Dorian Grey: An intrusion into a mind in turmoil

Gwen HERAT

LITERATURE: 'How sad it is, murmured Dorian Grey, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. 'How sad it is; I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young.

It will never be older than this particular day of June..... If it were only other way around; if it were I who was to be always young and the picture that was to grow old; For that... for that; I would give everything; Yes there is nothing in the whole world I would not give. I would give my soul for that.' (page 31).

Here we see Dorian Grey in a Faust-like role. Both were willing to sell their souls for beauty and both were reckless at the thought of achieving it. Dorian goes further when he adds; 'I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.

I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep everything what I must lose..... (page 32).

Oscar Wilde has directly drawn upon his experiences to fill the atmosphere of scandal in the book and with so many parallels with his life for inspiration, the book became important to silence his critics later on. At Oxford, he became a close and intimate friend of Frank Miles, a painter.

Miles introduced him to an aesthete, Lord Ronald Gower, a homosexual. The two characters of Lord Henry Wotton and painter, Basil Hallward in the book are represented by Gower and Miles.

These two along with Peter and Ruskin whom he met at Oxford, formed Wilde's own emotional life. As must as we see Dorian Grey in hopeless and uncontrollable situations, we find the same parallel in Wilde's life.

Oscar Wilde though Oxford educated was a superstitious man given to reliance on palmistry and fortune-telling which we shall come to know later, paved the way for the Picture of Dorian Grey to have been invaded by fatality and doom.

Early in the book there are shades of misfortune that would eventually spell tragedy. The first words of Basil Hallward to Lord Henry Wotton 'We shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly'.... and from the confines of the Reading goal, Wilde wrote about 'Doom' in the famous prison letter 'that like a purple thread runs through the gold cloth of Dorian Grey'..... (page x) Turmoil that gripped his mind revealed the strange anticipation that clouded his own life.

His devastating confrontation with the Marquess of Queensbury instrumental in his downfall and the prison sentence along with humilation, was forecast by Wilde in his book. All these he remembered in the cell while languishing for Lord Alfred Douglas.

'I say, in Dorian Grey somewhere that, a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.'

Bitter enemy

And the Marquess of Queensbury was his bitter enemy. The pretensions and social morality of the English of his time, came under the hammer which irked the critics but Wilde as an Irishman was a mirror to his oppressors who were annoyed with his audacity.

It was the Marquess of Queensbury who set the trail for their screams. If they thought they silenced him, they were wrong. The Picture of Dorian Grey which they attempted to make dowdy and shameless, rose to be a sensational classic. And all the time even from his cell, Oscar Wilde knew the outcome.

If Dorian Grey is the best narration of a 'double life' of a Victorian gentleman, then Oscar Wilde is the best divide within London where the story still moves from the rich and affluent to the backstreets of Whitechapel in their hovels.

Did Wilde play a paradox. The answer is within us who have studied his book carefully not for story value or gay and homosexualism but for the highly-charged emotion and philosophy of individual lives.

A painful narration from the heart of an individual struggling to unload a catastrophe to a society that spoke of gay life behind closed doors. Wilde flung them open on their faces ridiculing their hypocricy while dragging Lord Alfred Douglas in the process which was his downfall.

And for those of us in the new millennium who still find the book exciting, is iridescent with paradox. And I think it is a judgement, fair by Wilde, even though I happen to be a woman declaring such a paradox.

After going through many painful phases in which morality played a vital role. The Picture of Dorian Grey is a classic today, read relished and deeply admired as an intrusion to a mind of a genius whose restless nature was interpreted negatively by those who did not understand the message he was trying to deliver, during his life time.

It also takes a mature mind to comprehend the subject and dissect it for its worth something I may have failed I read it as a teenager.

But, many of his critics did agree that Wilde's decision, had the need to for a confession or expiation but they over-ruled such ideas as vulgar and not becoming, to his defence came Arthur Conan Doyly who disagreed and declared 'I cannot understand how they can treat Dorian Grey as immoral.'

