Oscar Wilde – The picture of Dorian Gray
the author
· Oscar Fingal O´Flahertie Wills Wilde
· an irish author
· co-founder of the esthetic movement “l´art pour l´art“
· born on October the 16th in 1854 in Dublin
· mother was poetess and had a literary parlour à Wilde got to know important people of the local culture
· father doctor
· first studied in Dublin, later classic philology in Oxford (1878 first price for poem „Ravenna“)
· in Oxford confronted with new esthetic ideas which he took up à lifestyle as Dandy
· Dandy: long hair, velvet knickerbockers, esthetic appointed, elegant with the aim to make a work of art of the person
· because of his eccentric character he became the target of sneer in the satiric magazine „Punch“
· in circles of experts he was praised as a colloquy genius with shrewdness and good jokes
· after his study he moved to London
· 1884 he married Constance Lloyd
· because of her money, Wilde was able to spend most of his time for writing
· because of his work and his personal qualities he adapted to a central person of the London society
· 1895 maximum of his career
· got into social offside due to a sensation lawsuit
· was accused of sodomy by the father of his younger friend Lord Alfred Douglas (they had a homosexual relationship)
· 2 years of jail with heavy labour
· financial and societal ruin caused mental ruin
· with him his work was also banned, none of his stories was performed for a long time
· after ejection he emigrated to Paris
· died on November the 30th in 1900 because of meningitis
his career
· first he released poems
· became popular owing to his sarcastic and witty performances
· most of his stories originated at the end of his career
· for example the bright „ ghost of Canterville“ or the melancholy book „ The picture of Dorian Gray“
· it was Oscar Wildes only book
· it served as proof in his process because of sodomy
· but it was not the popular book as we know it today, it was the mostly unknown version which was published in the magazine „Lippincotts Monthly Magazine“ 1980
· it weight as very captious
the story
· main character is a young man named Dorian Gray
· he is the inspiration of Basil Hallward´s art, Basil adores his pristine nature and his indescribable beauty
· Basil paints a picture of Dorian à a masterpiece
· Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basils´ and then also to Dorian, is there at the time of the last sitting
· Dorian is fascinated by Lord Henry and his unconventional (perhaps immoral?) ideas
· he discusses the wonders of youthfulness and the awfulness of aging
· Dorian, still young and moldable, is only an experiment for Henry and very affected by his words
· as he sees the finished picture, he is extremely disappointed, he realises that his beauty is short – live and he praises: „ If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young and the picture 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!“
· from then on Dorian´s look stay the same
· but also his physical features are not changing, his soul is changing
· under the influence of Lord Henry he starts exploring life in new ways
· Basil is against this strong influence, he is worry about a desaster
· at the beginning of Dorian´s „new life“ he meets a young women „Sybil Vane“
· he falls in love with her and asks her to marry him
· when he wants his two friends to get to know her, they visit the theatre where Sybil performs
· at this evening she acts extremely worse but Dorian has only loved her because she has been a fantastic actress and he breaks off the engagement in a very cruel way
· Sybil commits suicide
· at the same time Dorian discovers that there is a change in the picture, it shows a very cruel expression
· shocked because of this he hides the picture in a always locked room of his house
· as time goes by the painting changes to represent Dorian´s soul, the grotesque thing that has become of it
· no one of his faults, Dorian rushes young men and married women into their ruin, is to see on his beauty face, but the picture becomes even more terrible
· one evening, it is the one before his 38th birthday, he decided to show Basil Hallward his „soul“
· Dorian makes him responsible for his fate and so he kills him with a knife
· after he had destroyed the corpse he wants to start up a new life
· Lord Henry laughs at him
· at home Dorian starts to slash at his picture with a knife and it turns to the original form
· suddenly Dorian Gray physically aged and turned into what his painting had been which signifies the end of his painful existence
the problem
· the book deals with the problem of fugacity of youth
· moreover Oscar Wilde addresses the problems of homosexual being in the prude London
· he criticises the doubtable morale of the society which doesn’t permit people to enjoy life
· secret sins
· feeling of guilt
· double nature of the human soul (comparable with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1896) trying to separate the good and the evil of one person)
· another big problem is the urge that all wishes should come true à as you see here it will end in a desaster
· Wilde describes the tragedy of a young person with a weak soul who loses his identity
moral
· There is more than only beauty and egoism