|
|
|||||
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY - THEMES, MOTIFS & SYMBOLS
THEMES
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Purpose of Art
When
The Picture of Dorian Gray
was first published in
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in
1890, it was decried as
immoral. In revising the text the following year, Wilde
included a preface, which serves as a useful explanation
of his philosophy of art. The purpose of art, according to
this series of epigrams, is to have no purpose. In order
to understand this claim fully, one needs to consider the
moral climate of Wilde’s time and the Victorian
sensibility regarding art and morality. The Victorians
believed that art could be used as a tool for social
education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works
by writers such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing. The
aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major
proponent, sought to free art from this responsibility.
The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for
bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in
Dorian Gray by Lord
Henry, whose every word seems designed to shock the
ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as they
were by the belief that art need not possess any other
purpose than being beautiful.
If this philosophy
informed Wilde’s life, we must then consider whether
his only novel bears it out. The two works of art that
dominate the novel—Basil’s painting and the mysterious
yellow book that Lord Henry gives Dorian—are presented
in the vein more of Victorian sensibilities than of
aesthetic ones. That is, both the portrait and the
French novel serve a purpose: the first acts as a type
of mysterious mirror that shows Dorian the physical
dissipation his own body has been spared, while the
second acts as something of a road map, leading the
young man farther along the path toward infamy. While
we know nothing of the circumstances of the yellow
book’s composition, Basil’s state of mind while
painting Dorian’s portrait is clear. Later in the
novel, he advocates that all art be “unconscious,
ideal, and remote.” His portrait of Dorian, however,
is anything but. Thus, Basil’s initial refusal to
exhibit the work results from his belief that it
betrays his idolization of his subject. Of course, one
might consider that these breaches of aesthetic
philosophy mold The
Picture of Dorian Gray into something of a
cautionary tale: these are the prices that must be
paid for insisting that art reveals the artist or a
moral lesson. But this warning is, in itself, a moral
lesson, which perhaps betrays the impossibility of
Wilde’s project. If, as Dorian observes late in the
novel, the imagination orders the chaos of life and
invests it with meaning, then art, as the fruit of the
imagination, cannot help but mean something. Wilde may
have succeeded in freeing his art from the confines of
Victorian morality, but he has replaced it with a
doctrine that is, in its own way, just as restrictive.
The Supremacy of Youth and Beauty
The first principle of
aestheticism, the philosophy of art by which Oscar
Wilde lived, is that art serves no other purpose than
to offer beauty. Throughout
The Picture of Dorian
Gray, beauty reigns. It is a means to
revitalize the wearied senses, as indicated by the
effect that Basil’s painting has on the cynical Lord
Henry. It is also a means of escaping the brutalities
of the world: Dorian distances himself, not to mention
his consciousness, from the horrors of his actions by
devoting himself to the study of beautiful things—music,
jewels, rare tapestries. In a society that prizes
beauty so highly, youth and physical attractiveness
become valuable commodities. Lord Henry reminds Dorian
of as much upon their first meeting, when he laments
that Dorian will soon enough lose his most precious
attributes. In Chapter Seventeen, the Duchess of
Monmouth suggests to Lord Henry that he places too
much value on these things; indeed, Dorian’s eventual
demise confirms her suspicions. For although beauty
and youth remain of utmost importance at the end of
the novel—the portrait is, after all, returned to its
original form—the novel suggests that the price one
must pay for them is exceedingly high. Indeed, Dorian
gives nothing less than his soul.
The Superficial Nature of Society
It is no surprise that
a society that prizes beauty above all else is a
society founded on a love of surfaces. What matters
most to Dorian, Lord Henry, and the polite company
they keep is not whether a man is good at heart but
rather whether he is handsome. As Dorian evolves into
the realization of a type, the perfect blend of
scholar and socialite, he experiences the freedom to
abandon his morals without censure. Indeed, even
though, as Basil warns, society’s elite question his
name and reputation, Dorian is never ostracized. On
the contrary, despite his “mode of life,” he remains
at the heart of the London social scene because of the
“innocence” and “purity of his face.” As Lady
Narborough notes to Dorian, there is little (if any)
distinction between ethics and appearance: “you are
made to be good—you look so good.”
