I recently saw a modern play version of Oscar Wilde’s only novel in which shifting images were on mobile phones. It reminded me of a version called Selfie, which the National Youth Theatre staged in 2016 and which covered similar ground. It was also a wake-up call. What did Wilde actually write in his 1891 novel? Of course I’d read it but only, I think, once and that was probably 50 years ago. It was, therefore, a pretty overdue reread.
Gray is an exceptionally good-looking young man in his late teens when the novel opens. Born to a wealthy family, he lives in great comfort and there is no question of his ever having to earn a living. He receives his full inheritance when he comes of age at 21. He is befriended by Basil Hallward, an artist, who is bowled over by Gray’s beauty and paints a stunning portrait of him. Hallward also introduces him to Lord Henry Wotton, a louche, cynical but charismatically entertaining man.
Gradually Gray slides into a moral abyss, initially by courting and promising to marry a second rate young actress who then takes her own life when he dumps her. And, as the years pass, it goes on getting worse until he is notorious and harbouring dark secrets. Meanwhile he seems, unaccountably to have found, the secret of eternal youth, in appearance at least. But the painting is changing and revealing the truth so, in terrified horror, he locks it in a room upstairs. Yes, at one level it’s pure gothic and very much of its time. I’ll spare you any spoilers about what eventually happens just in case you’re new to The Picture of Dorian Gray.
In many ways we’re in the same world as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which was published only five years earlier in 1886. The dual personality – the public face versus the private amoral evil – and the investigative presentation of conscience are very clearly present in both books. If I were still teaching A level English it would be an interesting project to study both texts comparatively with students.
The other thing which interested me a lot is the character of Lord Henry. Even his friends get weary of his aphorisms, some of which are often now casually attributed to Wilde by people who have probably forgotten, if they ever knew, that he put them into the mouth of Lord Henry. Of exhibitions at Royal Academy he comments: there have either been so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures, that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse.”. He castigates opera goers’ dresses as “designed in a rage and put on in a tempest” and criticises those who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.
Lord Henry is, arguably, the character who “corrupts” Gray, or at least sets him on the path to corruption. And that is probably the most interesting question in the novel. Can one person lead another astray to this extent? How much of our behaviour comes from our own moral compass or lack of it and how much is triggered by external influences? Wilde is said to have based the character partly on his friend, Lord Ronald Gower, and partly on what he knew was the public perception (rather than the reality) of his own personality.
Finally, of course, Wilde was famously gay or bisexual and ultimately treated shockingly by the law. The friendships between the men in this novel have clear homo-erotic overtones while women are always a sidelined inconvenience. There is, one suspects, a certain amount of “Bunburying” and it’s fascinating to note how clear that is now in way it wouldn’t have been to the average reader in 1891 although, the undercover gay community would have sensed it.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Murder Under the Mistletoe by Richard Coles
