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The Picture of Dorian Gray: art, ethics and the artist
Article by: Greg Buzwell Themes:
Fin de siècle, TheGothic
Dark desires and forbidden pleasure are at the centre of The Picture
of Dorian Gray. GregBuzwell examines the interplay between art and
morality in Oscar Wilde’s novel,and considers its use of traditional Gothic
motifs as well as the theories ofthe new aesthetic movement.
Oscar Wilde’s onlynovel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), is a superb
example of late-Victorian Gothic fiction. It ranks alongside Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Strange Case of DrJekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Bram
Stoker’s Dracula (1897) as a representation of how fin-de-siècle literature
explored the darkest recesses of Victorian society and the often disturbing
private desires that lurked behind acceptable public faces. The novel also
examined the relationship between art and reality,highlighting the uneasy
interplay between ethics and aesthetics as well as the links between the
artist, his or her subject and the resulting image on canvas.
(PICTURE)
‘The terrible pleasure of a double life’
The idea of adouble life – of outwardly playing a respectable role while
inwardly pursuingan existence that crossed the boundaries of acceptable
behaviour – is central to the plot of the novel. Dorian Gray, once he
becomes aware his portrait willbear the scars of his corruption – thus
leaving his actual appearance unstained – feels free to ignore the pious
morality that pervaded the Victorian era.Rather like Dr Jekyll in Stevenson’s
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,Dorian is able to pursue his
debauched activities knowing his respectable appearance and unblemished
looks will shield him from accusations of depravity.His ability to have the
best of both worlds – the continued acceptance of hispeers and the ability
to fulfill his basest desires – becomes in itself animportant part of his
fascination with events. When attending a societygathering only hours
after having committed a murder we are told Dorian ‘feltkeenly the terrible
pleasure of a double life’ (ch. 15).
Dorian’s friendLord Henry makes this link between the criminal and the
respectable citizenclear when he observes: ‘Crime belongs exclusively
to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should
fancy that crime is to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring
extraordinary sensations’ (ch. 19).Dorian, with his visits to opium dens
and his delight in high culture combines the criminal and the aesthete – the
very definition of ‘decadence’ distilled into a single person and a disturbing
example of the split between the wholesome public persona and the furtive
private life.
(PICTURE)
Ethics and aesthetics
While much of The Picture of Dorian Gray delights in the beautiful and the
intoxicating indulgence of the senses – the novel’s opening paragraph for
example describes the heady pleasures to be derived from the scents of
roses and lilacs – it canbe argued that Wilde intended his book neither
as a celebration of decadencenor as a fable about the perils of its excesses.
As Wilde states in the prefaceto the novel ‘There is no such thing as a
moral or an immoral book. Books arewell written or badly written. That is
all’. In other words, any moral disgustor vicarious pleasure derived from
the book reflects more upon us as readersthan it does on the novel itself.
The book is a tale, pure and simple. It is we, the readers, who force it to
bear the weight of a moral dimension.
(PICTURE)
The idea lying behind Aestheticism, the controversial theory of art that was
newly fashionable at this time, was that art should be judged purely by its
beauty and form rather than by any underlying moral message (‘art for
art’s sake’). This is exemplified in the novel by the dandyish Lord Henry
Wotton. Lord Henry advocates the hedonistic pursuit of new experiences
as the prime objective inlife. In his view, ‘one could never pay too high a
price for any sensation’(ch. 4). Dorian, although seduced by Wotton’s
poisonous whisperings, is increasingly interested in the moral consequences
of his behaviour. He stands before his decaying portrait, comparing the
moral degradation as depicted in oil with his unblemished innocence as
reflected by the mirror. The contrast gives him a thrill of pleasure: ‘He
grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more
interested in the corruption of his own soul’ (ch. 11).Dorian – via his wish
to remain handsome, while the painting bears the weight of his corruption
– muddies the boundary between art and life, aesthetics and ethics.
The painting is made to serve a moral purpose, being transformed
froman object of beauty into a vile record of guilt, something ‘bestial,
sodden and unclean’ (chapter 10). This tainting of the picture perhaps
constitutes, for the aesthete, Dorian’s greatest crime – namely the
destruction of a beautiful artwork.
(PICTURE)