The Negative Consequences of Influence
The painting and the
yellow book have a profound effect on Dorian,
influencing him to predominantly immoral behavior over
the course of nearly two decades. Reflecting on
Dorian’s power over Basil and deciding that he would
like to seduce Dorian in much the same way, Lord Henry
points out that there is “something terribly
enthralling in the exercise of influence.” Falling
under the sway of such influence is, perhaps,
unavoidable, but the novel ultimately censures the
sacrifice of one’s self to another. Basil’s idolatry
of Dorian leads to his murder, and Dorian’s devotion
to Lord Henry’s hedonism and the yellow book
precipitate his own downfall. It is little wonder, in
a novel that prizes individualism—the uncompromised
expression of self—that the sacrifice of one’s self,
whether it be to another person or to a work of art,
leads to one’s destruction.
MOTIFS
Motifs are recurring
structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help
to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The picture of Dorian
Gray, “the most magical of mirrors,” shows Dorian the
physical burdens of age and sin from which he has been
spared. For a time, Dorian sets his conscience aside
and lives his life according to a single goal:
achieving pleasure. His painted image, however,
asserts itself as his conscience and hounds him with
the knowledge of his crimes: there he sees the cruelty
he showed to Sibyl Vane and the blood he spilled
killing Basil Hallward.
Homoerotic Male Relationships
The homoerotic bonds
between men play a large role in structuring the novel.
Basil’s painting depends upon his adoration of Dorian’s
beauty; similarly, Lord Henry is overcome with the
desire to seduce Dorian and mold him into the
realization of a type. This camaraderie between men fits
into Wilde’s larger aesthetic values, for it returns him
to antiquity, where an appreciation of youth and beauty
was not only fundamental to culture but was also
expressed as a physical relationship between men. As a
homosexual living in an intolerant society, Wilde
asserted this philosophy partially in an attempt to
justify his own lifestyle. For Wilde, homosexuality was
not a sordid vice but rather a sign of refined culture.
As he claimed rather romantically during his trial for
“gross indecency” between men, the affection between an
older and younger man places one in the tradition of
Plato, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare.
The Color White
Interestingly, Dorian’s
trajectory from figure of innocence to figure of
degradation can be charted by Wilde’s use of the color
white. White usually connotes innocence and blankness,
as it does when Dorian is first introduced. It is, in
fact, “the white purity” of Dorian’s boyhood that Lord
Henry finds so captivating. Basil invokes whiteness when
he learns that Dorian has sacrificed his innocence, and,
as the artist stares in horror at the ruined portrait,
he quotes a biblical verse from the Book of Isaiah:
“Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as
white as snow.” But the days of Dorian’s innocence are
over. It is a quality he now eschews, and, tellingly,
when he orders flowers, he demands “as few white ones as
possible.” When the color appears again, in the form of
James Vane’s face—“like a white handkerchief”—peering in
through a window, it has been transformed from the color
of innocence to the color of death. It is this
threatening pall that makes Dorian long, at the novel’s
end, for his “rose-white boyhood,” but the hope is in
vain, and he proves unable to wash away the stains of
his sins.
SYMBOLS
Symbols are objects,
characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts.
The Opium Dens
The opium dens, located
in a remote and derelict section of London, represent
the sordid state of Dorian’s mind. He flees to them at a
crucial moment. After killing Basil, Dorian seeks to
forget the awfulness of his crimes by losing
consciousness in a drug-induced stupor. Although he has
a canister of opium in his home, he leaves the safety of
his neat and proper parlor to travel to the dark dens
that reflect the degradation of his soul.
James Vane
James Vane is less a
believable character than an embodiment of Dorian’s
tortured conscience. As Sibyl’s brother, he is a rather
flat caricature of the avenging relative. Still, Wilde
saw him as essential to the story, adding his character
during his revision of 1891.
Appearing at the dock and later at Dorian’s country
estate, James has an almost spectral quality. Like the
ghost of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol,
who warns Scrooge of the sins he will have to face,
James appears with his face “like a white handkerchief”
to goad Dorian into accepting responsibility for the
crimes he has committed.
The Yellow Book
Lord Henry gives Dorian a
copy of the yellow book as a gift. Although he never
gives the title, Wilde describes the book as a French
novel that charts the outrageous experiences of its
pleasure-seeking protagonist (we can fairly assume that
the book in question is Joris-Karl Huysman’s decadent
nineteenth-century novel
À Rebours, translated as “Against the Grain” or
“Against Nature”). The book becomes like holy scripture
to Dorian, who buys nearly a dozen copies and bases his
life and actions on it. The book represents the profound
and damaging influence that art can have over an
individual and serves as a warning to those who would
surrender themselves so completely to such an influence.