The Picture of Dorian Gray (Annotated Keynote Classics)

By Oscar Wilde and Michelle M. White

Now a revered gothic classic, when this novel was first published it was said to be poisonous and, "heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction - a gloating study of the mental and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden youth . . ."

• Language: English
• Publisher: MMW Books, LLC
• Release date: Sep 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781949611212

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was a Dublin-born poet and playwright who studied at the Portora Royal School, before attending Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford. The son of two writers, Wilde grew up in an intellectual environment. As a young man, his poetry appeared in various periodicals including Dublin University Magazine. In 1881, he published his first book Poems, an expansive collection of his earlier works. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was released in 1890 followed by the acclaimed plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

Book preview

Wilde_The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray_(Annotated_Keynote_classics)_Cov_Ebook.jpg

Also available from

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

For a complete list of titles see

KeynoteClassics.com

The Picture

of Dorian Gray

by

Oscar Wilde

With Annotations by

Michelle M. White

Table of Contents

Introductory Key to The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Topics for Discussion or Essays

Major Works of Oscar Wilde

Bibliography

Introductory Key to

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde once said, Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginative,¹ and no one could have called him unimaginative. As one of the most often quoted English language writers of the nineteenth century, Wilde is known for his many funny and insightful witticisms. His writing, and this novel in particular, reflects the ideas that swirled around parlors and pubs of the late nineteenth century. Having an understanding of the cultural atmosphere and the circumstances of Oscar Wilde’s life will help you get at the essence of the novel. This introduction will provide some relevant background information about that time that may give you additional insight into the story.

In Dublin, Ireland, in 1854, Oscar Wilde was born into an unconventional family. His father, William Wilde was a leading surgeon, medical researcher, and author, but he was also a known philanderer with more than one child conceived outside of his marriage to Oscar’s mother. Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee, or Speranza Wilde was a poet and journalist revered for her work on social justice. She was something of a national hero for bringing to light the horrors of the Irish potato famine that killed over a million people in the 1840s. In this household of two sons and a daughter, literature, science, and activism was a way of life. Oscar and his siblings were included in the parties their parents hosted that were attended by intellectual and artistic celebrities of not only Dublin, but England, Europe, and America as well. Nothing was off-limits at these get-togethers, where all the beliefs and ideas of the day were hashed out. Growing up in the company of such luminaries gave Oscar a wide-ranging informal education and taught him how to be an entertaining and skilled conversationalist who could always make people laugh.

All this excitement at home left him with little interest in his formal education. He used his sense of humor to entertain his classmates, often making the teachers the butt of his jokes. He was quite the bookworm, finding his age-mates to be rather boorish in their sense of humor and interests. He related better with his instructors. In school and on his own, he read all the English classics like Walter Scott, Jane Austen, John Keats, and H. M Thackeray. He particularly enjoyed the works of Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe.

With a near photographic memory and dramatic verbal flair, Oscar earned a scholarship to Oxford where his insatiable appetite for art and books was fed. In the Victorian era, literature and art were used as tools to promote moral or social education. It typically came within the framework of romanticism, which prized feelings and the individual more than the eighteenth-century enlightenment ideals of reason and science. Novels were about a personal journey or romantic quest for freedom or self-expression and ended with a moral lesson. Nineteenth century culture continued to revere artists like Raphael and Michelangelo, who created contrived and moralistic compositions. In contrast, the pre-Raphaelites, which became of particular interest to Wilde, like Algernon Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, and John Ruskin, felt art should be created for art’s sake, rather than with a religious or moral intent; it should depict nature and the human body realistically, even if it shows ugliness. They were particularly interested in the classical art and culture of ancient Greece.

Oscar also took to John Addington Symond’s Studies of the Greek Poets which described how beauty and individualism was of the utmost importance to the ancient Greeks. This individualism was also key in the works of Walter Pater, another favorite. Oscar was influenced by Pater’s discussion on the virtues of Greek pederasty. Pederasty was the custom of male teachers or tutors taking attractive younger men (or teens) under their private tutelage. These mentor/protégé alliances often included homosexual relations. Pater and the French Decadents suggested that people should focus their lives on the pursuit of sensation and experience. This hedonism, which also comes from the Greek, became a popular theme in nineteenth century romanticism. The name Dorian comes from an ethnic group of ancient Greeks from the region called Doris.

