How long to read dorian gray

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer. Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance.

In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning.

Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well. Gray, come over and look at yourself. I am awfully obliged to you. Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time.

He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them.

They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.

Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body.

He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears.

He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it. 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 the other way!

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! Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. You like your art better than your friends.

I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say. The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.

Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself. Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another.

You are not jealous of material things, are you? I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly! Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. What is it but canvas and colour?

I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them. Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something.

Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas. With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. Then you can do what you like with yourself. And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple pleasures? What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal.

It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all—though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture.

You had much better let me have it, Basil. There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers.

I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture? The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture.

It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go. The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile.

Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon. Come to-morrow. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon. As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.

At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure.

He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.

In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs.

His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices. When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over The Times. I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five.

I want to get something out of you. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it. What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better.

But I hear they let them in now by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him. Who is he? Or rather, I know who he is. His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother.

What was she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr.

Gray at present. I have only just met him. Of course I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow—a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind.

I remember the whole thing as if it happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it.

They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public—paid him, sir, to do it, paid him—and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards.

He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died, too, died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that.

What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother, he must be a good-looking chap. His mother had money, too. All the Selby property came to her, through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there.

Egad, I was ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a story of it. I hope he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies.

He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were. The men were a poor lot, but, egad!

Carlington went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. And by the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? They take things flying. Lord Henry shook his head. I am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after politics. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm. They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.

I shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. I have asked myself and Mr. I am sick of them.

Why, the good woman thinks that I have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads. Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic. The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street and turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square. Crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance.

A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it were.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.

Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade! And Basil? From a psychological point of view, how interesting he was!

The new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was!

He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analyzed it? Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our own century it was strange Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait.

He would seek to dominate him—had already, indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There was something fascinating in this son of love and death. Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses.

When he entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick and passed into the dining-room. He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.

Opposite was the Duchess of Harley, a lady of admirable good-nature and good temper, much liked by every one who knew her, and of those ample architectural proportions that in women who are not duchesses are described by contemporary historians as stoutness.

Next to her sat, on her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who followed his leader in public life and in private life followed the best cooks, dining with the Tories and thinking with the Liberals, in accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was occupied by Mr.

Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial statement in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of them ever quite escape.

What are American dry-goods? Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners. The duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption. It is most unfair. And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris.

I wish I could afford to do the same. Sir Thomas frowned. I assure you that it is an education to visit it. Erskine plaintively. Sir Thomas waved his hand. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his shelves.

We practical men like to see things, not to read about them. The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect. Perhaps it was. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all…All art is at once surface and symbol…It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors…All art is quite useless.

Does it matter? Not really, but it makes you wonder what else is sloppy inside the text. Top image from wikipedia London street around from cloudfront. View all 27 comments. Beautiful art by saku-chann on Tumblr I originally was going to give this three stars, because I enjoyed it enough, but was never too invested.

I felt annoyed at how these characters were so obviously not straight. I mean, a vast majority of this book is about Dorian taking a wife. Meanwhile, every man in this book just has full page monologues telling Dorian how beautiful he is. And then I sat down to do my review, and I started doing my research. Hell, he was even jailed for his sexuality, and died soon after from all the inhumane injuries he endured while in prison.

All three major male character in this book read very… not straight. My friend, Destiny , told me that a lot of readers in the Horror circles make strong arguments that Dorian is in fact pansexual, which makes me happier than I can express with words. You guys, I have no words. In the s people thought homosexuality was some disease, something to be cured, something not okay to simply just be.

Something that was a criminal act. Something that Oscar Wilde was jailed and forced to do hard labor for. Okay, I do suppose I should tell you about the story now. Henry is a manipulator that heavily influences Dorian with his views about what is important in life.

He later is harboring a major secret and will stop at nothing to hide this secret and the events that lead him to this secret. There is also a huge discussion to be had about good versus evil and how we view that grey area in-between.

Yet, these discussions are held in this seamlessly woven story. Overall, I really enjoyed it and it was able to evoke a lot of emotion from me.

