The Picture Of Dorian Gray Read Online Free PDF Page B

acting in.’ Sibyl, who regards Dorian ‘merely as a person in a play’ (Chapter IV),decides that he is really Prince Charming, and echoes Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott when she complains, ‘I have grown sick of shadows.’ This all points to her artificiality as a creation, suggesting that an ‘aesthetic’ rather than sentimental response to her death – for Dorian ‘one of the great romantic tragedies of the age’ – is more appropriate. In depicting the experiences of Dorian and Sibyl in this way, Wilde provides an illustration of the basic tenets he propounded in his statements on art – that art is destroyed by life and morality, and that ethics and aesthetics belong to separate spheres of thought and judgement. His novel is in part an allegory of interpretation, and an essay in critical conduct.
    Despite the specific historical references and contexts (scientific, homoerotic, aesthetic) which can help to illuminate many of the themes of Wilde’s novel, providing a background to its reception, revision and subsequent history, it is a book that continues to fascinate readers of all ages over a hundred years after its first publication. For at the centre of the narrative is a study of an individual struggling with the consequences of his actions, and coming face to face with the reality of his ‘soul’. Wilde’s study of conscience and corruption can also be understood in both ‘metaphysical’ and ‘psychological’ terms. Dorian, who emulates Lord Henry’s cultivated cynicism and adopts the course of amoral hedonism the dandy prescribes, nevertheless is compelled to believe that ‘The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and barteredaway.It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it’ (Chapter XIX). It is a powerful and disturbing conceit that Wilde employs to depict this recognition:
    … the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all.… here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls. (Chapter VIII)
    Dorian decides to ignore the lesson provided by this recognition, choosing to believe that the portrait would free him fromthe consequences of his actions. But Dorian is never free. Thus despite hisworship of and unbridled indulgence in pleasure, he cannot escape from his fascination with the portrait, constantly examining his ‘soul’ with an obsessional intensity to rival the sternest puritan or the most ascetic anchorite.
    He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. (Chapter XI)
    ‘Conscience’ (whether one reads that in sacred or secular terms) is strongly delineated in the novel. Dorian believes that he has destroyed conscience, but in truth it destroys him. The portrait
    had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it. (Chapter XX)
    Thus although the central conceit of the physical consequences of certain acts is informed by beliefs peculiar to the time, Wilde’s depiction of how this process affects Dorian has the power to fascinate and chill readers in an age that has discarded such beliefs, and can recognize in such descriptions an outline of what now might be termed ‘paranoia’.
Dorian Gray
is in part an acute study of obsession and