The Picture of Dorian Gray - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0175565716 ISBN 13: 9780175565719

Synopsis

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" is Oscar Wilde's classic tale of the moral decline of its title character, Dorian Gray. When Dorian has his portrait painted by Basil Hallward and wishes that he would stay young while his picture changes, his wish comes true. In exchange for this Dorian gives up his soul and as he ages the bad deeds that he commits are reflected in his painting and not him. "The Picture of Dorian Gray", arguably Wilde's most popular work, was considered quite scandalous when it was first published in the late 1800s in Victorian England.

About this title

Review

A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife", Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."

Review

"Every line that Wilde ever wrote affected me so enormously." --Morrissey, musician "A heady late-Victorian tale of double-living, in which Dorian's fatal, corruptive influence over women and men alike is suggestively indistinct." --Sarah Waters, author, Fingersmith

Edition details

• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0175565716
• ISBN 13: 9780175565719
• Binding: Paperback