Well, I'm a recently married horror writer, so my mood swings between the macabre and the blissful a...
Well, I'm a recently married horror writer, so my mood swings between the macabre and the blissful at the moment! Very confusing indeed. I've been away a month to get married and such, but will be more active again soon.
Member since:11.07.2000
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Oscar Fingal O' Flahertie Wills Wilde was an author and playwright whose range covered just about every genre in the book, and in life he was both amused and pained that many thought this range suggested superficiality. That is one crime of which Wilde can never be justifiably accused. The content of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', a work which is almost semi-autobiographical, works on a multitude of levels.
In short, this is the story of a man exposed, through literature given to him by one Lord Henry, to the darker side of life, the sins and pleasures of the flesh and the spirit. Throwing himself into these pleasures with vigour and enthusiasm, the once pure-hearted Dorian Gray becomes a black beast. He remains youthful, beautiful and saintly looking, while all the time the titular picture of him grows more and more repellent as it begins to display his true countenance - the stains on his soul, his age and inner ugliness.
With this clean, neat metaphor, Wilde allows himself to explore several themes. Firstly, there is the hypocrisy of the individual, and what society sees of him. Regardless of your apparent beauty, to follow one's darker urges to satisfaction is to risk self-destruction. As Dorian indulges drugs, blackmail and eventually murder, the picture becomes physically representative of his own conscience, tormenting him to the point where he takes a knife to it, with horrifying results. This end scene, while at once being a work of horror as bleak and stark as anything Poe ever committed to paper, paints broadly the point that every man will answer to his conscience some day.
Luxuriance drips from the prose throughout this darkest of tales, which is crafted by a man at the height of his literary genius. The imagery of the very first page is a beautiful summation of the novel entire. There are 'heavy scents of lilac', 'the delicate perfume of pink-flowering thorn', 'rich odours' galore. We are Dorian here, introduced to a heady world of hedonistic pleasures.
Of course, the novel was lambasted on its initial release, and Wilde's own preface shows that he expected as much. There is little other way to read his tongue in cheek observation that 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.' The point that a piece of writing can corrupt so utterly is taken up again in the story - where it is a book which sets Dorian on his downward tumble.
In a time of sententious moralising, we have here a writer willing to challenge the establishment. The parallels in the plot with Wilde's own love of the hedonistic need hardly be stated, though of course Wilde did harm to nobody but himself in the end. Therein we have the core of the sub-plot. Wilde was open and honest in his affairs and activities, while Dorian represses them, and externalises them. The results for Dorian are tragic (of course, The Picture of Dorian Gray' might as well have been entitled 'The Picture of Society As I See It'). It is a great irony that, as it turned out, Wilde's own approach to life was similarly tragic.
About the hypocrisy of both society and the individual, the power of art, and the bleakness of a soul divided, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is genuinely chilling, even horrifying, and stands as such in this modern era, where image is everything. For me, Wilde's willingness to challenge society through the metaphors of horror sums up the genre at its greatest. Refusing to flinch from harsh truths, to pretty them up for a wider audience, he comments: 'An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style'.
Wilde stares full on at what horrifies him, and presents it as he sees it. In his day, he was criticised for doing so. Today he is applauded.
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Wilde certainly made a number on contraversial staements through this book. Maureen
Azurel 11.04.2002 20:49
Great op, I read this book a little while ago and some parts just seem to stick in my mind.
GrUnGe_GaL 23.02.2001 11:07
a great opinion on this book, I read this book last year sometime and I was swept away by the story and the whole msg, the ending is so symbolic isn't it
A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the ... more
aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change a...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the ... more
aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change a...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Feb 17th, 2001
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