#picture of dorian gray whom

[hollow-point-heart]

Everyone I know is sending me posts about the new Dorian Gray series and I'd like to thank every single one of you for taking the time to ruin my evening

[askjtetch]

Good day to you, Mr.Hatter! I was curious if you had any book recommendations :3 I have read and adore Alice in Wonderland and am curious if you've any other novel ideas (teeheehee)

~🍵

I most certainly do, Anon, thank you very much for asking!

I very much enjoy reading. I likely have as many books as I do hats, so of course I have some favourites I could share with you. (I will avoid any Lewis Carroll, for fear of sounding like a broken record. I do like other things, contrary to popular belief.)

Watership Down by Richard Adams is just wonderful!

The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame, too.

Oh, oh, and I adore Oscar Wilde, so I must absolutely recommend The Picture of Dorian Gray.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway is another good one.

I’m sure I could think of a great many more, but for now, these shall do.

If you read them, I hope you like them!

[victoria-in-gardenias]

Oscar Wilde must be turning in his grave at this. I cannot possibly understand how these show runners read this marvellous book and thought of them as 'brothers'. This could have been a good exploration of their relationship in an age where homosexuality is not viewed quite like it was during Wilde's time. There is no PICTURE of Dorian Gray without Basil's fascination and love present.

It is horrifying to see this beautiful story potentially butchered and displayed where it will be accessible to millions, most of whom have probably never read or even heard of Oscar Wilde and his works.

[laserbeamss]

okay i know im like half a year too early to mention anything about this topic and also tumblr is raving mad about this topic and no one is actually gonna read this but. i read shakespeare's julius caesar for the first time yesterday and i need to be a pretentious fucker for a while. look the one thing i'm glad that tumblr agrees with me about is that the assassination of caesar was incredibly homoerotic like i felt like a madman for thinking that but then i discovered thousands of strangers on the internet are backing me up and i felt better.

i'm talking about the play version of events, not the historical version, by the way; though i will talk about the historical version shortly.

shakespeare really knows how to write his tragedies. that play has not left my mind since i finished reading it, which was, by the way, in one sitting about 24 hours ago. my mind has not stopped thinking about that play for an entire day and i am sure it will continue to do so in the near future.

i love the contrast between the ways caesar himself is portrayed. to some, he is a dead man walking. to some, he is the very anchor of society: the north star. to some, he is just a man, who needs to come home and rest sometimes. to himself, he is a mixture of all of those, but he only ever expresses one of those roles, because he is the dictator of rome, in his eyes, he is the rightful king, the one who has led and will continue to lead rome to glory for years to come, and there was no point in heeding the word of anyone else.

my favourite character, is, quite predictably, brutus. "not that i loved caesar less, but that i loved rome more" okay so what if i cried. (i somewhat shamelessly will admit that i have shed tears over this. as i said, the man knows how to write his tragedies.) on one hand, caesar is brutus' friend, the one who had elected him praetor of rome (i know it isn't directly mentioned in the play that caesar made brutus praetor but he is referred to as praetor and since historically caesar was indeed the one to elect brutus praetor, i think it is safe to assume the same within the context of the play), the one who had pardoned him after he sided with caesar's enemy pompey, the one whom he admitted several times that he loved. on the other hand, brutus was raised to bring honour to his family's name via bringing honour to rome; and thought himself morally righteous when he considered that he wasn't above betraying his friend to end a tyrranical rule, even if it meant allying himself with others who wanted to murder caesar for their own selfish gains. and after following through with what he perceived to be his utmost duty to his country, and his people, and his family, and himself, he is haunted by the ghost of his close friend, something which drives him into the point of his own sword.

betrayals have a special place in my heart because they are so entangled deep in conflicting emotions. to betray one is almost always to stand behind another, but inherently betrayals of others are also betrayals to yourself; there must have been a reason the betrayal was a betrayal and not a simple act of violence. because acts of violence can happen by anyone's hand, but betrayals can only happen by those who are most trusted.

cassius, that motherfucker. i feel the same way towards him as i felt toward lord henry wotton in the picture of dorian gray. egging my favourite character on to go against his homoerotic bestie, like fuck that.

