Character Design in The
Picture of Dorian Gray
Sheldon W. Liebman
Until the 1980s, The Picture of
Dorian Gray was generally considered to be a deeply flawed novel. To some
critics, it was simply badly written. To others, it was hopelessly confused,
reflecting Wilde's uncertainty and irresolution. To still others, it was
negligible or, at best, second-rate because it was merely an expression of the
1890s, in which case it was historically important but otherwise unworthy of
critical attention. Within the last two decades, however, many readers have
called Dorian Gray a great book. Indeed, its most recent critics have treated
the novel as if it were neither the product of Wilde's confusion nor merely a
period piece. Its irresolution is taken to be an expression of Wilde' s
understanding of the human condition. And Dorian Gray’s broader philosophical
concerns are assumed to be those of a moralist who is fully aware of the failure
of Victorian (or, in fact, any conventional) morality and is exploring the
consequences of its demise.
Interpreting rather than evaluating the
novel, most recent critics have seen Dorian Gray as in some sense a running
debate between two of its major characters, Henry Wotton and Basil Hallward,
and, furthermore, a debate carried out in the mind of Dorian Gray. In the past,
many readers concluded that this opposition represented a plain choice between
right and wrong: "conscience and temptation," "good and evil," "positive and
negative moral influences," or "love" and "egoism." Although this opposition was
usually seen as a battle symbolically waged by Henry and Basil, it was sometimes
taken to be a conflict between warring psychological faculties ("conscience" vs.
"libido" or "intelligence" vs. "sensibility") and, for some critics, as Regenia
Gagnier has noted, a projection of the war in Wilde' s own psyche. The consensus
among these critics was either that, in Wilde's judgment, Dorian Gray chooses
wrongly and pays the ultimate price for his serious moral error, thus confirming
the existence of cosmic justice, or that Dorian never really makes up his mind,
thus reflecting Wilde' s "warring energies," his "schizophrenia" or, less
grandly, his "identity crisis" or, less pathologically, his
"immaturity."
Nearly thirty years ago, however, Houston A. Baker made the
interesting point that in "The Critic as Artist" Wilde calls not for a choice
between "conscience and instinct," but for a "merging" of these two faculties.
And Dorian's fate, Baker continued, is a result of his inability to reconcile
these two aspects of his personality. This approach to the novel is suggestive
because it implies, first, that the conflict between Basil and Henry is not
simply a matter of good vs. evil and, second, that Dorian' s failure to
integrate his opposing "selves" is not a consequence of his own psychological
inadequacy, but a condition of modern life. From this perspective-and in my
judgment, which I shall try to substantiate in the following pages-Dorian Gray
is torn between two mutually exclusive interpretations of human experience: one,
optimistic, religious, and emotional; the other, pessimistic, cynical, and
intellectual. In the course of the novel, the reader (if not Dorian) discovers
that neither interpretation is adequate and that, from Wilde's perspective,
there are no alternatives.
Of course, this is essentially the majority
view of the novel today, with which I have no quarrel. My only complaint is
simply (but significantly, I believe) that the opposition between Basil and
Henry has been seriously oversimplified by most critics, reduced as it usually
is to a battle between ethics and aesthetics. (This formula also suggests that
the novel is really, after all, a product of its time and, because it fails to
deal with more universal issues, is not relevant to readers in the twentieth
century.) Thus, my main point is not merely that Wilde' s characters stand for
opposing values, but that the belief systems they embody are complex as well as
internally logical and consistent; that the story in which these characters act
on their values is a test of their viability and applicability to real life, not
just to the exotic worlds of decadent sensuality and drawing-room repartee; and
that Dorian, as the protagonist in this drama of universal moral conflict, is a
major figure in the development of the modern novel.
Wilde wrote in De Profundis that "Doom like a purple thread runs through the gold cloth of Dorian Gray." Although Basil Hallward introduces this theme, he merely threads the needle; it is really Lord Henry Wotton who weaves the thread. In fact, despite the general critical picture of Lord Henry as dilettante, intellectual lightweight, and effete hedonist, he is actually one of the most philosophical characters in British fiction. As more than one critic has noted, Henry is, first, a scientist and an intellectual, whose most outstanding trait is his curiosity. Early in the novel he recommends science as an antidote to social reform and insists on seeing things from "the scientific point of view."' Although his scientific curiosity occasionally draws him to the exploration of mere sensation, it has evidently led him to more profound discoveries: "Ordinary people [he says] waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was torn away" (p. 83). As one of the elect, Henry tells Dorian and Basil, "I have known everything." The "tired look in his eyes" suggests that he is weary of this knowledge, from which he cannot, however, escape. And although he is "always ready for a new emotion," he knows "there is no such thing" (p. 107; my emphasis).
