The Picture of Dorian Gray Read Online Free PDF

and poisoner, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ (January 1889). Here he makes one of his first assaults on the tendency to bring ethics to aesthetics: ‘The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose. The domestic virtues are not the true basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement for second-rate artists.’ 26 Such views would become central to Wilde’s thought, being the principal theme of his Preface to the revised edition of his novel, and in many of his works of criticism published subsequent to it. As he protested to the reviewerof the
St James’s Gazette:
‘The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.’ For Wilde, art is superior to nature and to life, and aesthetics are always higher than ethics. However, although his most forthright statements on this theme appeared as a consequence of his experience with the critics of his novel (especially those dealing with art and morality), the earlier works referred to above indicate that Wilde held these views prior to its publication. These views also inform his novel, which he called a reaction ‘against the crude brutality of plain realism’ (Mason, 74 ). This is found in Wilde’s depiction of Dorian and his ‘criticism’ of the painting, for Dorian brings his moral life to the portrait, confusing art with life, and ethics with aesthetics. The result is disastrous for the work of art; what should have been hailed as ‘one of the greatest things in modern art’ is transformed into a horrifying record of corruption, ‘bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it…. He kept his youth – that was enough.’ For Wilde perhaps this destruction, a form of aesthetic ‘heresy’, is Dorian’s greatest ‘sin’. As he stated in the Preface: ‘Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.’
    A similar illustration of the disastrous effects of life on art, and of confusing ethics with aesthetics, is found in the tragic tale of Sibyl Vane. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful young actress whom he discovers performing in a seedy, third-class theatre. From the outset it is clear that he is in love with Sibyl’s acting rather than the woman herself. As he enthuses to Lord Henry: ‘Tonight she is Imogen… and tomorrow night she will be Juliet.’ ‘When is she Sibyl Vane?’ asks Lord Henry. ‘Never,’ Dorian replies. Dorian intends to ‘take [his] love out of poetry, and to find a wife in Shakespeare’s plays… I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.’ Sibyl plays all the great romantic heroines of the Shakespearean stage, and while she remains within the sphere of art her performance enraptures Dorian. ‘Life’, in the form of the real passion she feels for Dorian, ruins her art: ‘‘‘Dorian, Dorian,’’ she cried, ‘‘before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life.… I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came…[and] taught me what reality really is.… I might mimic a passion that I do not feel,but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire’’’ (Chapter VII). Dorian’s cruel response is consistent with his aesthetic code: ‘Without your art you are nothing.… A third-rate actress with a pretty face.’ That night Sibyl commits suicide, and Dorian detects the first changes in his portrait.
    However, despite the moral censure suggested by the portrait’s reaction, Wilde discourages such a straightforwardly ‘sentimental’ response to these circumstances. To do this he points to the artificiality of Sibyl and her experiences. As Dorian exclaims to Lord Henry, ‘How extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had