i think i am most fascinated by how i do not know what i would have done if i was in brutus' place. would i have done what he has, plotted against and murdered my best friend who trusted me most, who dedicated his last words to me, who admitted defeat solely when it became apparent to him that i was among the conspirators? or would i have lived with the guilt of perpetuating tyrrany and lived with the guilt of, what in my conscience would have been, subjecting future generations of romans to suffer under a dictatorship, just to be able to greet my friend every day and not be haunted by what i have brought on against him?

that caesar truly did not expect brutus to be among the conspirators breaks my heart. that brutus acted out of duty and moral obligation only to fail miserably after having murdered his friend breaks my heart.

in my mind, these two got reincarnated somehow, in a calmer generation, and talked things through, and rode off together into the sunset.

i didn't ever think i would get so emotional over two dudes from a shakespeare play based on historical events that happened over two millenia ago but here we are. they make me want to cry like a baby.

but onto some actual history.

i'll start of with some nitpicking. when caesar is referred to as julius in the play, i physically cringed. as i cringe whenever anyone else assumes his first name to be julius. caesar's full name was gaius julius caesar (or caivs ivlivs caesar, if you will). caesar was the name with which 99% of people would have refered to him, as it was is cognomen, the name that was supposed to distinguish you from everyone else in roman society, and the one formally used to refer to you. if one were close to caesar, one would have called him gaius, which was his praenomen, of which there were only about twelve to choose from. julius, on the other hand, was his nomen, or the name passed down based on which clan he was decended from, in his case the julii. no one actually used the nomen to refer to anyone, as many, many men could be not in the least bit related anymore and yet share the same nomen. it would simply have been too confusing.

now, some common knowledge. "et tu, brute?" was never really uttered by caesar. the two most popular theories as to what caesar said after having been stabbed is that he either said nothing at all, which is what ancient scholars generally agreed upon, although it was expected of him to say something as he was expected to leave behind a legacy. some think he said "you too, child." in greek. initially, this may seem like it is a question that holds essentially the same meaning as "et tu, brute?": one of shocked betrayal, of the question of how even someone as close to caesar as brutus could do this to him. but it is more likely that it was instead a statement, and indeed the shortened version of a common roman proverb, essentially meaning "what goes around comes around". so what caesar would have meant by that is you too will meet your demise in a similar fashion, just you wait. which is very interesting to me

i think the historical relationship of caesar and brutus is very interesting (putting aside my homoerotic intepretation of the shakespeare characters for a moment). brutus' mother was a long-time mistress of caesar, and ancient scholars talked of a rumour that brutus was actually caesar's son, though they were sceptical, and modern historians also generally disagree with this. however, it is true that they were reported to have an affectionate relationship, caesar essentially teaching brutus all he knew like a father would to a son; brutus was raised by his uncle after his father was killed by pompey (also known as pompey the great), so he initially sided with caesar. however, already then, he saw how caesar was becoming overzealous and decided to switch sides and support pompey in the civil war. however, pompey was defeated by caesar in the battle of pharsalus, after which brutus was taken prisoner and eventually pardoned by caesar, granting him the ability to then build his political life in the roman senate. after that, he became one of caesar's closest friends and advisors, even being promoted to be the praetor and then proconsul of rome.

anyway, if you made it this far, have a knife (to stock up for the ides of march). take your pick: 🔪🗡⚔🪒

[romanceyourdemons]