Henry's knowledge is revealed in his discussions of two of his favorite topics: nature and human nature. On both subjects, his comments demonstrate that he is an incurable pessimist. His picture of the universe might well have come from T. H. Huxley: "It often happens [he says to Dorian after Sybil Vane's death] that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that" (p. 130). Of course, Henry's frivolous manner of speaking-his lament about tragedy's "lack of style" and his equation of tragedy and vulgarity-might divert the reader from Henry' s main point, i.e., that most tragic events reflect the "sheer brute force" of nature. It may be surmised, as well, that the exceptions to this general rule-namely tragedies "that possess artistic elements of beauty," of which Sybil's death is supposed to be an example-are really only made exceptional (and unthreatening) by a willful effort of the aesthetic (and anaesthetizing) imagination. Later, in his explanation of Sybil's death, Henry indicates that "actual life" destroys: "She marred it, and it marred her" (p. 133). When he says to one of the guests at Aunt Agatha's luncheon, "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable" (p. 64), Henry is indicating that he is inured to this fundamental aspect of nature-evidently because he has simply accepted it.
Henry's knowledge of psychology is equally extensive, and his view of human nature is equally grim. Wilde comments: "[Henry] had always been enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life-that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value" (p. 82). Henry acquires his wisdom about "the passions and the intellect" from literature as well as direct observation of human behavior. Sometimes "a complex personality," like Dorian' s, gives him an opportunity to examine the human species in its natural habitat. What Henry has learned is, first, that human beings are irrational (p. 52). When Dorian tells Henry, after the death of Sybil, that he is resolved to reform his life, Henry comments: "Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil" (p. 129). Earlier he had said to Basil that human beings cannot abide by moral imperatives defining their obligations to others. Fidelity, for example, is impossible because people are moved by their emotions rather than their will. Thus love is not a product of free choice, but "a question for physiology" (p. 53). Virtually all that one can say about human nature is precisely what one can say about nature writ large: it is driven by irrational, impersonal physical-biological forces beyond human control and human understanding. <!--pagebreak-->In a world without purpose, the result of faith is disillusionment, the result of action is disappointment, and the result of love or sympathy or compassion is suffering. That is why "nothing is ever quite true" (p. 107) and ennui is the unforgivable sin (p. 241). All truths collapse against the backdrop of chaos, and indifference is the dead end of all human endeavor. At the end of his tether, Henry engages in the only kind of action, other than suicide, that fits his desperate moral and metaphysical dilemma: contemplation (p. 65). This serves both his curiosity, which he cannot quench, and his fear, which he cannot face. Indeed, all of his activities are double-edged and simultaneously serve two opposed ends: approach and avoidance, or the instincts of Eros and death. Detachment enables Henry to see dispassionately, like a true scientist, but also to refrain from emotional involvement, like a schizoid personality. Spectatorism allows him to analyze nonjudgmentally but also to turn reality into art by transforming everyday human events into aesthetically distanced drama. And cynicism permits him to act on the stage of the real world, displaying the fruits of his scientific research, but also to protect himself from succumbing to the emotional temptations of that world, thereby avoiding the suffering that shadows passion.
Quite logically, then, as I have suggested, Henry' s cynicism derives from his dark vision of the external and internal realms of human life. His morality comes from his metaphysics, and those who do not share the latter have trouble believing the former. Basil, who evidently knows Henry well, says to him: "I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry... I believe that you are a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose" (p. 26). Henry feeds this impression when he tells his dinner-party companions that "one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner" (p. 252). Nevertheless, although he no longer actively pursues physical pleasure-at least, the kind that Dorian indulges in-and lives a relatively quiet life of intellectual contemplation, he takes almost nothing seriously. And although, unlike Dorian, he would do nothing strenuous to retain his youth ("To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable" [p. 255]), he is quite willing-and even eager-to manipulate Dorian callously and deliberately, in order to satisfy the only desire that he believes is neither futile nor destructive intellectual curiosity-and to experience the only real pleasures left to him, those he can have vicariously, living through others. He "would sacrifice anybody..., for the sake of an epigram" (p. 242), as Dorian claims, and he would sacrifice anybody for the sake of an experiment that might yield an aesthetic thrill or an iota of knowledge.
