The Picture of Dorian Gray

[melannen]

So I'd had the Gutenberg Picture of Dorian Gray up in a window since I got back into From Eroica With Love for a bit last summer, because every time I get back into Eroica I think I should finally read Dorian Gray! and I got about halfway through and wasn't super into it and got distracted. But I needed one more book to finish off my Goodreads challenge so I picked up where I left off on New Year's Eve.

And - I realize this is probably not meant to be my main takeaway, but - I am stuck on what Dorian Gray was supposed to be up to that was so terrible. Like okay, he's clearly a bit of a sociopath, but (before the murder, let me clarify this, before the murder), what is it he was doing that made everybody edge away from him in fear and disgust?

It clearly wasn't murder, because when he actually does commit murder it's pretty obviously the first time. Also, given the thing with the bird-shot later, murder isn't really enough to make you persona non grata in that community, as long as you go about it the right way. He has to have done something that is less legally risky than murder, but worse in the eyes of high society than killing somebody.

I guess it could be homosexuality, or homosexuality/promiscuity/adultery/seduction combined, except whatever it is, Basil Hallward seems to be certain that Dorian wouldn't do it, and I find it difficult to believe that anyone who was voluntarily friends with Sir Henry would be shocked that someone was engaged in homosexuality/promiscuity/adultery/seduction. (Maybe this was more clear in the uncensored version such that it makes sense? But, really, Sir Henry.)

I mean, it could be making a point about how the love that "dare not speak its name" gets transmuted into all unspeakable things when it can't be spoken of. Or just that Dorian was a generally bad influence on people (he does seem to have been something of a one-man tumblr, showing you all culture and art and beauty but also slowly teaching you a new concept of normal until you can't interact right in other society anymore and also carelessly picking at all your weak points until any hint of mental illness you have is magnified into suicidal despair)

- except that Basil Hallward has clearly been given evidence of a specific, delineated crime he is accused of. So it can't just be a general aura of unspeakability and bad influence-ness.

It could be violent rape but honestly Dorian just doesn't seem the type.

It doesn't seem likely it's any kind of financial malfeasance, because there's no hint that Dorian has money troubles or really difficulty living within his (considerable) means (And, notably, gambling is never really mentioned as a vice of his). It doesn't seem likely it involves children either, because there's no evidence people younger than teenagers exist at all in the world of the novel.

Drugs? But this was the late 1800s, who wasn't doing drugs? Surely not political opinions or activism, Dorian would find that crass.

Black magic? There's a bit about his dive into mysticism there, it seemed to be making a point that he wasn't really tempted by the occult. Unless maybe people could just sense the spell with the portrait in his vibes. (I thought for a moment that the poisonous book bound in yellow paper must be The King In Yellow but it's a few years too early, so perhaps instead The King In Yellow is the book bound in yellow paper.)

I think I am hampered here by thinking of the other Victorian literature I've read in the past few years, that being such things as The Great God Pan, Sins of the Cities of the Plain, and Ellis's Sexual Inversion. Even Flatland, written for schoolboys, has state-sanctioned cannibalism and an explicit orgy scene and also does not ever flinch from lamplighting its own hypocrisy! The Victorians were fucked up, but they knew it. What is it that Dorian Gray did that is so much worse than anything in The Great God Pan or Sins of the Cities of the Plain?? What's left??

Is the point that we don't know what it is and therefore we imagine the worst thing we can imagine? I'm just. Having trouble imagining anything worse than "The Great God Pan", and besides I don't actually think Dorian at his worst is as morally corrupt as the men in "The Great God Pan". Of course, I did go right from reading Dorian Gray to listening to a murder podcast to put myself to sleep, but it's not like the Victorians had a shortage of lurid true crime to read before bed if they wanted, either.