with incisive visuals, powerhouse performances, and a keenly presented narrative, the substance (2024) functions as a feminist revisiting of the picture of dorian gray and the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde and their attendant eugenicist fears of the nascent presence of the troglodyte within the superior man. with stark and oppressive sets and framings homaging stanley kubrick, the flesh-centered cinematography and soundscaping of the younger cronenberg turning the everyday functionings of the body into body horror, and of course practical body horror effects that match the work of the elder cronenberg in his prime, this film’s visceral sensory overwhelm firmly denies the audience the reprieve stevenson and wilde indulge in by identifying the audience safely with an unaffected, untouchable, normal observer. instead, the audience of this film must identify with, must be the disintegrating, disgusting, self-destroying protagonist. the feared and despised troglodyte that this work centers around is not delineated on racial and socioeconomic lines like the troglodytes of dorian gray and jekyll and hyde—othered parties ostensibly escapable by getting oneself in with whiteness and then violently pulling up the latter behind oneself—but rather is delineated along the lines of age. she is the despised and discarded figure of the older woman, whom, no matter how loudly one performatively shuns her, each young woman will inevitably become. although of course the issues raised in this film are not novel questions, particularly not in regards to the entertainment industry around which the film centers, the immediate, engaging, crystal clear way in which it presents them hits like a countertop and cuts like a needle, from its two leads’ electrifying performances to its stunning effects and soundtrack to articulate intertextual engagement, including an ironic use of also sprach zarathustra that recalls both the appearance of the appearance of the “evolved” man through violence in 2001: a space odyssey (1968) and the rights and role of the “evolved” man as described by nietzsche. everything about the substance (2024) is stunning and overwhelming and as powerful as blunt force trauma, and i would highly, highly recommend it

[ironwoman359]

So @lxgentlefolkcomic, which everyone should go read, especially if they like Dracula Daily, has inspired me to deviate from my priority TBR (that I never stick to anyway) and read all the works it's inspired by. When I started reading the comic, I already had Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes under my belt.

I really enjoyed all the subtle references and details to those works in the comic, so in order to get the same experience with the other characters I wasn't familiar with, I decided to read The Invisible Man, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I just reserved The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For good measure, since it was right next to it on the shelf, I also checked out The Island of Doctor Moreau, so that when I get around to The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia I'll have the full context from the original text.

My recommendation for anyone who's trying to go back and read these older stories is to do what many people commented about when reading Dracula Daily: imagine yourself in a world where no one has ever heard of Jekyll and Hyde or an invisible man. It's impossible to completely remove that cultural context ingrained in us of course, but you'll get much more out of the story if you at least imagine the perspective of an original reader for a moment.

For instance, I'm a little over half way through 20,000 Leagues right now, and so much of this book is just long lists of various species of fish and seaweed that Aronnax is seeing out the window, which is rather boring by modern standards, but if you put yourself in the mind of a victorian reader who doesn't have google images and for whom the idea of an electric powered submarine is a far-flung future idea, it makes a lot more sense. The book is an adventure story; so little seems to happen other than "then they sailed to this place and saw this fish" because for the readers of the time, that was fantasy enough.

And that's not to say that there aren't other moments that transcend the time in which they were written, that show why these stories have stayed classics for so long. The Invisible Man wasn't my favorite victorian book ever (I'll be curious to see how Dr. Moreau stacks up against it), but it had some genuinely beautiful/touching/chilling moments in its prose, especially in the last 25%.

There's a moment where a man is caught in an impossible position, and he looks out over the view of his village on the seaside, sees the ocean and the cliffs and the hills, and to paraphrase, the book says "and he suddenly realized that life was very sweet" right before he makes a last desperate move which will likely result in his death. It was genuinely poignant! And the epilogue was fantastic.

So all that to say, don't let how old these stories are put you off, give them a read if you're interested, and don't be afraid to use spark notes or other guides to help you understand if you're a bit confused! The editions I'm reading have footnotes in them as well, and those are also really helpful.

[howlsmovingmind]

The phrase “The Oscar Wilde sort” is one of my favorite things ever. It used to be as readily understood as “fruity” is now, but if I tell someone I’m “the Oscar Wilde sort”, ALMOST EVERYONE AROUND ME IS CONFUSED. And that’s hilarious.

“Friend of Dorothy” has, in a way, kept its previous meaning and use because it’s still coded to be something mostly only queer people understand. My brother is a well read person whom I typically expect to understand my references. I said something like, “Well, I am a friend of Dorothy after all.” And he looked at me with such confusion. My brother, the most well read person I have met in my small town (keeps himself informed on current events, history, and internet culture) didn’t know queer history hardly at all. Lavender Menace, Lavender Scare, the YMCA, Sappho, the word Sapphic, Plato and his Platonic ideals, cowboys, or Polari.

