The Dorian Daze

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” shows us the true face of Pride. It shows us that those who choose a life of Pride are condemning themselves to a self-delusional and self-destructive existence. Hoodwinked by the nihilistic falsehood of relativism, they spend their increasingly meaningless days in a Dorian daze.

Literature can throw a penetrating light onto the darkness of the times in which we find ourselves. We think perhaps of works of dystopian fiction, such as Lord of the World by R. H. Benson, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. These “futuristic” works project contemporary trends into an imaginary future to reflect how things might become if such trends are not abandoned or modified. As such, they can serve as prophets or even prophets of doom.

Other works of literature can help to expose and even overthrow tyrannical regimes. Take, for instance, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a powerful depiction of the brutality and inhumanity of the Soviet labour camps, which helped to discredit Soviet Communism in the eyes of the world.

Although these titles spring readily to mind when we think of literary works which have the power to shed light on the darkness and madness of modernity, it is not likely that Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, will be seen as a work which wields such power. It is not a dystopian depiction of a nightmare future, nor is it a grittily realistic exposé of present political tyranny and corruption. It is, on the contrary, a fantasy with supernatural undertones set in Wilde’s own time and Wilde’s own London, which nonetheless holds up a remarkable mirror to our present narcissistic culture, showing us ourselves and serving thereby as a cautionary parable of the dangers of Pride and its decadent and destructive consequences.

The story revolves around an impressionable young man, Dorian Gray, who is corrupted by the philosophy of nihilistic and cynical relativism preached by an older man, Lord Henry Wotton. The eponymous picture is painted by the third key character, Basil Hallward, an artist who is besotted with Dorian’s physical beauty. Upon seeing the portrait, Dorian Gray becomes enamoured of his own physical appearance, much as the mythical Narcissus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses falls in love with his own reflection in the pool. After Lord Henry seduces Dorian with the notion that the physical beauty of youth is all that matters, Dorian realizes that the painting will always reflect his youthful beauty whereas he is destined to grow old and ugly. In a fit of anger at the thought of his own mutability and mortality, he wishes or perhaps “prays” that he should retain his youthful good looks and that the painting should bear the burden of his age, growing old in his stead. The wish is granted, or the “prayer” answered, and Dorian enjoys the poisoned fruits of his Faustian pact.

The remainder of the novel is a catalogue of Dorian’s sins, which become worse and more perverse as he sinks into the quagmire of his own addictive decadence. With every sin he commits, the portrait becomes more hideous and ugly, sneering with cruelty. Dorian realizes that the picture is the mirror of his own soul, reflecting the ugliness that lurks beneath the ever-beautiful veneer of his unchanging physical beauty. At times, the unflinching metaphysical realism of the ugly reality of his hidden but true self prompts him to repentance. Each time, however, he slips back into his old wicked ways. Eventually he seeks to free himself of the leering presence of the picture, which he perceives as his conscience. If he can free himself of the presence of the picture, he can free himself from the presence of his conscience. Such liberation would enable him to sin more freely without the slightest suggestion of self-reproach. Seeking to destroy the picture, he succeeds only in destroying himself, his conscience being inseparable from his very soul.

Such is the fictional story but how does it reflect the factual reality in which we find ourselves today?

If we see Dorian Gray as homo superbus, the Man of Pride who seeks to do his own thing without any self-restraint or any society-imposed moral constraints, he emerges as an Everyman figure, forged in the image of our own deplorable epoch, who shows us the state of our nihilistic and decadent culture. Dorian Gray is the advocate of Pride. He keeps up appearances in public but his private life is a mess which messes up the lives of everyone else. The more he tries to be the self-created image of himself, the less he knows who he is. The more that he believes he is free from moral constraints, the more he becomes a slave of his own addictive and self-destructive habits. The more he tries to kill his conscience, the more certainly he is killing himself.

So much for Dorian Gray, the Man of Pride, but what of his picture? It is the art which shows Dorian Gray the ugly truth beneath the cosmetic veneer of the prideful surface. And the role that the fictional picture plays in the fictional story, is the same role that the fictional story plays in the real world. Wilde’s own novel is itself a mirror, showing us a portrait of the decadent and prideful culture which Wilde knew only too well, to his own great cost and to the cost of others.

The Picture of Dorian Gray shows us the true face of Pride. It shows us that those who choose a life of Pride are condemning themselves to a self-delusional and self-destructive existence. Hoodwinked by the nihilistic falsehood of relativism, they spend their increasingly meaningless days in a Dorian daze.

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The featured image is the frontispiece to Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” wood-engraved illustration, by Eugene Dété (engraver) after Paul Thiriat (published 1908, London or Paris), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.