The Picture of Dorian Gray

A novel that put its author on trial

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde first appeared in July 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, in thirteen chapters. Reviewers attacked it as immoral. For the book edition of 1891, Wilde added six chapters, softened passages about Basil's feelings for Dorian and added a Preface of short sayings about art. This summary follows the 1891 text, which most editions print. Five years later, in the 1895 libel case that Wilde brought against the Marquess of Queensberry, the defense read from the novel to attack his morals. That case led to his own trials for gross indecency.

The story is a Gothic tale set in the drawing rooms and slums of late Victorian London. It has three main characters: an artist, a corrupting wit and a beautiful young man. Its themes are the worship of beauty and youth, the influence one person can have on another, the relationship between art and morality, and the double life.

The Preface

The Preface is a list of epigrams about art. Wilde writes that the artist is the creator of beautiful things, that there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book, only books well or badly written, and that all art is quite useless. The Preface states the creed of aestheticism: art for art's sake. The novel that follows tests that creed and, many readers argue, shows its dangers.

Basil's portrait and Lord Henry's words

In his London studio, on a summer day, the painter Basil Hallward shows his friend Lord Henry Wotton his new portrait of a young man of extraordinary beauty, Dorian Gray. Lord Henry says it is his best work and he must exhibit it. Basil refuses. He says he has put too much of himself into it: the picture reveals the secret of his own soul, his worship of Dorian. He asks Lord Henry not to meet Dorian, fearing his influence.

Dorian arrives, and they meet anyway. While Basil paints, Lord Henry talks. He tells Dorian that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it, that youth is the one thing worth having, and that it will soon be gone. He preaches a new Hedonism: a life devoted to beauty and the senses, with no fear of pleasure. Dorian is fascinated. He has never thought about himself this way.

Basil finishes the portrait. Dorian looks at it and sees his own beauty as if for the first time. Then he thinks of growing old and ugly. He cries out that he wishes the picture could age while he stays young forever, and that he would give his soul for it. Basil offers to destroy the canvas. Dorian stops him. Basil gives it to him.

Lord Henry learns from his uncle that Dorian's mother, a beautiful heiress, ran off with a poor young soldier, who was killed in a duel her father arranged. She died soon after. Lord Henry decides to shape Dorian as an experiment.

Sibyl Vane

A month later, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he is in love with Sibyl Vane, a seventeen-year-old actress in a shabby little theater in a poor part of London. Every night she plays a different heroine of Shakespeare: Juliet, Rosalind, Imogen. Dorian loves her art more than her. Sibyl knows him only as Prince Charming.

Sibyl's brother, James Vane, is about to leave for Australia as a sailor. He distrusts the rich gentleman who is courting his sister and swears to kill him if he ever harms her. He does not know his name.

Dorian announces his engagement to Sibyl and brings Lord Henry and Basil to see her play. She acts terribly, as if she does not care. Afterward, she tells Dorian that before she met him, acting was her only reality. Now she knows real love, and she can no longer pretend. Dorian is disgusted. He tells her that she has killed his love, that without her art she is nothing, and he leaves her sobbing on the floor.

At home, Dorian looks at the portrait and sees a new line of cruelty around the mouth. The wish has come true. Frightened, he resolves to make it right and marry Sibyl. He writes her a passionate letter.

The next day, Lord Henry brings the news: Sibyl killed herself the night before by swallowing poison at the theater. Dorian is shocked, but Lord Henry persuades him to see her death as a beautiful tragedy, like a scene from a play. Dorian goes to the opera that evening. When Basil comes to comfort him, he finds Dorian cold and unmoved.

Dorian decides that the portrait will carry the burden of his conscience while he enjoys life. He has it carried to the locked schoolroom at the top of his house, where he played as a child, and keeps the only key. When Basil asks to exhibit it, Dorian refuses, and Basil confesses that he worshiped him. Dorian feels pity, and relief that Basil has not seen the change.

The yellow book and the double life

Lord Henry sends Dorian a book with a yellow cover, about a young Parisian who tries to experience every sensation of every age. Wilde does not name it, but it is usually identified as Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel À rebours. Dorian reads it for years and models his life on it.

The story moves quickly through eighteen years. Dorian collects perfumes, music, jewels, embroideries and rare books. He is the center of fashionable London, and he still looks twenty. But rumors follow him. Young men who befriend him are ruined. One young officer kills himself. Another man has to leave England with his name ruined. A lady's reputation is destroyed. Dorian is seen in the opium dens and low taverns of the docks. Sometimes he climbs to the locked room and compares the aging, evil face on the canvas with his own young face in a mirror, with growing pleasure.

Basil's visit

On the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, Dorian meets Basil in the fog. Basil is leaving for Paris and has come to warn him. He has heard terrible rumors and cannot believe them. He says he would need to see Dorian's soul to know the truth.

Dorian, in a strange mood, offers to show him. He takes Basil up to the locked room and pulls the cover from the portrait. Basil sees a hideous, leering face that is still recognizably the one he painted. He is horrified and begs Dorian to pray with him.

Dorian feels a sudden hatred for the man who painted the picture. He picks up a knife and stabs Basil again and again in the neck. Then he locks the door and goes downstairs as if nothing has happened.

The next day, Dorian calls on Alan Campbell, a young chemist and a former friend. He blackmails him, with a threat written on a piece of paper, into destroying Basil's body with chemicals. Campbell does it and leaves shattered. Later he shoots himself in his laboratory.

The opium den

Unable to forget, Dorian goes to an opium den near the docks to drown his memory. A woman there calls him Prince Charming. A sailor hears the name. It is James Vane, back from the sea, who has spent years looking for the man who destroyed his sister. He seizes Dorian at gunpoint outside. Dorian asks him how long ago Sibyl died. Eighteen years, James says. Dorian tells him to look at his face under the lamp: he looks like a boy of twenty. James lets him go, ashamed. Then the woman tells him that Prince Charming has not changed in eighteen years, and that he sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.