This made me realize just how little cishet people know about queer history. Maybe even how little queer people know about queer history. We aren’t really taught these things in the States and the people around us don’t typically have knowledge about any of it either. We have to go digging for it because we want to know about the people like us. We want to know more about our history. Because it is ours. It’s personal and special.

Him not knowing these bits of history confused me. I thought, for some reason, he knew everything I knew and then some. But he was just as uninformed as I was. But he didn’t care. Because it didn’t mean anything for him. (And that’s not a problem!) Polari seems like a dead language a lot of the time. But interactions like this make me realize that there is actually still a place for it. Because, really, it has evolved to look and sound different, but it’s still there.

I feel like I’ve lost the plot of this post, but I’m gonna keep going because I want to.

Queer history is so beautiful and human. It’s so unbelievably human. That’s why literature like “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, “The Price of Salt”, and “Maurice” are so important. Sappho’s poems and knowing they’re about women is important. Knowing Walt Whitman was queer is important. Knowing Emily Dickinson was queer is important. This is a whole group of people who have been hidden from the public eye and hated and scorned and killed because of who they love. And it is about who they love. You cannot tell me this is simply about the physical aspect of it all. Because it’s not. It’s really not. The AIDs crisis? There was no way that was just about having sex. AIDS was such a problem because they wouldn’t help the queer people affected by it. Only when straight couples were being affected did they do anything.

Queer shipping does not lose the plot of stories or discount everything that a piece of media has explored and built up. Like people shipping Anderperry. It’s not a crazy thing! It does not take away from Neil’s acting being a point of contention between him and his father. It could add a layer to maybe why it was such a big deal beyond his father simply being a controlling jerk and not allowing Neil to engage in something outside of what he’s “supposed” to do. Mr. Perry made Neil drop the school paper at the beginning because it would be “distracting”. We know that Mr. Perry is controlling and never would have allowed Neil to act no matter what. Because it wasn’t the plan. But Neil being queer adds a layer to this narrative that a lot of people have seen and found themselves in. It doesn’t have to distract from the story and the themes that the author or creator is presenting. It can add a layer. I mean, Walt Whitman being such a huge part of the film and message all throughout adds to the queer message.

I just think that… it’s interesting and important and it means more to so many people than we assume. History and every aspect of humanity is important.

And saying “I’m the Oscar Wilde sort” is objectively hilarious.

An Oscar Wilde Fan,

Howl

[literary-motif]

Author's Note

To whom it may concern,

Let me preface this by saying a few things. For the sake of my sanity racism, sexism, and homophobia do not exist. The story is set in the 1890s in London, making it the late Victorian era. However, due to my morphing history into a significantly more equal and diverse frame, the society and the times are nearly unrecognizable. I must admit that I did not study Victorian London or the Victorian age nearly thoroughly enough to write a historically accurate historical fiction (even with the changes I chose to make in favor of keeping the reader gender-neutral), so prepare for a myriad of (sometimes unintentional) historical inaccuracies.

I will be the first to point out that the sole reason I set this in the 1890s was because The Picture Of Dorian Gray was published in 1891, and I thought it criminal not to reference it at least once. (In the depth of my soul, I hope Oscar Wilde is proud of me and my frankly very queer longing for the picturesque). 

This novella explores some backstory of our beloved Xanthus. It has ten chapters, including Prologue and Epilogue. The vibe I was going for was something akin to dark romance and gothic horror.

Due to the sometimes darker nature of the story, I advise to caution the following content warnings, which I will also add to their respective chapters: memory manipulation (via compulsion), talk of suicide, smoking and drinking. Religious themes and imagery are present throughout the story.

Sometimes, I rant a little about history and literature because I researched specific things that led me down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia articles. Take everything with a large teaspoon of salt because I did not do in-depth research. I tried to be as accurate as possible, within reason.

To declutter some of the text and enlighten you (pun intended) on the things I found, I wrote annotations, so in case you’re interested or confused about the historical happenings that I cannot explain in the text, I give an exposition of them there.

Enjoy the fruit of my labor with which I rewarded myself after finishing the last of my exams and successfully graduating. I began working on this on the 22th of May, and truthfully, I am quite happy to have finished it in pretty much a month's time.

