13. Victorian literature, Shelley, Wilde

It was criticized as scandalous and immoral → edited it

Victorian novels x Dorian Grey:

• Working class, poverty, realism, action x supernatural element (curse), it’s not classical story, focused on dialogues, feelings and adjectives

• the topic is untypical – the way, he makes fun of the society is different

epigrams

needs to be reread, it’s hard to focus

Lord Henry doesn’t really make sense – he is superficial and immoral

STORY:

• It is about a young man named Dorian Gray who has a portrait painted of himself. The artist, Basil Hallward, thinks Dorian is very beautiful, and becomes obsessed with him. One day in Basil's garden, Dorian meets a man named Lord Henry Wotton. Henry makes Dorian believe that the only thing important in life is beauty. However, Dorian realizes that he will become less beautiful as he grows older. He wishes the portrait Basil painted would become old instead of himself. Dorian then sells his soul so he can be beautiful forever, but not on purpose.

• Dorian's wish comes true. However, every time Dorian does something evil, mean, or selfish, his picture ages. For 18 years, Dorian does not age. He does many bad things, while his portrait becomes more aged with each bad deed. Later on, Dorian decides to stop doing bad things in the hopes that this will make his portrait become beautiful again, but it only makes it worse. Dorian thinks that only a full confession will make the portrait beautiful again. However, he does not feel guilty for anything he has done. So, Dorian picks up a knife and destroys the portrait.

• When his servants hear a scream from Dorian's room, they call the police. The police find Dorian's body on the floor with a stab wound in his heart. His body has become very aged. However, the portrait has returned to the way it was when it was first painted.

Plot:

• Major Conflict: Dorian Gray, having promised his soul in order to live a life of perpetual youth, must try to reconcile himself to the bodily decay and dissipation that are recorded in his portrait.

• Rising Action: Dorian notices the change in his portrait after ending his affair with Sibyl Vane; he commits himself wholly to the “yellow book” and indulges his fancy without regard for his reputation; the discrepancy between his outer purity and his inner depravity surges

• Climax: Dorian kills Basil Hallward.

• Falling Action: Dorian descends into London’s opium dens; he attempts to express remorse to Lord Henry; he stabs his portrait, thereby killing himself.

Themes (2 of them):

• The purpose of art: Wilde wanted to free art from responsibility of being a tool for social education and moral enlightenment (= Lord Henry - every word he says 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)

  • 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. (painting of Basil and yellow book)