She linked this article , which then made me weep. Again, this story is so much more than a paranormal painting, and a man trying to hide secrets. This is a masterpiece and my heart will forever break thinking about this story. View all 14 comments. Shelves: oct-scare-fest , immortality , gothic-fiction , faustian-bargain , classic-horror , owned-copy , unsympathetic-main-characters , moral-decadence , psychological-horror , victorian.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a hard book to review. After reading such eloquent, beautiful, and rich writing, I am at a loss for how to command my comparatively paltry ability to use words to express how I felt about this book. Forgive me as I go back to AP English for a few moments. I asked myself what were the themes of this novel. Here is my list: Identity Experience Beauty The triumph on senses over reason Accountability I will attempt to build my review, in part, around the discussion of these t The Picture of Dorian Gray is a hard book to review.

Here is my list: Identity Experience Beauty The triumph on senses over reason Accountability I will attempt to build my review, in part, around the discussion of these themes.

Identity Dorian Gray was a flawed man who was essentially empty inside. He was very young when this story began, seemingly full of potential. Sadly, he invested all his sense of worth in his external beauty, doing little to grow the inner man; unless you consider his descent into depravity, discovering more and more excesses for the meaningless value of those experiences since his mentor Lord Henry taught him that experience has no value , yet he was strangely curious as to how they would affect the portrait of his soul.

He was not quite a tragic figure, because I could not feel sorry for him. He had made this horrible decision and I believe he had opportunities to repent of it, which he didn't take , but he chose never to take responsibility for himself.

Which leads to the next theme. Because he never took responsibility for his actions. Being accountable for one's own actions is a crucial aspect of self-development, at least in my humble opinion.

If a person cannot do that, they are doomed to eternal immaturity. This was Dorian's fate. It was Basil's fault for painting the picture.

It was Sybil's fault for being a bad actress, and making him fall out of love with her. All the people he ruined in his relentless pursuit of pleasure and debauchery ruined themselves.

He took no part in their ruination. Ultimately, he even blamed the picture, and sought to destroy it as the only true evidence of his black soul. I feel like this: If you're going to be a bad, selfish person, own up to it.

Don't try to act like your sins should be laid at other people's feet. That was the route the Mr. Dorian Gray took. Experience Lord Henry was the man who opens Dorian's eyes to the fact that the only thing he has to his advantage is the beauty of his youth, that he should enjoy life while he is young enough to experience it fully.

He states that experience is not a teacher, and that men don't learn from the mistakes they make as they live. Your experiences don't count for anything.

It seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for Dorian Gray. Instead of realizing how his selfish, shallow actions could hurt and destroy others, he never did do that. He merely went from one fixation to the other, marking the effects on the portrait that he guarded jealously.

In the end, there was no value to what he experienced. He was just wasting time in my opinion. The triumph of sensation over reason Dorian Gray became a voluptuary, lost in sensations. He didn't focus on becoming a learned person, only experiencing what he encountered in his pursuits, wallowing in those sensations; until he grew bored, and moved onto the next one. Lord Henry seemed like a good mentor. A man who appeared so intelligent, with a saying for everything.

A witty, entertaining man, who had a reputation for saying utterly wicked things. But he wasn't a deep man. He didn't believe what he said. It was an image that he projected for lack of anything else to do as an aristocrat who had no need to work for a living. Dorian Gray took this as gospel, and took it to the next level. As a result, it made his life utterly meaningless.

Sadly, his friend Basil, who was a fairly wise person, was dismissed, and made fun of by Lord Henry. I almost felt like Basil and Lord Henry were the warring aspects of Dorian's conscience, at times.

Beauty What is beauty? I tend to think it's a double-edged sword. We are all attracted to things that are beautiful, that have a physical appeal. But, should we be content with merely a comely appearance, while the inside is rotted?

Dorian Gray was a man of such unearthly beauty that people could not believe he was capable of the debauchery he had committed. Those who didn't heed the warnings given to them, came to rue it. Basil, who painted the young Dorian's fateful picture, couldn't accept that Dorian had become such a horrible person.

What a sad fate that was for Basil. I felt several things as I read this book: interest, curiosity, disgust, sadness, and ultimately, a sense that justice had been done, in a very strange, but fitting way. One thing that became very apparent to me as I read this novel, was Oscar Wilde's considerable wit.