Have fun reading! And feel free to give me feedback :)

[theotherrichardpapen]

I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (uncensored), Oscar Wilde

[cherrycatvibes]

"I quite admit that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When I was away from you, you were still present in my art. It was all wrong and foolish. It is all wrong and foolish still. Of course I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it; I did not understand it myself."

-The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

[meemoop]

Hiiii whats your top 5 fav books (this is because of the cat"s name)

Goodness, I couldn’t tell you my top five (I love too many), but I can give you the list of books I’ve given a 5-star rating on Goodreads! I can confidently say that The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is my favorite book of all time, with a close second being Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

 Fives:

Fyodor Dostoevsky's books:

The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment

Devils (or The Possessed)

The Idiot

White Nights

Other authors:

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (I cried so much, but I seriously recommend).

VERY High fours: God is Dead by Friedrich Nietzsche, Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I will never stop recommending Dostoevsky. Nietzsche said: “[Dostoevsky] is the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn.” After reading his novels, it seems I have lived ten years in one. Thank you for this ask! The answer is very long but when it comes to books I’ll go on forever and ever! 💕💕💕🫶

[lvsifer]

some ppl really need to read oscar wilde’s preface to the picture of dorian gray:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.

From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

[colleendoran]

The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Diminishment of Sybil Vane.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite stories.

The novel, published in 1890, is the tale of an exquisitely beautiful young man who captures the attention of portrait artist Basil Hallward and his sophisticated, bad hat of a friend Henry Wotton.

When we first meet him, Dorian is as naïve and innocent as his face seems to indicate. But, Dorian is corrupted by his relationship with his society buddy Henry, dazzlingly witty and rotten to the core. Wotton’s clever cynicism and hedonistic lifestyle turn Dorian's head. "I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable," says Henry.

His life is true to his declaration.

Early in the tale, Dorian falls in love with a beautiful young actress named Sybil Vane, whom he cruelly rejects when she doesn't live up to his standards, breaking her heart. She commits suicide, and Dorian regrets his cruelty, but the experience hastens Dorian’s fall into darkness.

Over time, Dorian becomes a libertine and murderer, far surpassing his friend Henry in his disregard for morality. "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." Wotton says it, but it is Dorian who lives it, a double life from upper class aesthete to back alley opium dens.

Over the nearly twenty years of the tale, Dorian is kept youthful by the magic of the portrait painted of him during the peak of his bloom by his friend Basil. The enchanted picture becomes horrifically ugly to mirror Dorian’s soul, yet the man keeps his pretty face. Gray hides the painting away in an attic, disgusted by it, yet delighting in the fact that canvas and oil bear the scars of his evil, while his flesh betrays nothing.

Over time, Gray expresses regret over his debauched ways, and affects playing at kindness by deciding not to ruin a beautiful young girl who reminds him of his lost love Sybil. Delighting in the novelty of a good deed, he wonders if the portrait will show some evidence of this attempt at good boy behavior.

Instead, the portrait looks even more monstrous than before, for Dorian’s act was not motivated by genuine concern for another, but by vanity. In a rage, he stabs the picture in the attic, the record of his corruption. Dorian drops dead, now ugly and elderly, while the portrait shows Gray youthful and beautiful once again.

The story was scandalous for its gothic horror elements and homoerotic themes, which are obvious throughout. Even so, Dorian’s love for two women, particularly Sybil Vane, are pivotal relationships and particularly interesting in that when the story is adapted into other mediums, the important role Sybil plays is diminished in such a way as to destroy the central themes of art and morality that Oscar Wilde explored in the text.

In the book, Sybil Vane is a naturally talented young actress who captures Dorian's heart with her artistic accomplishments. She falls in love with Dorian, realizing that the beauty of first love far surpasses the false love she plays at as Juliet on stage. Her acting becomes hollow. Her talent is destroyed as she is swept away by genuine emotions she has never known before.

But the aesthete Dorian has fallen for Sybil’s talent: without it, she is nothing to him. He breaks his vows to her, and in despair, she commits suicide.

In Dorian Gray, we have an accomplished woman who gives up her art for a man. Without it, she is empty, and Dorian’s contempt for her weakness destroys her.

