Oh Dorian!

Bambis......Here are some lovely notes on your favorite man of the hour. I have included a list of allusions to other works as well as some study questions for further exploration. Please take notes and answer all questions as per classroom assignment.

Picture of Dorian Gray Allusions to other works
The Republic
Glaucon and Adeimantus present the myth of Gyges' ring, by which Gyges made himself invisible. They ask Socrates, if one came into possession of such a ring, why should he act justly? Socrates replies that even if no one can see one's physical appearance, the soul is disfigured by the evils one commits. This disfigured (the antithesis of beautiful) and corrupt soul is imbalanced and disordered, and in itself undesirable regardless of other advantages of acting unjustly. Dorian Gray's portrait is the means by which other individuals, such as Dorian's friend Basil, shortly before Dorian kills him, may see Dorian's distorted soul. The portrait is also akin to Gyges' ring: for by making Dorian eternally youthful and innocent in appearance, he may commit crimes with impunity.[citation needed]
Tannhäuser
At one point, Dorian Gray attends a performance of Richard Wagner's opera, Tannhäuser, and is explicitly said to personally identify with the work. Indeed, the opera bears some striking resemblances with the novel, and, in short, tells the story of a medieval (and historically real) singer, whose art is so beautiful that he causes Venus, the goddess of love herself, to fall in love with him, and to offer him eternal life with her in the Venusberg. Tannhäuser becomes dissatisfied with his life there, however, and elects to return to the harsh world of reality, where, after taking part in a song-contest, he is sternly censured for his sensuality, and eventually dies in his search for repentance and the love of a good woman. It might even be argued that the end of the opera, in which a miracle announces the salvation of Tannhäuser's soul, suggests, perhaps, a more optimistic interpretation of Dorian's end than might otherwise be thought of.



Faust
Wilde himself stated that "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust." As in Faust, a temptation is placed before the lead character Dorian, the potential for ageless beauty; Dorian indulges in this temptation. In both stories, the lead character entices a beautiful woman to love them and kills not only her, but also that woman's brother, who seeks revenge.[14] Wilde went on to say that the notion behind The Picture of Dorian Gray is "old in the history of literature" but was something to which he had "given a new form".[15]
Unlike Faust, there is no point at which Dorian makes a deal with the devil. However, Lord Henry's cynical outlook on life, and hedonistic nature seems to be in keeping with the idea of the devil's role, that of the temptation of the pure and innocent, qualities which Dorian exemplifies at the beginning of the book. Although Lord Henry takes an interest in Dorian, it does not seem that he is aware of the effect of his actions. However, Lord Henry advises Dorian that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing";[16] in this sense, Lord Henry can be seen to represent the Devil, "leading Dorian into an unholy pact by manipulating his innocence and insecurity."[17]
Shakespeare
In his preface, Wilde writes about Caliban, a character from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. When Dorian is telling Lord Henry Wotton about his new 'love', Sibyl Vane, he refers to all of the Shakespearean plays she has been in, referring to her as the heroine of each play. At a later time, he speaks of his life by quoting Hamlet.
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Dorian Gray's "poisonous French novel" that leads to his downfall is believed to be Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À rebours. Literary critic Richard Ellmann writes:
Wilde does not name the book but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost, Huysmans's A Rebours...To a correspondent he wrote that he had played a 'fantastic variation' upon A Rebours and some day must write it down. The references in Dorian Gray to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate.[18]


Themes . Theme 1 Self-worship leads to self-destruction. Dorian Gray’s excessive love of himself leads to an obsessional desire to preserve the moment–whatever the moral cost–in order to maintain his looks at the peak of their perfection and enjoy all the pleasures that they bring him. Theme 2 Time will have its way. No man can defeat time; it marches inexorably toward old age and death. Dorian Gray ends up old and ugly and dead, physically and spiritually. Yes, he remained youthful looking for many years, seemingly cheating time. But time, in the form of the portrait, caught up with him and gained its revenge. In some ways, Gray’s attempts to preserve his youth resemble the attempts by modern men and women to forestall aging with lotions, special diets and exercises, cosmetic surgery, and youthful fashions. Theme 3 Beauty is only skin deep. Beneath his veneer of elegant good looks, Dorian Gray is monstrously ugly. As Shakespeare observed in The Merchant of Venice: “A goodly apple rotten at the heart: / O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!” Theme 4 Earthly pleasures can never completely satisfy a human being. Dorian Gray never is really happy because he never realizes that the things of the earth–physical beauty and the pleasures of the flesh–can never satisfy man’s insatiable desire for them. Theme 5 Evil appears in winsome disguises. Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray are both charming, each in his own way. But their outer charms disguise inner evil. Theme 6 An abused child becomes an abusive adult. Dorian Gray’s grandfather, Lord Kelso, reared the orphaned Dorian in a poisonous atmosphere. The old man despised Dorian and even had a special “schoolroom” built for the boy so that he could shut him up in it and not have to endure his presence. When Dorian grows up, he lashes out at Sybil Vane, driving her to suicide; murders Basil Hallward; and blackmails Alan Campbell, who also commits suicide. Ultimately, Dorian turns his wrath against himself. Theme 7 Implied homosexuality. Dorian Gray is admired by other males in the novel for his “beauty”–the word author Oscar Wilde, who was a homosexual himself, uses again and again to describe Dorian and the word these male characters use from time to time in dialogue in their praise of Dorian. Although Wilde never explicitly describes or refers to intimate relations between Dorian and other males, he indicates that Lord Henry Wotton and other characters either desired such relations or participated in them. Homosexuality apparently is one of the sins that corrupt Dorian and possibly other young men in the novel.

Study Questions

1. Discuss the character of Lord Henry and his impact on Dorian.

2. Discuss the role of homoeroticism in the novel.

3. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book,” Wilde says in the Preface. “Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Does the novel confirm this argument?

1. Discuss the relationship between Basil and Dorian.

2. Analyze the Gothic elements in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

3. Discuss the role of Sibyl Vane in the novel.

4. Discuss the parallels between Dorian's story and the Faust legend. Does Dorian make a pact with the devil?

5. Why does Dorian decide to destroy the painting at the end of the novel?

6. Compare and contrast the characters of Basil and Lord Henry. What is their relationship to one another? To Dorian?