But lurid true crime and Sins of the Cities, certainly Abbott and Ellis, and really even Arthur Machen, are of a different class than Wilde. And there's definitely an aspect in a lot of Victorian horror where the true wrongness comes from being out of your place; maybe the things Dorian did weren't actually that bad by middle-class Victorian standards but they still had to be unspeakable in a Duke's drawing room. (Maybe they were unspeakable to Dukes because middle-class people did them!) That's something I don't think I'll ever understand naturally. But surely Dorian Gray wouldn't knowingly do anything middle-class!!

I think there may be something else tripping me up, and it's something I've been thinking about in terms of other reading too: just how much different the experience of reading is in the internet age. It's entirely possible Wilde wouldn't have been able to, or dared to, get his hands on Sins of the Cities of the Plain even if he'd known it existed, whereas I can just pull a full-text copy off the internet on a whim. There's a whole chapter in Dorian Gray that's just Dunsany-esque lists (though again, pre-Dunsany! This is one of those books that has made itself trite by defining an aesthetic and genre that outgrew it, which is certainly a very Dorian Gray thing to do--) of beautiful and exotic things, and even twenty-five years ago I would have pored over them carefully to try to remember all the things that I might never find another reference to. Today I just skimmed it and made a mental note to go back to the chapter someday and wikipedia them all. There really isn't anything that's unspeakable because it's unlearnable anymore.

Anyway, my best guess at the terrible unspeakable thing Dorian is doing that scandalizes even Lord Henry's friends, that is not as bad as murder but worse than killing people, is either making and breaking secret betrothals, or blackmailing people into sex. But neither of those feels quite right either.

Comments

[china_shop]

(he does seem to have been something of a one-man tumblr, showing you all culture and art and beauty but also slowly teaching you a new concept of normal until you can't interact right in other society anymore and also carelessly picking at all your weak points until any hint of mental illness you have is magnified into suicidal despair)

Hee! /o\

[thenewbuzwuzz]

+1

[melannen]

Look. The resemblance was uncanny! (You know Oscar Wilde would still have a tumblr.)

[out_there]

It's been too long since I read it for me to remember details. I used to believe it was betrothals and lovers -- that he refused to follow the expected social cues (ie if you do it,keep it quiet. If you spend time with a girl form a good family, marry her.) But I suspect it's kept vague on purpose.

[melannen]

I'm sure it's vague on purpose, and that probably I'm not supposed to think there's an actual bad thing he did, just imagine that it's worse than you can imagine. It's just that my "worst" has been reset to The Great God Pan and Dorian wouldn't *do* that!

The reason I don't think it can just be generally infamous sexual conduct is that Lord Henry also does that and Basil seems to think Dorian is way over even Lord Henry's lines. Although Henry was married, which means he can't be misleading anyone into thinking he's a marriage prospect, so that may be a big part of it.

[ivyfic]

That chapter is explicitly a list of all the other gay literature so anyone else interested can go look it up.

Unfortunately, I read Dorian Gray twenty years ago so don’t remember it well enough to help with your main inquiry.

[melannen]

Huh, I would not have considered that, because I mostly remembered it being about music and embroidery and gems, but sure enough, there are a lot of literary reference! I guess I shouldn't have skimmed. Although it also wouldn't have occurred to me that even in the 1880 the Satyricon was something somebody looking for dirty books would need to be told about (of course I learned about the Satyricon via books on werewolves, so I have no room to talk.) I think it's actually more a summary of queer history than specific literary titles? But yes, I can see it serving that purpose! Another thing the internet changes the need for. (I was amused to see that there was a contemporary review that actually cross-referenced Dorian Gray with the scandal that Sins of the Cities was RPS of, so his detractors were also doing the work...)

I think, on re-read when it's not 11:30 after a twelve-hour drive, that it was mostly meant to be sleeping with young men, and maybe even more specifically sleeping with young men *carelessly* so you don't leave them better off than you found them. And the popular imagination making that seem worse. But I'm still not sure what the specific "Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read." which is clearly meant to be worse than just sodomy (especially since it was a woman's confession.) Maybe some kind of extreme S&M kink well beyond the innocent birching, genderplay and incest in Sins of the Cities? Or some kind of sexual coercion which also implicated other people in the coercion.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

I gather it's generally assumed the poisonous book was a fictional version of "À rebours" by Huysmans.

