The Picture of Dorian Gray

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

INTRODUCTION

O. Wilde's only novel. He has put a lot of himself in it.

A partly autobiographical novel

Four main characters. Three men :

Dorian Gray, Lord Henry, Basil Halward

Dorian : represents the sort of young man O.Wilde could fall in love with. He is also an image that the young Wilde had of himself, an image with which he was narcistically in love. He is an ideal of beauty and purity at the beginning of the book but will become a degenarate soul. This degradation expresses Wilde's disgust with his own sexual life.

Lord Henry : he is Oscar wilde's dark side : the corruptor. So he has what can corrupt : Wilde's charm and elegance, his intelligence, his wit.

Basil Halward : he is Wilde's conscience, good and and pure, disinterested. He is also the artist in the story, not a poet and writer like Wilde, but a painter.

One woman :

Sybil Vane : the victim. In this world of men, nice, pure, young women can only be victims. Also an actress. Wilde had a special relationship to actresses, the only kind of women he felt attracted to in a way.

Besides, the novel describes accurately the kind of elegant aristocratic life Wilde lead in London.

A supernatural novel.

It doesn't seem so at first, but the supernatural element will develop and take more and more importance as the plot unfolds. The end of the novel is a remarkable coup de théatre.

A poetic novel :

Wilde at its best as a writer, some very poetic passages. Besides, the story of the degradation of a pure soul is in itself darkly poetic.

A symbolic novel : The characters embody the myths expressing the moral conflict between good and evil, innocence and temptation. L.H is Mephistopheles and D. is Faust.

A thrilling novel : as the plot unfolds we understand that the pattern is simple. It is a story of crime and punishment. But till the very last words we will not know what the punishment will be. A real suspense.

Why it created a scandal.

The book was forbidden for a long time in England.

Nothing in the novel is explicit. The homosexual relationships between the characters