With languorous prose and the ramblings of the rich and bored, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is just the novel to usher in a hedonistically aesthetic summer heat. Now a classic piece of Gothic Literature, Oscar Wilde’s novel is praised for its writing style and daring characters but was considered vulgar, unacceptable, and lacking moral merit at the time of its publication. Even with all its poetic euphemisms and curtain-pulling, the work was too salacious for the Victorian audience and faced censorship for its ideals and morality. In the face of his detractors, Wilde, a prominent Aesthete, included in the 1891 published edition a preface concerning the morality and duty of art, in which he states: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all”.
A muse is a powerful creature. Love and praise may fall on deaf ears to an unrealized man. But whisper tales of mortality, fleeting beauty, and adoration, the desperation of the damned will overtake them. As it overtakes the young man, he, in a pit of panic, pledges his soul so the burden of time will be placed upon his mirrored self in portraiture. Young Dorian Gray. A beautiful muse and love of painter Basil Hallward, and the manipulated mentee of the hedonistic fast-talking Lord Henry, tears through the polite society of London, leaving all who approach ruined in his wake. While his portrait decays in his attic, exposing the monstrous degradation of his soul.
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.”
– Oscar Wilde
To the people of the Victorian era, perception was everything. The women had to be beautiful, charming, but unobtrusive. The men, stoic masculine providers with no time for frivolities or deviant behaviors. And Dorian Gray is the perfect young Victorian man. He is beautiful, charming, and has all the merits his class dictates. His impressionable mind is warped by voyeuristic Aesthete Lord Henry, into an existential crisis that leads to selfishness and cruelty all in the pursuit of pleasure. This is what made The Picture of Dorian Gray so subversive in its time. It held a mirror to society, forcing it to look at its faults and secrets, and even at Wilde’s beloved Aestheticism Movement. Book Club Groups can explore the themes of love, art, beauty, and influence through each unique character carefully crafted by Wilde, and the conflicting realities held within them. To help guide discussion, our copies include an introduction by Penguin Classics Editor, Robert Mighall, and a backmatter of notations to provide the modern reader with further context and knowledge for the novel.
Oscar Wilde in a letter to Ralph Payne (1894):
I am so glad you like that strange coloured book of mine: it contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am Lord Henry what the world thinks of me: Dorian what I would like to be – in other ages, perhaps.
If you’re interested in requesting The Picture of Dorian Gray for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 16 copies. (A librarian must request items)
Wilde. Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin Classics. (1891)