I imagine he was quite entertaining to be around. In the preface, Oscar Wilde says that all art is meaningless. What was he trying to say with this story? I have trouble believing that. This was a novel I couldn't dismiss and treat as mere brain candy. There was some message there that hammered away at my brain. I do believe that Mr. Wilde hints at the subjective nature of art which includes literature. I think that we could all read the same story and take away different things from it.

Our brains are so very different, and the pathways are nurtured and developed by our various experiences, and our own values. So, that we will all come away from viewing a picture or reading a story with a hand-tailored message.

Maybe that's what he means by saying that an artist strives not to be present in his work. Instead, it is a mirror reflecting the viewer. That makes sense to me, actually. What message did I come away with? At the end of the day, I believe that Dorian Gray led a worthless life. His eternal youth counted for nothing.

He never grew as a person, and he used the bounteous gifts he'd been given selfishly. He did horrible things that made it even worse. He was lucky in that he didn't live long enough to count the full cost of those actions. He allowed the portrait to take the weight of those sins intead of letting them rest where they belonged. If anything really bothers me as a person, it's the thought of my time on this earth being wasted. Never having accomplished anything of value. For that reason, I found Dorian Gray to be a very sad man, but I could not feel sorry for him.

So, is this a horror novel, you might ask? I think this is a thinking person's horror novel. It is a study of how the sins we commit cannot be hidden, even if we lie to ourselves about that.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Wilde does not elaborate on what vile acts Dorian committed. We are left to our own expansive imaginations to surmise the bulk of what he'd done.

Some people don't believe in such a thing as sin. If you don't believe in sin, how could it have a cost? It didn't matter that Dorian Gray didn't acknowledge his sins.

They caught up with him in the end. The horror is how he confronted the consequences of his sins, yet turned away from them, locking that manifestation away in the attic to view with a detached sort of curiosity. The horror is the lives he destroyed, but never felt more than a moment's remorse. Fundamentally, Dorian Gray was an angelically beautiful monster. The horror is that we can look upon beauty, and we can be fooled into never asking what lies beneath it.

View all 40 comments. The Picture of Dorian Gray begins on a beautiful summer day in Victorian era England, where Lord Henry Wotton, an opinionated man, is observing the sensitive artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of Dorian Gray, a handsome young man who is Basil's ultimate muse. While sitting for the painting, Dorian listens to Lord Henry espousing his hedonistic world view, and begins to think that beauty is the only aspect of life worth pursuing.

This prompts Dorian to wish that the painted image of himself would age instead of himself. View all 7 comments. Nov 27, jessica rated it it was amazing. View all 12 comments. Mar 23, Trevor I sometimes get notified of comments rated it really liked it Shelves: literature.

He said that when he read this book as a young man it made him certain that he was not homosexual. Now, that in itself was enough to make me curious about the book.

This is a book that could only have been written by a homosexual male and it is a book about homosexuality in very many ways. We are increasingly a culture obsessed with appearance. Or rather if it was the expression of desire very early in the book for Dorian Gray by Basil, his painter and ardent admirer, that convinced him.

Lord Harry is one of those talking desk calendars, in fact, other than Hamlet, I think it would be hard to find a book with more quotable quotes per page. Some of them are deliciously funny and others are just the sort of illumination that a match struck in a dark room makes. There were moments in this book, as there are in other works by Wilde, when one gets a feeling of premonition of his fate — it is hard to think of a sadder story than that of the last years of his life, or one that makes more plain how incredibly stupid are societies that punish people for their sexuality.

There would be very little I could not forgive Wilde for, particularly after he wrote The Importance of Being Earnest — this book, his only novel, is nearly as good. Our sins are not quite displayed as clearly on our faces as is assumed here, but our lives do mark us — it is a pity that in our obsession with youth that we forget how beautiful our scars can be and that love, real love, the love that touches us most deeply, is when another accepts our scars and loves us for them, rather than in spite of them.

The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for. There was no time when I felt Wilde was calling a spade an implement for cultivation or some such silly phrase.

