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The Picture of Dorian Gray
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.
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.
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Hee! /o\
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+1,000,000!
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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.
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Unfortunately, I read Dorian Gray twenty years ago so don’t remember it well enough to help with your main inquiry.
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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.
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I think you are just meant to think he's bad because of the gayness? Also thematically the book is kind of about the pervasive quality of wickedness and how tied it is supposed to be to ugliness. But yeah--it's been too long for a more in depth understanding than that. I could go look up my college paper on it...
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But there's also like, if you live a life of learning about wonderful things, you will eventually get to where you find one of these lists and (if it's not imaginary) you recognize many of the things on the list. And nothing kills the wonder of one of those lists of wonderful things than the sinking sensation that you know more about the things on it than the person writing the list does. Dorian Gray's isn't as bad as some! I mean knowing the real thing is often way more interesting than just the bit on the list, but, you know, "Oh yeah I just read a BBC article on Dhaka muslin's complicated tragic history with colonialism and how Bangladeshis are using socialism and modern gene sequencing to bring it back" doesn't evoke quite the same *feeling* as the contextless line the Dacca gauzes, that from their transparency are known in the East as “woven air,” and “running water,” and “evening dew”.
And then the third way to experience it, which is as a list of intriguing-sounding things to stick a post-it on to look up later and cross-reference and get the full story. Which the internet makes super easy, at least for a lot of things, and would have been a lot harder in Wilde's day, which makes me really intrigued by the idea that this was at least part of the original intent. I would be super into a very annotated version of that chapter that really digs into what Wilde might have been expecting his audience to get out of all the things in the lists!
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(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....)
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My browsers currently save your windows when closed/re-opened, so the windows get preserved just like the tabs when I restart, and thus I can stack a ludicrous number of windows just like I can stack a ludicrous number of tabs, but I guess some browsers still don't do that?
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(Also it's possible to save a session and restore in on a different device/after a wipe, so I have sometimes kept the same tabs open even past that.)
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(Or, well, possibly it's just that the fanfic tabs that stay open for months are all on my phone now.)
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AO3 has intermittently prompted me, “Is it ‘later’ yet?” above a list of the items I'd marked for later. I felt disciplined, in a good way.
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It's completely unpredictable -- there's a D2000 somewhere deep in the code that decides when it's displayed.
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Ahhh I misremembered and recreated it.
When I'm already logged in and open the bare site at https://AO3.org. I get these divisions:
"Find your favorites" listing fandoms I've so assigned
"News" shows 3 most recent items from OTW
"Is it later already?" shows 3 works I'd marked
"Unread messages" from my inbox then
"OTW Tweets"
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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.)
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oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
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*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
I don't think it worked.
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
....what does it say about me that nothing came to mind? Am I a pure innocent or am I too corrupt even for Dorian Gray? Perhaps coming out of it with just a deep curiosity reveals that my overriding sin is actually just Eve's original one: wanting to know stuff more than I care if I should.
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Yeah, exactly! Like the bit where Basil Hallward says "Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?" and lists off various young men who have committed suicide or had to leave the country with a "tarnished name", and a modern reader reads certain implications (and presumably a few of Wilde's contemporaries would have, too), and then the next page of the book goes out of its way to disclaim that oh no, the scandal is that this one "[took] his wife from the streets", that one wrote his friend's name on a bill, etc..
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
Re: oh oh oh I know this one!!! *waves hand frantically*
//DIES
Yes! I was going to say that just as the poisonous book is based on À rebours but not in a clearly identifiable way, Dorian's unspeakable sin is deliberately left vague for political reasons (criminalized sexuality) which also turn into aesthetic reasons (the French Decadent school &c &c) but Wilde is of course ahead of us all. He was indeed a beautiful troll.
I have the Harvard edition of the uncensored/annotated book, which is GORGEOUS, and from what I remember, the text was much more explicit about Basil's feelings for Dorian, but also cut out references to Dorian's mistresses.
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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.
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I own a bad Victorian novel titled "Not Like Other Girls", I should actually hate-read it someday.
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Yes, I was having a reread because of this discussion, and aside from all the decoy-trollery about what specific Unspeakable Depravity Dorian himself has committed that Basil has seen evidence of, this was what caught my attention this time around.
If one reads without looking for Implications (even though Wilde has scattered them so temptingly over the text) or trying to figure out "the most terrible confession I ever read", what Basil says is that everyone who's become close to Dorian has made awful life-ruining decisions, of fairly diverse kinds.
But it hit me that to a reader now, that's maybe MORE disturbing and interesting than the various possible depravities - "I don't know what you're doing but everyone around you self-destructs while you remain unharmed."
Much creepier and more of a horror story than "Oh, maybe he went to a Satanic orgy or something".
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Someone who enables all the worst in others, egging them on, and keeping his own shoes clean is a very very realistic horror story. Also now I can just imagine the advice letter column, and I haven't ever actually read The Picture of Dorian Grey.
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Yes! Which really struck me on this reread, when I'd previously been paying attention to the melodramatic Gothic horrors and aesthetic stylings.
And it makes some of the melodrama snap into place more: oh, of course James Vane oh-so-conveniently gets shot by mistake, if the nature of Dorian's whole supernatural thing isn't just Eternal Youth/Spooky Portrait, it's that he's immune to consequences (except those he inflicts on himself). Damage bounces off him to land on everyone else around.
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(There's also a non-supernatural version where a lot of Dorian's friends had nervous breakdowns, attempted suicide, or went mad because non-neurotypical people tend to find each other. It isn't Dorian's fault that all the people in his set who were already not coping with life looked at him and found a kindred spirit! Practically everybody in my friend groups is either in psychiatric treatment or should be and nobody is poisoning us, we just found each other. Another thing that's like Tumblr...)
The episode with what's-his-name at the opium den really says things in that interpretation too - because that points up that Dorian isn't intending to drive all his friends to ruin, isn't really sure why it's happening, finds it disturbing, and wants to help them if he can! He just isn't very good at helping, and also has a little bit of an object permanence problem when it comes to relationships, I can relate. (Also, honestly, the boy in the opium den still seems halfway to think that's preferable to going back home to his family and Dorian did him a good turn - and maybe he's right. He's the only one of Dorian's 'victims' we actually see.)
I actually find that version really interesting!
But the "most terrible confession I ever read" - assuming the confession itself wasn't a complete lie - makes it hard to really buy the "Dorian did nothing wrong!" read. He clearly has done something more depraved and harmful than just generally being careless with people and a bad influence. (And murder.)
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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
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As a teen I had a book of aphorisms, and like half of them were by Wilde. It imprinted hard on me :)
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Neil Bartlett reading the whole of De Profundis in the chapel of Reading Prison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZv87dlDd_Y
(There's also Patti Smith doing the edited version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiG_KUutjrs )
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It's got the kind of details I like :,)
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Dorian's unspeakable crime: HIS VIBES WERE BAD.
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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!
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Wilde was definitely leaving things out ambiguously, but that very specific "terrible confession" is still going to pick at me.
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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.
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https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856575/chapters/33221844