Yet in almost all the theater/film adaptations I've seen, Sybil Vane is not gifted as an artist. In the 1945 adaptation starring a stunning young Angela Lansbury as Sybil, she is all beauty and dubious ability, a chorus hall girl singing about being a caged bird. Dorian’s interest in her is based on looks alone, and when she decides to have sex with him before marriage, Dorian dumps her.

In the 2009 film adaptation with Sybil Vane played by Rachel Hurd-Wood, she is seen onstage stiffly playing Shakespeare with an absurd, lower class accent. Dorian pursues her solely for her beauty, and his comments to friends about her talent come across as the deluded musings of a man in love who has no artistic taste. She dies, Ophelia-like, in the river after Dorian dumps her.

In both films, Dorian discards Sybil after she gave up her virtue: her sexual innocence.

But in the novel, Dorian dumps Sybil because she gave up her true virtue: her art. In adaptations of the work, the accomplished woman is reduced to a silly aspirant who only finds meaning with a man. She has nothing without him, not even the ability Oscar Wilde was good enough to gift her in the novel. She has only the hollow shell of outer beauty. The vital points Wilde makes about art and life are lost with the diminishment of Sybil Vane to a talentless showpiece.

The 1945 version is actually quite good, but making Sybil die for lost virginity is one heck of a different meaning than making Sybil die for lost art.

In the novel, Sybil falls in love with a real love, and Dorian falls in love with an artist. His love is about reflections, and the portrait is a symbol of that. His goodness eaten away by Henry's bad influence, the decaying portrait of Dorian betrays the corruption of his principles and his growing narcissism.

Almost every adaptation shows that Sybil Vane is doomed by the loss of her sexual innocence, and not by the loss of her art.

This is nowhere in the book.

The director of the 2009 film said the central theme of the work is, "What if you were allowed to do anything?" Which is not the central theme of the book. The central theme of the book is art and morality, ars gratia artis, the central theme of the entire aesthetic movement.

A woman's loss of talent would not be seen as primary consideration to a man writing through the male privilege prism. Of course Sybil would want to get a handsome rich man! What woman doesn't? Sybil can only step up her situation in life by her association with Dorian, not via her talent or accomplishments! It does not occur to the writers of the adaptations that Sybil steps down, not by losing her virginity, but by setting aside her art.

She chooses to pursue something real with Dorian: true love. On rejecting her for setting aside her art, Dorian destroys what he claimed to love: art itself.

Dorian is a man of exquisite taste, hence his fascination with Sybil's gifts. The contrast between his corrupt portrait, and his constant, public pursuit of beauty and quality in art is a statement on the hypocrisy of society. By turning Dorian into a besotted goof who falls for a mediocrity, this theme is turned on its head.

In the novel, both Sybil and Dorian fall on the sword of the sacrifice of the self. Dorian is captivated by his friend Henry, a decadent creep. Sybil is captivated by Dorian, on a fast track to becoming a decadent creep. Both Dorian and Sybil are destroyed because both Dorian and Sybil willingly sacrifice the true nature of their selves – goodness and art - to the bad influence of another person.

Dorian's radiant goodness, and Sybil's shining talent are housed in beautiful shells. And both give up their principles to someone else. By making Sybil's virtue a physical state (her virginity) instead of something intrinsic to her as an accomplished woman, she is further diminished as a character, and so is the theme. Sybil is just another girl who is tainted because she was dirtied by sex in Dorian's eyes - no longer pure - instead of being a woman of accomplishment who gave up a lifetime pursuit for a false love.

Sybil's fate was a warning to me, to never give up something intrinsic to myself on the altar of another human being.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is about being destroyed by choices that betray inner beauty. Sybil kills herself when Dorian doesn’t fill up the place in her heart that she gave away.

Dorian realizes what has he has done, but tries to hide his inner ugliness by hiding the portrait.

In the end, they are both destroyed by giving up their virtues, their true selves: true beauty, art, and love.

Originally posted ON MY PATREON.