Walter Pater also introduced Wilde to the Aesthetic Movement which was closely related to romanticism in the late nineteenth century. The Aesthetics believed that art and literature were meant to convey a mood or precipitate a feeling and not to be taken literally. Like the pre-Raphaelites and French Decadents, Aesthetics espoused that art and literature’s purpose was for pleasure, not morality. Whether it was beautiful people, flowers, or well-decorated spaces, the appearance on the surface was most important, rather than what was inside. In the prim and proper nineteenth century, any deviance from accepted social behavior was carefully hidden. For example, French Decadent literature like scandalous novels and poetry with themes of sexual pleasure or violence were wrapped in yellow paper to hide their content. You’ll find reference to one such yellow book in Dorian Gray. In fact, after this novel’s publication, these books became known for homosexual stories. The yellow book in this novel is described as symbolist in style.

Symbolism is a nineteenth century movement, led by Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine, in which art was to represent truths through symbols and metaphors, in contrast to realism and naturalism. The idea was to present not the literal thing but its effect. This is just one example of how Oscar Wilde’s ideas and philosophies about art and literature are incorporated into this novel. Pay particular attention in the second chapter, which sets the tone and introduces these themes which are revealed in the extensive conversations, motives, and actions of the characters throughout the book.

At Oxford, in addition to philosophical reading, Oscar enjoyed a much more active social life, but to keep up with his wealthy classmates, he began a life-long habit of over-extending himself financially with the use of credit. One of his well-to-do friends was Frank Miles, who would later become a famous portrait artist. With Frank, Oscar was able to travel to Florence where he was able to indulge his love of art and beauty. To earn extra income to cover his increasingly extravagant lifestyle, he began writing for magazines and giving lectures on classical subjects during breaks from school. An early success was a review he wrote of the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in London in 1877 which established him as an expert on aesthetics and classical art. He added to his extensive contacts in the world of art and literature and capitalized on it by writing to his new connections praising their work and asking for advice on his own.

As a young man, Wilde promoted a carefully cultivated image of himself in print as well as social circles. In the ordinarily reserved Victorian London, his life-of-the-party vivacious personality was unexpected. At six feet, three inches, he towered above most people, and his uncommon clean-shaven face, long hair, and distinctively flamboyant style made sure he was noticed. Julian Hawthorne, son of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, described him as having a feminine air. Often wearing a green carnation in his lapel, his love of flowers and beauty was expressed not only in his attire but in the notorious décor of his home where he entertained regularly. He lived with Frank Miles, and they treated their friends to extravagant tea and beauty parties in their London home, showing off not only their aesthetic tastes but entertaining and amusing conversation. Their notorious soirees included artists, celebrities, and even royalty like Prince Leopold and Princess Louise, children of Queen Victoria. Oscar’s infectious sense of humor and story-telling skills helped assure his welcome among the rich and famous, like painter James McNeill Whistler and actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry. In the modern world, he would likely have been a master of social media, attracting multitudes of followers to his blogs and podcasts rather than magazines and lectures. Late Victorian society was slowly beginning to open up and admit professional and artistic people to fashionable circles, and Oscar was especially attractive to the women who ruled in this world. They invited him to their parties because of his good humor, intelligence, and charming flattery. He showed them around the city to art galleries and advised them and other wealthy ladies on things like dress and decorating. Wilde became known for his expertise on beauty and even presented himself as a work of art. His growing reputation was not without its critics, however, and whispers were exchanged speculating about his sexuality. The newspapers parodied him and made caricatures of him in cartoons, but he wasn’t concerned, famously saying The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. When rumors reached Frank Miles’ father, he threatened to cut off his son financially if he didn’t stop associating with Oscar.

Without Frank’s support, Wilde’s extravagant lifestyle began to result in the accumulation of debt. He self-published a small book of poetry, and he had some poetry published in popular magazines, but his income was insufficient. This became a bigger concern with the death of his father, which required him and his brother, Willie, to help support their mother (their younger sister, Isola, had tragically died at nine years old; Oscar was twelve at the time). Willie became a journalist and worked for the London newspaper, The World, where he was able to use his connections to help get more of his brother’s poetry published and promote his growing celebrity. Oscar’s witty quips like, Work is the curse of the drinking classes and I can resist anything except temptation became the memes of the day.

In the early 1880s, Wilde became popular enough to go on lecture tours on aestheticism and home décor in England and America. His opinion on women’s fashion included recommending a ban on corsets. He was sought out as a spokesperson in advertising products from cigars to kitchen stoves. His first play, Vera, came out in New York in 1883 and was loved by audiences but reviled by critics. American press coverage followed his tour. The Buffalo Express reported that on a visit to Niagara Falls, he quipped, I was disappointed in the outline. The design, it seemed to me was wanting in grandeur and variety of line. The problem was that to really appreciate the beauty of the falls he had to view it from Table Rock, but to do that, he had to wear an ugly yellow raincoat. His tour in America widened his sphere of notable friends to include Wendell Phillips, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Julia Ward Howe. He even met his idol, Walt Whitman.

