The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapters 6-10

Sybil

• Sybil is so pure that Dorian rejects Henry’s theories

  • Supports theme of art versus life

    • Very different things and can be mistaken for each other

    • Dorian confounds the two

“I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.”

• Possibility Dorian won’t give in to Henry's influence

• Yet Dorian values Sybil as art just like Henry values him

  • Destroying Sybil shows how he gives into what Henry says

Basil v. Henry

• Very different viewpoints on marriage

  • Basil-- more traditional

  • Henry-- upset that it makes ppl less selfish

• Wilde uses the two to argue for and against the aestheticism movement

  • Henry argues using a philosophical argument for the philosophy

“Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.”

• Symbolic of long standing tension between nature and culture

“One's own life--that is the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern. Besides, individualism really has the higher aim.”

• Basil believes that living for oneself means one does not only pay financially but in other ways-- suffering

Theme of Art

• Art used to create a better world and escape surrounding

  • That what sybill does with her acting and thus she can no longer act when the world becomes good to her

    • Dorian let her feel real emotions acting let her escape to different realities

  • This is Sybil’s philosophy and the direct opposite of Henry’s

    • She believes in bigger grander emotions compared to Henry’s which ignores human emotion

“[B]efore I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. [...] You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is.”

• The change is sybil causes Dorian’s love for her to be destroyed

  • She was only a performer to her-- does not lover her as a person

    • Dramatic Irony: similar to how the world treats Dorian-- as a beautiful rather than a person

“You have spoiled the romance of my life. How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your art, you are nothing.”

Portrait

• The portrait reflects his aging and his moral actions

  • Showing the universe’s moral nature

  • It’s his conscience

• Shows sin while giving Dorian freedom from mortality

  • Shows how the conscience is ultimately influenced by mortality

“But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?”

• Painting is stored in the school room

  • Where he also stores the lessons of the paintings and the lessons of his childhood

    • Symbolic of how he refuses to acknowledge

  • Shows how refuses to use it to guide his character and become a better person

    • His soul belongs with his unused past

    • He tries to rid himself of his conscience

  • Basil could have saved Dorian from Lord Henry’s influence

“Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.”

Reputation vs. Character

“For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that existed between him and the picture might cease. It had changed in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain unchanged. [...] He would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely into it?”

• Dorian thinks about changing but does not

  • Demonstrates his change towards evil

  • Does not own up to changing and becoming a better person

• Shows Dorian emotions and opinions lean more toward pleasure

  • Changes due to Henry

“There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one's debut with a scandal.”

• Demonstrates how Dorian is an artistic creation run amuck

• The artistic expression allows him to explore his pleasures freely

• Dorian sees Sibyl as the literally embodiment of the characters who she plays

  • Kills when her reality is revealed

“I must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded.”

• Shows Dorian influenced by Henry

  • Views this through an aesthetic perspective--mixes art with reality

“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.”

• Fills in the rest-- the meaning of ugliness in a ugly thing

  • Dorian cannot see that in Sybil’s death

    • He’s severing himself from Sybil’s death with his ego

    • Dorian really has been influenced by Lord Henry has been corrupted by him

“She passed again into the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her.”

• Her death literally did--adds to the portrait

• Shows the transformation of Dorian into more of a work of art

Basil & Dorian

• Basil has physical attraction towards Dorian

  • Conversation discusses Basil’s inner nature rather than Dorian’s

  • Shows homoerotic relationships and their negative stigma at the time

    • Basil translates these feelings into his art

“The love that he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.”

Yellow Book

• A Rebours by JK Huysmans

• Book represents the poisonous influence of Henry upon Dorian

  • Henry is responsible for the corruption of Dorian

• The book is reflective of his own being

  • A man obsessed with the sensory

  • Foreshadows Dorian taking up a hedonistic lifestyle