 'movements' or 'eras' in literary history, but these labels aren't always useful. Both Oscar Wilde and Elizabeth Gaskell, the writer of Mary Barton and North and South, were 'Victorian' in that they were both writing and publishing their work in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).

But whereas Gaskell, writing in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, wrote 'realist' novels virtually the plight of manufacturing plant workers in northern England, Wilde wrote a fantastical horror story nearly upper-class men who are able to stay forever young and spotless while their portraits decay in their cranium. They're a world abroad from each other.

Wilde'due south novel is a good example of how later on Victorian fiction often turned against the values and approaches favourited by before Victorian writers. It was Wilde who, famously, said of the deplorable catastrophe of Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, which Dickens's original readers in the 1840s wept buckets over, 'one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without' – what, crying? No. Wilde's word was 'laughing'. The overly sentimental style favoured past mid-century novelists similar Dickens had given way to a more than coincidental, poised, nonchalant, and detached style of storytelling.

At the same time, we can overstate the extent to which Wilde's novel turns its back on before Victorian attitudes and values. Despite his statement that there is no such affair as a moral or immoral volume, The Flick of Dorian Gray is a highly moral work, equally the tale of Faust was. Dorian'south life is destroyed by his commitment to a life of pleasure, even though it entails the destruction of other lives – most notably, Sibyl Vane'south. Far from being a volume that would be denounced from the pulpits past Anglican clergymen for beingness 'immoral', The Film of Dorian Gray could brand for a pretty good moral sermon in itself, admitting one that's more witty and entertaining than most Christian sermons.

The Picture of Dorian Grayness is, at bottom, a novel of surfaces and appearance. We say 'at bottom', simply that is precisely the point: the novel is, every bit many critics have commented, all surface. Lord Henry is so taken by the beauty of Dorian Grey that he sets about existence a bad influence on him. Dorian is and so taken by the painting of him – a ii-dimensional representation of his outward appearance – that he makes his deal with the devil, trading his soul, that thing which represents inner meaning and inner depth, in substitution for remaining youthful on the outside.

Then, when Dorian falls in dearest, it'southward with an actress, not considering he loves her merely because he loves her functioning. When she loses her power to act, he abandons her. Her name, Sibyl Vane, points up the vanity of interim and the pursuit of pare-deep appearance at the price if something more substantial, but her commencement proper name also acts as a warning: in Greek mythology, the Sibyls fabricated cryptic statements about hereafter events.

But there'southward probably a particular Sibyl that Wilde had in heed: the Sibyl at Cumae, who, in Petronius' scurrilous Roman novel Satyricon (which Wilde would surely have known) and in other stories, was destined to live forever but to historic period and wither away. She had eternal life, but non eternal youth. Dorian's own eternal youth comes at a horrible cost: without a soul, all he tin can do is get in pursuit of new sensations, forever chasing desire yet never attaining true fulfilment.

It will, in the end, destroy him: in lashing out and trying to destroy the truth that stares dorsum at him from his portrait, much as he had destroyed the creative person who held upward a mirror to his corrupt self, Dorian Gray destroys himself. In the final analysis, as he and his portrait practise not exist separately from each other, he must alive with himself – and with his conscience – or must dice in his vain attempt to close his eyes to who he has really become.

About Oscar Wilde

The life of the Irish gaelic novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is as famous every bit – perchance even more famous than – his work. But in a career spanning some twenty years, Wilde created a body of work which continues to be read an enjoyed by people around the world: a novel, The Picture of Dorian Greyness; brusk stories and fairy tales such equally 'The Happy Prince' and 'The Selfish Giant'; poems including The Ballad of Reading Gaol; and essay-dialogues which were witty revivals of the Ideal philosophical dialogue.

But in a higher place all, information technology is Wilde'south plays that he continues to exist known for, and these include witty drawing-room comedies such every bit Lady Windermere's Fan, A Adult female of No Importance, and The Importance of Being Earnest, also as a Biblical drama, Salome (which was banned from performance in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and had to be staged away). Wilde is also ofttimes remembered for his witty quips and paradoxes and his conversational 1-liners, which are legion. They include, 'Work is the expletive of the drinking classes', and 'I have nothing to declare except my genius' (when travelling through customs in America).

Wilde's life – his generosity to others, his double life as a family human and someone who engaged with extramarital diplomacy with other men, and his subsequent downfall when he was put on trial for 'gross indecency' – has been movingly written nigh in Richard Ellmann'southward biography of Wilde and in the 1997 biopic Wilde, with Stephen Fry in the title part.