His writing is always clear and to the point. I really did enjoy it. Jun 13, Petra is in Delray Beach having fun,No books rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-read-a-long-time-ago , fiction , reviewed , reviews. Possessing eternal youth and beauty produces exactly the same effect as sentencing a man to life without the possibility of parole. Both have nothing to lose and morals disappear before the desire for immediate self-gratification in all things.

And so it is with Dorian Gray. It's a moral story so eventually his evil catches up with him and he dies, as does the criminal. Is Oscar Wilde saying that it is man's essential nature, to be so internally psychopathic and selfish that so long as he can ke Possessing eternal youth and beauty produces exactly the same effect as sentencing a man to life without the possibility of parole.

Is Oscar Wilde saying that it is man's essential nature, to be so internally psychopathic and selfish that so long as he can keep his reputation he will wreak havoc on people's lives and not care in the process of enriching his own?

Oscar Wilde was a man who held some very nasty views and only cared when extremely similar ones were turned upon himself. He was imprisoned for homosexuality, but felt it was ok for Dreyfus to be imprisoned on a trumped-up crime but really because he was Jewish. He chose the wrong side on that one and lost even his best friend. I don't like the author, but I do love his prose.

I read this book years ago. But the psychological story of a man's realisation that there are no consequences to his actions, nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted, you never forget.

View all 23 comments. Jan 06, Paul Bryant rated it really liked it Shelves: novels. I don't know what I was quite expecting here. It's a psychological horror story with a lot of comic relief, in the form of the endless witty paradoxes. After page 30 you are thinking that if Lord Henry makes just one more crack you're going to knock his monocle off his family crest and grind it underfoot. Oscar often clearly thinks he's being hilarious with his wit with a capital W — and maybe it's me, but Oscar Wilde often sounds like a parody of Oscar Wilde, like in the Monty Python sketch WHIS I don't know what I was quite expecting here.

But of course, some of it is very good stuff : The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. When we meet we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. The fact was, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband.

One of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies but are thoroughly disliked by their friends. But his character Lord Henry goes on and on with the wit and the aphorisms She is a peacock in everything but beauty…she tried to found a salon and only succeeded in opening a restaurant….

One can't stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. And you get a lot of guff about women No woman is a genius. A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

As for conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and two of these can't be admitted into decent society. Oh, how rude of me — Oscar, allow me to introduce Captain Beefheart. Then there's the necessarily undeclared but pretty open gayness.

How the two older men worship this young Adonis Dorian — they openly salivate! He says to Lord Henry 30 minutes after meeting him : I feel I must come with you. Do let me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time?

No one talks so wonderfully as you do. What a flirt. I don't think boys talk to each other like this anymore. They're a little more discreet these days. So as the story saunters along, and at a couple of points you think there never will be a story, the banter and the brittle conversations die away and Dorian, his portrait miraculously ageing instead of him, realises he can "sin" without consequence.

He turns into a vicious voluptuary, a promiscuous profligate, an effulgent epicurean and a licentious libertine. In time the word gets round, and society reacts with the strongest possible disapproval : He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club… and it was said that on one occasion when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out.

That would cut a fellow to the very quick, though, wouldn't it. What would be the modern equivalent? There isn't one. Both Dorian and the novel turn strange. You might think that the life of a young handsome sensualist would consist of orgies and opium, roofies and deflorations, and maybe a black mass thrown in for kicks, with goats and orphans, but you would be wrong.

Dorian plunges into a life of strange obsessions — for ten pages we get elaborate lists of a perfumes, b jewels, c tapestries, and d world music — yes, that came as a surprise to me too : He used to give curious concerts in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers or grave yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes So WOMAD then.

Dorian collects instruments like the furuparis, human bone flutes, sonorous green jaspers, the clarin, the teponazali, some yotl-bells and a Stratocaster made from the skulls of Tibetan lamas. No, I made up the last one. But this is a real quote : "he had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments". I was kind of disappointed. Is this really debauchery? I don't think Ozzy Osbourne would recognise it as such.

With the change of gear in the book, we find that Oscar can come out with some quite extraordinary sentences. Here is a favourite : There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie.