[melannen]

I figured it was probably a real book! Thanks.

(Reading that wikipedia summary it mostly reminds me of Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, which is probably again also deeply missing the point, and making a point about how the internet has changed the way we experience literature....)

[primeideal]

I understand this isn't the main takeaway from this post, but you've had the same browser open since the summer? The computer doesn't get turned off or crash or anything? :P

[beatrice_otter]

I just assumed that by "window" she meant "tab" and that she has her browser set to keep tabs from session to session, so that when you open your browser, it will have the same tabs open that you had open when you last closed it.

[ratcreature]

Not the poster, but I set my browsers to restore my sessions so I keep tabs open for years sometimes regardless of turning the computer off inbetween. I don't sync browsers across devices, so eventually a clean slate happens when I get a new computer, phone or tablet, but generally my browsers just accumulate tabs, and run fine with a few hundred open tabs even, some from five years ago...

[melannen]

The point of this post is missing the main takeaway of things, I think! :D

My computer at some point started re-opening the old browser sessions automatically on restart. It's kind of creepy but also I am lazy so I haven't bothered figuring out how to make it stop. (This computer has very rarely crashed! Sometimes it throws a fit on restart but except for one blue screen of death a month or so ago it's been very good.)

oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*

[rydra_wong]

Dorian's Terrible Unspeakable Thing is deliberately unidentifiable, because Wilde is a massive troll.

Consequently, when anyone made accusations about exactly what immoral subject matter the book was delving into, Wilde could respond with the literary equivalent of "He who smelt it, dealt it":

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33689/33689-h/33689-h.htm#OSCAR_WILDES_REPLIES

It was necessary, Sir, for the dramatic development of this story, to surround Dorian Gray with an atmosphere of moral corruption. Otherwise the story would have had no meaning and the plot no issue. To keep this atmosphere vague and indeterminate and wonderful was the aim of the artist who wrote the story. I claim, Sir, that he has succeeded. Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray's sins are no one knows. He who finds them has brought them.

Gosh, oh censorious Scots Observer reviewer, you seem to have a very specific idea of what Dorian did, and doesn't that say a lot about the contents of your imagination?

And it means he can play with all sorts of implications, but have total deniability because Dorian's unspeakable thing can't be pinned down.

N.B. I believe I stole this point from Sos Eltis's Oxford lecture series on Wilde, which is a gleeful intellectual joy:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Sos+Eltis%22

Obviously the book is very very gay, but that's not specifically attached to Dorian's unspeakable thing; IIRC, the edits are in large part about making Basil's feelings towards Dorian less obviously romantic.

Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*

[oracne]

LOL LOL LOL LOL OSCAR I LOVE YOU

[oursin]

There's something about how Dorian ruins/corrupts people, as if he himself is a really evil drug, that he addicts other people and doesn't care - but my memories of the text are at present overlaid by a recent watching of the black and white movie version. (It really banalises the Sibyl narrative, even if she is played by a very young Angela Lansbury.)

[melannen]

Yes, that's my tumblr allegory! He definitely does not leave his friends better off than he found them. But that can't be the very specific thing that Basil saw documentary evidence of.

Honestly, the Sibyl narrative is fairly banal in the novel. Maybe in the novella it's less dragging. That's the point at which I originally got bored and wandered off. Wilde is so clearly also uninterested in her.

[cathexys]

I'm just here to tell you how much I'm enjoying this post&discussion.

And to show off my Wilde icon--in fact it was the first one I made when I got my LJ 19 years ago! And my journal still carries his quote. Boy did that quote become truer as I am aging: i am not young enough to know everything

[ivyfic]

A few years ago the Met had an exhibit on Camp and the absolute highlight for me was the original manuscript of de Profundis. Never has a more epic breakup letter ever been written.

[petra]

This post reminds me of why I subscribe to your newsletter.