Upon returning from this trip, he proposed to Constance Lloyd, whom he had met a few years earlier, and their sons Cyril and Vyvyan were born in quick succession. Constance also wrote for magazines on the topic of dress reform, and Oscar became the editor of the English magazine, Women’s World. He also began publishing some of the short stories he had been telling at parties for years, including The Happy Prince, and The Portrait of Mr. W. H.

Oscar and Constance became friends with a young Canadian student at Cambridge, Robert Ross, who came to live with them, and with whom Oscar had his first known homosexual affair. Constance began to have health problems and traveled to warmer climates for rest cures. In recent years, she has been retrospectively diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Without his wife around, Oscar began having more and more clandestine relations with young men, to the point where people were beginning to talk. Homosexuality was not yet defined as a sexual identity, but homosexual acts were considered to be immoral. Sodomy had been illegal in England since the 1500s, and it carried the possibility of the death penalty until 1861. In 1885, five years before this book was published, all sexual contact between men was made illegal, resulting in a criminal underworld for the gay community. In this novel, you will find references to the neighborhoods where gay men were forced to associate with a class of criminals and desperate drug addicts. In 1889, news broke of the Cleveland Street Scandal, in which a male brothel was discovered where telegraph boys where hired as prostitutes for wealthy and prominent men. It was in this atmosphere that The Picture of Dorian Gray was published as a serial in Lippincott’s Magazine, in 1890.

Despite the fact that the editor of the magazine had removed passages with references to both hetero- and homosexual desire and acts, the story was widely criticized for the allusions that remained. In an era in which novels were supposed to promote moral values, critics said it was unclean and poisonous. When Wilde prepared the book version, he removed such references and extended the length of the novel for publication in 1891. He also added a preface as a way to defend against critics’ objections to the Lippincott’s version. The provocative and insightful aphorisms in the preface earned it a place in the literary cannon on its own. The shorter original version of the story published in Lippincott’s is available online, but if you are expecting to read erotic scenes that were omitted, remember that it was 1890. The scandalous scenes removed include two men walking down the street — in broad daylight — arm in arm, and the shocking moment that one man put his hand on another’s shoulder. The Lippincott’s version had also says the character of Basil Howard was feminine in tenderness, and that he had never loved a woman but had a romance of feeling about Dorian. It also refers to the two women Dorian was involved with as mistresses. In the final book version, homosexual and heterosexual relations are insinuated, whereas in the original it was less ambiguous. By today’s standards, it is not explicit, but at the time, it was enough to be used as evidence supporting the accusation of Wilde’s immorality.

As you read this novel, many notable epigrams or humorous quips will capture your attention, and when they do, it’s a good idea to highlight them and make a note in the margin. Keeping notes like this will enable you to make connections, whether between thematic topics, between this novel and other books or movies, or between your life experiences and those of the characters in the story. Recognizing these associations will help you to get more out of what you read. If you come upon a part that seems out of place or is confusing, jot down a question or underline it. Usually a passage like this is there to make a point or symbolize something. Keeping track of your observations will help if you need to write about the novel or discuss it later. Even if you are only reading it for your own entertainment, taking notes will help you to remember what you read. You will also remember things better if you can put them into context with other concepts.

Shortly after Dorian Gray was published, Oscar met the love of his life, poet Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie, and began a lifelong on-again-off-again relationship. Together they became deeply involved in the underworld of sex and drugs. As time went on, Oscar became less inclined to hide his affairs. Perhaps he thought he would be protected by the customary discretion of nineteenth century culture, or maybe he thought that the people involved would not risk exposure by talking about it. Nevertheless, his reputation spread. Many dismissed the rumors, but other acquaintances and friends began to distance themselves. Some stolen letters resulted in him being blackmailed to keep them from going public. Just as Frank Miles’ father had done previously, Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, blamed Oscar for his son’s homosexuality. He denied his son his inheritance and began following Oscar and threatened him with prosecution. The lovers did not consider breaking up to be an option, and the frequently hot-tempered Douglas fueled the fire with provocative letters to his father. Queensberry began spreading more rumors, and Oscar’s career and social life began to suffer. The scandal grew when a much talked about book called The Green Carnation came out with a satirical depiction of Wilde and Douglas.