[dopeeanddiamondds]

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[bracketsoffear]

End: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) "Upon seeing his own striking portrait Dorian Gray is bewitched and offers his soul if only the painting will age while he remains eternally youthful. Believing himself incorruptible, Dorian indulges in a life of pleasure and excess. But what has become of his portrait?"

Vast: Piranesi (Susanna Clarke) "Piranesi lives in a place called the House, a world composed of infinite halls and vestibules lined with statues, no two of which are alike. The upper level of the House is filled with clouds, and the lower level with an ocean, which occasionally surges into the middle level following tidal patterns that Piranesi meticulously tracks. He believes he has always lived in the House, and that there are only fifteen people in the world, all but two of whom are long-dead skeletons. The status that decorate the halls and walls of the House are all gigantic and the halls themself are immense and bigger than what any human would be able to build on their own."

[thethirdromana]

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on Victorian inequality.

I posted about this recently in the context of Dorian Gray, but it keeps cropping up in the literature of the 1890s, as we meet a series of characters with deep inequalities of wealth and income.

In Dracula, inequality ranges from Jonathan, a middle-class solicitor who was probably earning around £100 annually while he was still a clerk, to Arthur, an nobleman whose income is at least £5,000 annually. (My post on that).

In the Beetle, inequality ranges from Robert Holt, a middle-class clerk, currently unemployed, but otherwise subject to the same pay scale as Jonathan without the promotion, to any of the other main characters: Sydney, Marjorie, Paul and the newly introduced Hon. Augustus Champnell. We don't know any of the wealthier characters' incomes but those who work do so by choice rather than necessity. I think we're talking four-figure incomes for all of them.

In the Picture of Dorian Gray, so far, inequality ranges from the Vane family, for whom £50 is a lot of money, to Lord Henry, who is another nobleman, with another four or even five-figure income.

Inequality warps the world that these characters live in. OK, not so much the world of the Beetle, because Richard Marsh isn't a good enough writer to recognise it. But Arthur smoothes the way for the Crew of Light simply by throwing around colossal amounts of money. And Dorian's relationship with Sibyl is immediately defined by the fact that he is so much richer than she is.

So what I've been trying to figure out is, just how unequal was Victorian Britain? How much of this impression of inequality is because all three novels include nobleman - the Victorian 1% - vs reflecting the reality of the society their authors lived in?

First step was trying to find some comparable data. This tremendously helpful article estimates a Gini coefficient of wealth inequality of 94 in Great Britain in 1890. (100 would be total inequality; 0 total equality). That's higher than any of the 25 countries for which they provide data for 2010 (the most recent date given). Great Britain comes in at 69 in 2010, compared with Poland at 58 at the lowest of the countries listed, and the USA at the highest at 88.

The same article also looks at share of wealth of the wealthiest 10%. For Great Britain in 1890, that's estimated at 89%, compared with 54% in 2010. Across the other countries listed, Poland is again lowest at 37% (go Poland!) and the USA highest at 73%.

So very crudely, the gap in wealth equality between Victorian Britain and modern Britain is pretty similar to the gap in wealth equality between Poland and the USA today.

I also had a bit of a look at raw income numbers to see how this might feel in practice. £1,000 a year is about the top end of middle-class salaries and the bottom end of what a member of the aristocracy might expect to live off. (Jonathan might well earn that much on inheriting Mr Hawkins' estate and legal practice). It's enough to employ three or four servants, though it's certainly a lot less than any of the wealthy characters I listed at the start of this post are living off. It's nearly 20x the adult male average salary of £56 a year, and more than 20x the average salary for all workers in the UK, which was £42/14/- in the mid-1880s.

In the UK today, the median salary for full-time workers is £33,000. (I know I'm comparing means with medians and so on, but I've got to make do with what I've got, and I suspect it wouldn't make that much difference anyway). By the same ratio, our wealthy characters would consider themselves just scraping by on what - by comparison with a normal worker - is an income of £660,000 annually, and based on my best guess for their actual income, is more like the equivalent of £33m per year. Or roughly the annual income of Lady Gaga, one of the 100 top-earning celebrities in the world.

So that's what this level of income inequality feels like. Sibyl Vane is like a normal actor who has Lady Gaga flirting with her, with comparable implications for how much this could transform her life.