Allow Me To Answer Penelope's Compelling Question

"So you finished the book, what do you think?"

The book in question is The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Right before I left Burlington, my sister gave me her copy of this book, which she had recently chosen and read with her book club. Luckily for me, she left her bookmark/note card in the book, revealing to me all of the secret and spontaneous thoughts that her reading adventure inspired. HA! Bet you didn't know THAT, Soupy! But, true to my own philosophy of not allowing the opinions of others to color my experience, I didn't read her notes until I'd finished the book.

On a very basic level, this book deals with the pros and cons of vanity; a timeless topic, one that it seems has and will forever plague our kind. There is also a lot of the nature of love, and passion, and lust, and self-gratification, and reaching for perfection, and how we define perfection. Dorian Gray, the main character in the tale, chooses to live a life spent in the pursuit of sensual pleasure; forsaking the well-being of others, in fact misleading the young and the innocent, for sheer entertainment. He follows a philosophy that was quite popular among the Dandies of the time, they called it aestheticism. Some of the books that influenced the movement were Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal , and Joris Karl Huysman's A Rebours, the latter of which is referred to throughout the novel as the little yellow book, and I intend to try my darnedest to get my dirty little hands on a copy of it as soon as I possibly can.

Here are some quotes that struck me:

(At the beginning, when Dorian is yet an innocent young buck...)


Lord Henry went out to the garden, and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him, and put his hand upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."

(...and later, when he's had some years of filthy living to stain his soul...)

Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day, until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own.

Then, there is a lovely exchange between two characters that is so quick and smart, and the word-play is so fun and subversive, I immediately wished that we spoke that way still, and took pleasure in each others' witticisms, without so many criticisms. Verbal fencing, I call it. (I'm sure I didn't come up with that). It reminded me of a movie that I saw years ago called Wit, about the parlour games of the french aristocracy, before the revolution, I think.

Here's the end of that bit:

She laughed. "I still have the mask."

"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.

She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.


At the end, Dorian Gray commits an act of mercy. Or, it is by his definition, based on his experience, an act of mercy. Let's say that because he consciously decided to choose differently, he considered it a good act. But when he allows himself to truly reflect, he acknowledges that vanity motivated the act. This is a problem that often comes up when people discuss good actions. In the christian philosophy, a person can spend their entire life committing acts of goodness, helping the needy, giving their riches to the poor, aiding the sick and disadvantaged and still not be good enough to get through the pearly gates. Goodness truly lies within your soul, and if your soul is good, you will naturally do good things. Your conscience won't allow you to commit evil without suffering. Your actions are not separated from your conscience. And many people try to alleviate the guilt that they suffer from by committing "good" acts. Somehow they feel it will balance things out. Sort of like this new trend of the wealthy buying green time. To alleviate the guilt they feel for the damage their daily lives inflict on the environment, their "footprint" as it were, they fund renewable energy enterprise. And I must admit that I have spent some time now asking myself some difficult questions about my motives for doing good. Do I want people to think that I am a better person, or do I truly care about these things? How do my actions reflect my words, and better yet, my true person?

Let's think about how one's friends and one's enemies can act as mirrors to us. How do we perceive ourselves through the perceptions of those closest to us, or our perceptions of their perceptions? And how do we act accordingly? Why are the people we hate our enemies, do we fear the reflection? And the ones who love us, are we flattered and justified by their approval? I hope that my friends will not flatter me unjustly unless I specifically ask them to do so. And I hope that I can see the truth behind my own hate. There is the old adage that we hate in our enemies what we hate in ourselves. I don't necessarily think that that is always true, but if you try to force yourself to see in yourself the traits you hate in others, it keeps you on your toes.
And then there is Art. People have a lot of strong ideas about Art's place in society, how it should be used, the artist and his place in our culture, what is good or bad art. What is art? Art is strong, it offends, it soothes, it unsettles, it explains, it hides things. In the book, there is a desire in the characters for art to stop being connected to ideas, and for it to just be beautiful for the sake of beauty, not to mean anything. One of my best friends Isaac once said of his paintings that they aren't about anything, they don't mean anything. But I don't think so. Perhaps it is because I know him too well, but I can see stories, places, events, people and his relation to them. And here is another problem: Art cannot ever be one way or the other, because a large portion of what art is lies in the perception of the viewer. So the piece that is produced by the amateur in a flurry of emotional passion can have as strong an effect as the piece of the master committed to canvas in a studied obsession over the course of years. And vice versa. And this applies to all human endeavor, not just fine art.

In conclusion, I loved the questions that this book asks, and that I subsequently asked myself. I loved the slice of post-Victorian London Dandyism that was presented. And, I simply adore the writing style of Oscar Wilde, although I must say the pages and pages describing the jewels, tapestries and books that Dorian collected deserved a little more patience and slower reading on my part. It was mildly tedious, but wonderful unknown facts and legends for me.

THE END LA FIN