Wilde continued to write and published a book of poems titled Poems in Prose and plays including An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest which were very successful productions in London. He was at the height of his success when Queensberry’s harassment increased to the point where Oscar became fearful enough to report it to the police. After Queensberry called him a sodomite in a letter, Oscar sued him for libel. The lawsuit backfired when Queensberry brought in multiple witnesses to show that Oscar had solicited and incited young men to gross indecency. The trial was highly publicized with Oscar playing his part entertaining the courtroom with his witty answers. When asked if he had ever felt that feeling of adoring a beautiful male person, he responded, I have never given any adoration to anyone except myself. Homosexual allusions in The Picture of Dorian Gray, as published in Lippincott’s were used against Wilde in the trial. To Oscar’s surprise, witnesses paid by Queensberry and granted immunity were brought in to testify. In the face of testimony from many whom he thought were friends, Wilde withdrew his suit, but the damage could not be undone. Constance pleaded with him to leave the country before he was arrested, but he refused to run. He was ultimately taken into custody and charged with eight counts of gross indecency and conspiracy to procure the commission of such acts. He was tried and sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor.

While he was deemed too out of shape to do hard labor, he barely survived the rigors of a nineteenth century prison. Prisoners were given a libido-quelling sedative, isolated from other inmates for most of the day, forbidden from talking or even looking at anyone, and subjected to harsh punishments like loss of food for infractions. For a man who lived for beauty, social stimulation, and good food, the effects were especially devastating. Constance visited, bringing news of Oscar’s mother’s death, and found him severely depressed and in desperately poor health. He had lost over ten percent of his body weight and was suffering from a severe untreated ear infection. She and some of his friends were able to get him moved to a better prison where he received a better diet and was allowed books and writing paper. Oscar poured out his soul in a letter to Douglas about their relationship, his life regrets, and his spiritual growth in prison. It was later published as De Profundis² in 1905, although all references to Douglas were omitted.

In a passage from De Profundis that is relevant to this novel, Wilde wrote:

I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur,³ a dandy; a man of fashion. . . . Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others, I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has someday to cry aloud on the house-tops. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.

After his release, Wilde took on an assumed name, Sebastian Melmoth, taken from St. Sebastian and a character from a book by his great-uncle, Charles Maturin, called Melmoth the Wanderer. He lived in exile in France and Italy with a succession of old friends. He was legally separated from Constance, but he was not allowed to see their children. She had changed hers and their children’s last name to Holland to disassociate them from Oscar’s reputation. The agreement stipulated that he would receive an allowance from her as long as he never contacted or saw Douglas again. Nevertheless, the lovers reunited in Naples. Both Constance and Bosie’s mother threatened to stop sending them money to live on, and before long, financial stress and the risks of being seen together took a toll. Bosie’s temper soon flared, and they were again separated.

Constance died from complications following surgery for uterine fibroids in 1898. Their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan were cared for by her cousin. The following year, Oscar’s brother Willie, suffering from alcoholism, also died.

As a source of much needed income, Wilde published The Ballad of Reading Gaol⁴ in 1897, about the conditions he witnessed in prison and the practice of locking up children and the mentally ill and disabled. He took up final residence in Paris during the Paris Exhibition, or World’s fair, of 1900. He was diagnosed with nervous exhaustion, depression, and a mysterious skin rash that has since been diagnosed as a streptococcal infection of the throat and a severe ear infection. He kept his sense of humor through his last days. While ill in bed, he is quoted as saying My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go. Unfortunately, the wallpaper outlived him. He died in November, 1900.

From the highest society to the darkest underworld, Oscar Wilde’s personality and life story shows up in The Picture of Dorian Gray. He wrote to Robbie Ross that "To have altered my life would have admitted that Uranian⁵ love is ignoble, I hold it to be noble — more noble than other forms."⁶ His life and work challenged Victorian ideals and ushered in a new way of thinking about art and literature. But more importantly it revealed homosexuality as a distinct social and sexual identity rather than being an abhorrent, unspeakable vice. Finally, the Policing and Crime Act of 2017 pardoned Oscar Wilde and approximately 50,000 other men who had been convicted for homosexual acts. Having gone from pop-star to pariah in his short lifetime, Oscar Wilde has since entertained generations with his funny quips and aphorisms, many of which will amuse you as you delve into in this novel.

. The Relation of Dress to Art, The Pall Mall Gazette, February 28, 1885.

Latin for From the Depths.

A loafer, or a person wealthy enough to wander about town wasting time.

Gaol is a British variant of jail.

Uranian was a nineteenth century term for what was then thought of as a third sex, or a homosexual gender.

. From a book by Oscar Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, titled The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, Harper Collins, 2003.

The Picture

of Dorian Gray

by

Oscar Wilde

The Preface

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner

or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of

Caliban¹ seeing his own face in a glass.²

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of

the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use

of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue