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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.
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..