Contempt

A brilliant scholar from Oxford whose literary knowledge marvelled the academics but who in the later years had contempt when he was discovered to be an Aesthete. After his brief marriage to Constane Lloyd with whom he had a son named Cyril, the marriage seemed to work out but the fragility loomed in the air.

Wilde knew his brief marriage to Lloyd was an escape to the homosexual strings in his mind which he tried hard to overcome. Their marriage crashed disastrously when Robert Ross came into his life.

Engaging in homosexual practices, Wilde and Ross threw caution into air and joined the notorious 'Uraninan Circle' in London. The rumours about his sexual life became public when from Ross, he moved over to many other partners.

This coincided with the publication of the Picture of Dorian Grey. He was snubbed, ignored and ridiculed at public places. The irony of it, they are all mentioned in the book revealing his anticipatory predictions. Or was Wilde given into telepathy.

The more one studies the character of Dorian Grey, the more one gets confused over the complexity of Oscar Wilde. His premonitions, ideals, and above all the challenge he threw at the literary world, speak of a spectacular mind.

'Ah what is impossible' murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning

his forehead against the cold mist-stained glass

'You told me that you had destroyed it'

'I was wrong. It had destroyed me'

'I don't believe it is my picture'

'Can't you see your ideal in it' said Dorian bitterly

'My ideal as you call it'.....

'As you call it'.....

Satyr

'There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr.'

'It is the face of my soul!

'Chirst, what a thing I must have worshipped. It has the eyes of a devil.'

'Each of us has Heaven and Hell to him, Basil; cried Dorian, with a wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it.

'My God, it is true; he exclaimed. (page 171)

It is from this point that Dorian decided to kill the painter though he had worked up the climax ahead of his evil deed. We find the otherwise strong-willed Dorian Grey turning helpless and weak.

He accused Hallway of flattering him on his good looks and taught him to be vain over his appearance. Once the picture was done in the glow of youth and beauty, Dorian mused he would remain like the picture to the end but it was not going to be so. The room was damp and mildew had got into the canvas.

The paints used had mineral poison in them and all what Dorian saw was a devil. It was his mind because which we discover at the end of the story.

'When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty.

Lying on the floor was a dead man in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they had recognised who it was'. (page 246)

Apparently, Dorian Grey had sold his soul to the devil.

Inheritance

Born in Dublin in 1854, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was the son of an eminent eye surgeon. He inherited his mother's wizardry in literary wisdom because she was a nationalist poetess.

A student at Trinity College, Dublin and later at Magdalene College, Oxford where his brilliance took a back seat owing to his involvement in propaganda of the new Aesthetic (Art of Art's sake) Movement.

Though he had clinched the prestigious Newdigate Prize for Poetry, he failed to obtain his fellowship at Oxford because of his activities.

He started lecturing and writing to periodicals for a living and published unsuccessful volumes of poetry in 1881. After his marriage to Constance Lloyd, he tried looking at his works more seriously and found himself on the right track.

Three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savil's Crime (1891), and A House of Pomegranate (1891) were successful. He wrote his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey in 1891 which won him the reputation as a modern writer of phenomenal success.

The Society of Comedies which were written later were performed at The West End stage from 1892 to 1895.

It seemed that he was becoming the icon of his time if not for his doomed encounter with Lord Alfred Douglas with whom he fell extravagantly and passionately in love. He was at the height of his career when fate made him bring two libel cases against the Marquess of Queensbury, Lord Douglas's father.

Wilde lost both cases and was sentenced for two years imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. While he languished at the Reading Goal, he wrote the Ballad of Reading Goal. He was still in love with Lord and continued to do so until he was released from Reading at the end of two years.

Wilde immediately left for the Continent on a self-imposed exile. He died in Paris in 1900 in ignominy.

If any reader can update me as to where Oscar Wilde is buried, it will help me in my future writing.

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