[melannen]

Sometimes I still even read books!!

[rydra_wong]

Okay to signal-boost? I feel like "let's discuss Dorian Gray and how Oscar Wilde would embrace social media" might hit the spot for a fair few people right now.

[melannen]

Sure! jesse_the_k beat you to it actually, quoting your solution! Although that post accuses me of including a "detailed review" which I don't think is true <_<

[kore]

This is just a joy, thank you for posting it (and Rydra for boosting it!).

[rydra_wong]

Unless maybe people could just sense the spell with the portrait in his vibes.

Dorian's unspeakable crime: HIS VIBES WERE BAD.

[melannen]

I'd buy it! (Hey the concept of psychic "Vibes" goes all the way back to late Victorian spiritualists and occultists! I'm 100% sure somebody did in fact tell Dorian Gray he had bad vibrations at least once.)

[sabotabby]

Here via rydra_wong Thank you for posting this; I enjoyed every second of this discussion.

[executrix]

John Sutherland has an essay in "Where Was Rebecca Shot?" about "What Is Lionel Croy's 'Unspeakable' Crime?" (Wings of the Dove) considers opium addiction and same-sex desires but opts for something like cheating at cards or forged IOUs. But when I was looking to see which Sutherland book that was in I found one in "Is Heathcliff a Murderer?" specifically about Portrait of Dorian Gray. Sutherland says the novel is disturbing first of all because of its un-English attention to smells, second because its numerous botanical references don't fit together and things appear in the wrong season, and also because the timelines are ambiguous. (BTW Sutherland says the book is "unmistakably" A Rebours.

I think Wilde, like a low-budget horror director, left things shady so the reader could build his own horror. Dorian Gray: the Room 101 of bad boyfriends!

[melannen]

Oh interesting, I did pay some attention to the botanical references in the beginning because Eroica does a lot with flowers, but I will admit my attention to them trailed off after awhile, and I didn't really notice time being out of joint. (Or the timeline being all that ambiguous - he keeps the years of Dorian's aging pretty concrete actually, the timeline not being as ambiguous I'd expect was something I noticed particularly!)

Wilde was definitely leaving things out ambiguously, but that very specific "terrible confession" is still going to pick at me.

[dragoness_e]

> What is it that Dorian Gray did that is so much worse than anything in The Great God Pan?

Good question, given that GGP had men doing non-consensual occult/sexual/medical experimentation on a poor ignorant woman with no one to protect her from them. By modern standards, those assholes should have gone to prison for a very long time. And that's before Helen was murdered. What did poor Helen ever do besides behave a bit unconventionally? "Oh no, she talked me into a gay orgy, I must kill her and then myself". Do less cocaine, dude, you'll be less high-strung.

I have had little truck with Arthur Machen since realizing his idea of horror was "a woman with agency". You can see it in both "The Great God Pan" and "The White People". There's Victorian horror that still works, but not Machen--too much "Values Dissonance".

As for Dorian Gray, I'd have to re-read it; it's been a long time. Don't forget the story was written by Oscar Wilde, who was brilliant, bi- or homosexual, unconventional, atheistic, and a satirist. There's a lot to unpack in what he writes. I do vaguely recall that Lord Henry is the real asshole in "The Picture of Dorian Grey"; he has a very nihilistic (Nietzchean?) view of morality that he passed on to young Grey.

Will re-read one of these days and get back to you with my opinion on Grey, and/or Wilde.

[melannen]

Right? Like I don't think the horror I got out of "The Great God Pan" was what Machen intended, but it sure was horrifying! Same with "The White People" - I never quite figured out what he *thought* he was doing, but the portrait of a young woman being dehumanized by her family and caregivers sure was vivid.

[cuddyclothes]

Wow, this turned into a fascinating discussion. I don't have much to add, but I'm pimping a silly fic I wrote about Dorian Gray that also involved some heavy-duty research about the "foul book" Dorian keeps around. It's a huge, turgid volume that I plowed through because I'm a masochist.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856575/chapters/33221844