Paintings andancestry
Paintings often play a sinister role in Gothic fiction. The first Gothic
novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) includes a figure
stepping from apainting and into reality while Melmoth the Wanderer (1820),
written by Oscar Wilde’s great-uncle Charles Maturin, describes the
haunting gaze of a portraitas it follows the viewer around a room. The
picture hidden in Dorian’s attic may be the most disturbing portrait in
Wilde’s book, but it is not the only canvas in the novel which provides
a pointer to Dorian’s behaviour. At one point Dorian walks through the
picture-gallery of his country home, looking at the portraits of his
ancestors: ‘those whose blood flowed in his veins’. The saturnine and
sensuous faces stare back at him, causing Dorian to reflect whether
‘some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached
his own?’ (ch. 11). This poses the question as to whether Dorian is free
to determine his own actions, and is thus entirely responsible for his
behaviour, or whether his actions are dictated by his genetic inheritance
– an inheritance, as the faces of his ancestors indicate, ‘of sin and shame’.
The eminent mental pathologist Henry Maudsley wrote in his book
Pathology of Mind(1895): ‘Beneath every face are the latent faces of
ancestors, beneath every character their characters’. This idea already
seems present in much Gothic fiction,including Wilde’s novel.
(PICTURE)
The Picture of Dorian Gray provides both a standard ‘Gothic’ account of
Dorian’s actions – the super natural picture and the lascivious ancestors
gazing from their portraits –but also a forward-looking scientific rational
for his depraved desires, namely the importance of inheritance in
determining behaviour. Dorian resembles his mother physically, inheriting
from her ‘his beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others’ (ch. 11),
while, as his corruption accelerates, the twisted portrait in Dorian’s attic
increasingly resembles his wicked grandfather. This latter idea suggests
Dorian is a scientific case study, as well as a moral one.Throughout the
book Lord Henry treats Dorian as a beautiful subject upon which to
experiment – partly via his encouragement of Dorian to pursue a
philosophy of pleasure, and partly through a call to social evolution –
a wish to abandon the restraints of Victorian morality on the grounds
that sin and conscience are outmoded primitive concepts to be swept
aside in the pursuit of new sensations.Lord Henry locates progress in
the overcoming of hereditary fears: ‘Courage hasgone out of our race …
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, theterror of God,
which is the secret of religion – these are the two things that govern
us’ (ch. 2). His call to youth is a call to courage. Dorian’s ultimate
failure to live up to Lord Henry’s ideals is due to his inability to escape
his conscience as depicted in the portrait. By attempting to destroy
the painting,and thus free himself from the constant reminder of his
own guilt he,ultimately, manages only to destroy himself.
Oscar Wilde and Dorian Gray
The Picture ofDorian Gray first appeared in the July 1890 number of
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine and immediately caused an outcry due
to its perceived references of homosexual desire. The review in the
Scot’s Observer memorably described the book as having been written
for ‘outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys’ – a reference
to a recent scandal involving a homosexual brothel in London’s Cleveland
Street. In response to such hostile criticism Wilde considerably amended
the text and a longer, noticeably ‘toned-down’version of the book was
published by Ward Lock and Co in April 1891. It is thislater version that
forms the standard text of the novel. Even so the Lippincott’s version was
used by opposing counsel in evidence against Wilde in two of his trials
in an attempt to show him guilty of ‘a certain tendency’. Formany people
Oscar Wilde the artist – with his flamboyant public persona and his
secretive private life – and his novel with its two distinctly different versions
and its duplicitous central character mirrored each other from the start.

翻译很粗，虽然发现有些地方要修改，由于贴出来就无法编辑，所以，如果不是原则性错误，就不打算再费周章重新发一次了。尽管如此，仍然非常期待专业人士的批评指正。

有些东西都是首见哪~~~不错不错~~~

为什么回复的人这么少呢，说得挺认真的

楼主真是好人ps.图我抱走了。。。

码

我想把它打印出来

打呗，就是别当成论文上交哈另外，译得粗糙，有不少要修改的地方，你可以自己修改

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最喜欢的他的作品 给赞

楼主真给力。。！

要做一个关于画像的演讲，英文的，想要一个故事简介，楼主可否讲下，用英文我英文实在是太渣。。。还选了这个难题。。不过已经选了，所以，感谢楼主