This week’s reading was pretty enjoyable for me; I love a good story with a moral and a twist, and I love Oscar Wilde. Starting out, it seemed as though this story was going to take a while to read but I found myself flipping through the pages (via mouse clicks) quite quickly. Oscar Wilde was one of my favorite writers to study in high school; I loved The Importance of Being Earnest. Having read these this play and now this story, I have concluded that Wilde is very good at writing novels with very clever endings.
Wilde was (appropriately) an Irish writer, and I researched him and found that The Picture of Dorian Gray is his only novel. I also found that Wilde’s family had experienced quite a bit of tragedy during Wilde’s early years. Perhaps this lead to Wilde’s homosexuality, which was discovered by the public when he was arrested for gross indecency, or sexual acts with a man. It’s interesting to me how in Carmilla’s story, homosexuality seemed to not be such a big deal to write about, but then in Oscar Wilde’s case, it was a very serious “criminal act.” Although, Carmilla is a fiction story. But I still wonder if maybe Carmilla is a subliminal message and small petition, if you’d call it, for gay rights? However, I took the story of Carmilla a lot differently than I noticed other classmates did, so who knows. Everyone’s views are different.
But back to the story for this week. I enjoyed it a lot. I could go on and on and explain what I thought every chapter of the story meant but for space & time's sake I'll just stick to this end chunk. Oscar Wilde writes enjoyable pieces with clever morals. I just want to say that the scene when Dorian stabs the painting and ends up getting the knife in his heart, was really where all of my anticipation led up to. “He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward.
He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it.
It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter,
so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant.
It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.
It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings,
he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture
with it…”
I have to say it was quite predictable what would happen, but I have read hundreds of books and have seen hundreds of movies so still I thought it was quite clever. The line where he says, “It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free,” is most interesting to me. The knife did indeed kill the past—the past that was living within him. But yet it restored the past to the painting. Not the effects of the past, which is what I believe the aging was, but since it restored Dorian to his full youth, I believe it preserved himself in the past, long before his past was ever a bad thing. So, in a way, it got rid of the past like he said, but just the part of his past that was regretful.
I also liked the quote, “Youth had spoiled him.” I believe this is a very powerful quote from the novel, because it is the sum of what the whole story is about. If Dorian hadn’t spent all of his focus on staying young, he would had never had the problems he went through---the aging. He still aged from trying to stay young, and it showed in the picture of him. His mind still aged, and further endorses the quote “Beauty is only skin deep.”
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Lucky,
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad that you were able to return to an author that you were not only familiar with, but that you had a fondness for. I'm also in agreance that the end piece is perhaps one of the best ones, and although we all knew, for the most part what would happen, it was still eloquently put. If this had been the first time I'd heard or read the story of Dorian Gray I would have been held in rapt suspense by that section with the knife. I also think that, like many literary killers, Gray developed a little bit of a condition like the one that Lady Macbeth suffered from ("Out damn spot"), which again pulls on Wilde's constant allusions to inspiration from Shakespeare.
Also I'll admit that one of the things that caught my attention in your blog this week was your commentary on homosexuality, especially when you theorized "Perhaps this lead to Wilde's homosexuality." Originally when I read this, I'll admit it put my back up because it sounded, for a moment, like you were saying that homosexuality was some sort of condition afflicted by his familial tragedy. I continued though and hoped I was just misreading things. You also made a comment on point of view of the other students and I have to agree, we are all very different individuals and that greatly impacts what we read as the subtext to these pieces, and the biggest part is often realizing that difference. I can't wait to see your point of view over the next couple of weeks.
WS
GRR! Sorry to rant but I had a whole long comment written and my computer decided to flip to a previous page and I lost it all! This might teach me to write them on Word first.
ReplyDeleteAnyways- I'll try to remember what I had written.
I also love a great ending with a twist, and The Portrait of Dorian Gray did not dissapoint. This was the first work of his I've been exposed to, so your comments on how his plays are similarly enthralling makes me want to look into them.
I did some reading into Oscar Wilde's background as well and I found it all pretty interesting. I was amazed at how "flamboyant" or I suppose "eccentric" he was, considering the social norms of the time. I imagine this is part of the reason I enjoy him so much. He was a free spirit and was not afraid to be himself, even if his society was not on board. It's no surprise that he fell victim to backlash and punishment as a result, seeing as today's society is still not tolerant of homosexuality as it should be, I can't imagine testing those waters in the late 1800's.
I can agree that the ending was predictable to an extent- basically the overall conclusion- completely a moral circle and ultimately implying that you reap what you sew an there is no escaping the repercussions of your actions. I was pleasantly surprised however with the twist of Dorian killing himself by stabbing the portrait that represented his years of bad decisions. (I say "pleasantly surprised" and I realize that this may sound a little morbid. It was the implications and the attention grabbing effects of the action that was pleasant- not so much the macabre areas)
Hey Lucky,
ReplyDeleteIt is nice to see that others enjoyed the novel as much as I did, although I cannot believe that you read the whole book online! The longest thing that I have ever read online was Carmilla and I thought that that was hard. Call me old fashioned, but I’d take a book over a computer screen any day, something about the smell… Anyways, kudos on reading it all online, I hope you can still see properly☺ Oh, and another big shocker; this was Wilde’s only novel! Really? Wow.
Going back to the book, I’m with you, I was kind of surprised that The Picture of Dorian Gray received so much criticism over homosexuality, while Carmilla received hardly any. I guess the whole vampire thing threw off the homophobes, and it did not exactly help that Wilde was openly gay.
One part of your blog that I am curious to know more about pertains to the comment in which you stated, “Wilde’s family had experienced quite a bit of tragedy during Wilde’s early years. Perhaps this lead to Wilde’s homosexuality.” I am a little confused as to what you mean by this. What about his families’ tragedy led to him being gay? I feel like I am missing something.
Although I did find the ending predictable, like you, it did not make it any less enjoyable. I do not know about you, but I was not a big fan of Dorian’s. Something about a man that will lead a girl to suicide, murder a good man for no good reason, and blackmail another man into covering it up just makes my all giddy inside when he ends up stabbing himself, with the same knife that he stabbed Basil Hallward with no less! Ah, sweet justice.