Oscar's solitary novel is a gothic tale of a man who came to think that he could commit sin without consequence. And he couldn't. It's either curiously conservative — God will smite you down, there's no escape, and nor should there be — or it's a coded message of revolution : the idle rich have got it coming to them.

I think Oscar became a convert to some form of socialism round about the time he wrote his novel, so I'm going with the latter interpretation. It suits me. I think there are fifty shades of Dorian Gray even now cashing in their half million dollar bonuses and thinking that they'll be young and invulnerable forever.

But vengeance will come like a thief in the night. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. Instantly, we feel we know this character — actually know him — rather than him being just a name and an empty description.

The author also succeeds in capturing in words that most elusive of places; the world of dreams:. There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie.

Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. He is able to select the right words at the right time to evoke each and every face, room, street, ornament or sensation. A slightly outlandish entry in this list, I admit, but a significant one nonetheless.

In typical Wilde style, the preface to this novel is actually more of a mini-essay on the nature of art. It concludes with these powerful, short sentences:. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. In the vast majority of cases a mere literary convention, here the preface feels urgent, important and directly bound to the main work itself.

Of course, The Picture of Dorian Gray is, in itself, a work of art, making this preface take on a pointed significance. The cult of the image is something which seems to have emerged as a deciding factor in the post-World War II, primarily Western world. Today, glamour magazines and adverts bombard us with Dorian-esque, unrealistic, skin-deep imagery every minute of every day. As I mentioned before, I see the novel as acutely picking up on one seemingly essential strand of human nature; the lust for our true character to be given a near-perfect outward-facing mask.

This can be seen manifesting itself in everything from celebrity super-injunctions to choosing how you are represented on your Facebook profile. So, those are my six reasons, but in truth the list could be far, far longer. All I would do is urge you to find and read this bizarre, engrossing, provocative novel that lingers in the imagination long after the final page. The novel is a clever tale about vanity, one which is even more relevant in modern society.

Everyone should read it. Oscar Wilde definitely has a great way with words. His description of even someone talking is like poetry. Many good points. Wilde surely had a way with words. I think the eerily relevant part is so true and going off what Alberta said about vanity.

That rings true I think a lot more today than even back then. I read this very recently and I am not sure what to think. I thought the novel is almost perfect if Dorian had had a conversion at the end! He was absolutely hopeless, so despairing of being able to change, it made me sad.

On the positive side, the book is beautifully written. I was first introduced to the character in the League of Extraordinary Gentleman. I know that is nothing like the actual character, the movie is an amalgamation of many different fictional characters, but after reading this the book does sound interesting. I may give it a read. I have read a few books from the s and I always find them cringe worthy. But then, maybe people from that time period used to talk like that.

I have to agree with you that Oscar Wilde is an amazing wordsmith. The words flow effortlessly, and I found myself reading it in one sitting.

Not one of my favorites, but I would definitely pick it up again in the future. Despite its complexity, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not difficult to read. Firstly this is a great article, Samuel. Some reviewers declared that, far from exposing immorality, Wilde wanted to promote it. Elsewhere, the story was greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend his novel in letters to the press.

One reviewer for a newspaper which declared that Lippincott's should be "ashamed to circulate" such filth, refused to describe the contents of the novel because he did not wish to "advertise the developments of an esoteric prurience". As well as talk of prosecution, there was a strong hint of Francophobia against the decadent "yellow book" Lord Henry gives Dorian to recruit him to his belief in "Art".

The Daily Chronicle found the novel to be "a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French decadents". More dangerous were the attempts of some reviewers to link the novel to the Cleveland Street affair of This scandal, centred on a male brothel frequented by an upper-class clientele that included members of the British political elite, was an eerie forerunner, in its exposure of the demi-monde, of the Queensberry libel case that would eventually destroy Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray , Wilde's only novel, was published on 20 June in the July edition of Lippincott's , as a novella of 13 chapters, and was the leading contribution to the magazine.

Several British reviewers condemned the book for immorality. The novel became so controversial that WH Smith withdrew that month's edition of Lippincott's from its railway station bookstalls.