How does one live in a world in which nothing can be believed and no one can be trusted? Henry's answer is what philosophers call ethical egoism. He encourages Dorian to follow his own example of pursuing his own self-interest, which means seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Henry's "new Hedonism" (p. 46) is based on the assumption that the quest for pleasure is natural because it is an expression of the quest for life (p. 105), a response to a basic impulse, which Freud would later call the life instinct, as Henry suggests to Dorian: "Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!" (p. 46). This impulse or instinct requires human beings to both live and grow by acting on their "natural thoughts" and "natural passions": "The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for." This is "the duty that one owes to one's self." Henry goes on: "I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream-I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be" (p. 41). By allowing ourselves to develop through the expression of our innate creative drive, we evolve from simple to more complex organisms, becoming "more highly organized," which is "the object of man's existence" (pp. 101-02). What Henry means by being "in harmony with one's self" is simply obeying the instinct and pursuing the "higher aim" of "individualism" (p. 106). To do otherwise is to "spoil" one's life (p. 102), to "stagnate" (p. 248), to "make [one's self] incomplete" (p. 255). <!--pagebreak-->In his theory of self-development, Henry may owe something to Aristotle, whose theory of tragedy influenced Wilde's thinking on that subject. However, the Greek ideal of self-realization, which Henry calls Hellenism, was not, at least in Aristotle's version of it, accompanied by an antisocial individualism. With his ardent elitism, his frequent contrast between the strong and the weak (and even between masters and slaves), and, particularly, his attack on the doctrine of self-sacrifice and self-denial, Henry is much closer to Nietzsche than to Aristotle. Like his more recent predecessor, Henry believes that by encouraging charity and social reform, society promotes sickness rather than health, stifles individualism, and inhibits intellectual growth. He says to Dorian: "Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age" (p. 46). "The nineteenth century," he adds later, "has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy" (p. 65). To worry about "one's neighbors" is to be "a prig or a puritan." The true individual flouts "the standard of [his] age," the acceptance of which "is a form of grossest immorality." The ignorant and the poor can afford nothing more than self-denial because their economic and intellectual condition requires it, but "medieval emotions are out of date" for the rich and the civilized (p. 106).
Society succeeds in its endeavor to direct all human activity toward social, collective ends, Henry says, by making people "afraid of themselves." Their fear is created and sustained by "the terror of society" and "the terror of God"-the bases, respectively, of morals and religion. Ironically, however, these two forces actually "starve" rather than nurture the soul: "The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us." The activities that one pursues in fulfilling one's needs and satisfying one's desires may be sins, but they are "beautiful sins" that are "made monstrous and unlawful" only by "monstrous laws." In an amoral universe governed by no absolute standards, nothing is inherently evil: "It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place" (pp. 41-42). In other words, "moderation is a fatal thing" (pp. 215-16) because no natural law sanctions it, and no growing organism can flourish under its rule and sway.
Yet the real (or, at least, deeper) purpose of Henry's scientific and artistic approach to human experience is actually escapist. His problem, Henry tells Lady Agatha, is that he cannot stand to witness suffering, perhaps because he, more than any other character in the novel, knows that it is not only real but irremediable: "I can sympathize with everything, except suffering . . . I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, the better" (p. 64). It is not that Henry totally ignores the unpleasant facts of existence. Rather, he "plays" with them and "transforms" them. In the process, philosophy is made to serve the pleasure principle, and "facts fly before her like frightened forest things" (p. 66). It is no surprise, then, that despite his curiosity-his intellectual quest-Henry prefers Beauty to Thought (pp. 25, 45, 134). And although he tells Dorian that "life has always poppies in her hands" (p. 131), he clearly makes every effort to grow his own so that he will never have to do without the opiate of distraction. Reality cannot be changed, but it can be dressed up if "we have [not] lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things." That is why "names are everything" (p. 231).
The problem Henry faces is that these diversions, which enable him to evade terror, do not satisfy all of his needs-namely, his intellectual curiosity and his creative impulse, without which he is in danger of stagnating from inaction and even perishing from ennui. As we have seen, however, action leads to pain, and the pursuit of pleasure leads to the exhaustion of all emotion. Thus, unable to act but needing to know and to create, Henry turns to Dorian Gray, who offers him both the opportunity to analyze a complex personality and the chance to create a new (and beautiful) self. Furthermore, Dorian also represents a new life of sensation, emotion, and thought that Henry can experience vicariously and therefore safely. In this way, Dorian becomes one of Henry's multiple selves, created, as such selves always are, to live a life that one's already pained and wounded selves cannot live-to live, in short, in fiction what one can no longer live in fact: "Good artists simply exist in what they make." Great poets "write the poetry that they dare not" or cannot-"realize" in their lives (pp. 81-82). <!--pagebreak-->Henry reveals the dynamics of this process of self-aggrandizement even before he decides to make Dorian an extension of himself. The young man asks Henry whether he is actually "a very bad influence," as Basil alleges. Henry replies, "All influence is immoral." In the context of his theory of self-development, he goes on to explain, anyone who is strongly influenced loses his individuality, his self-determination (pp. 40-41). At the same time, the person who influences someone else gains a medium of self-expression, a new stage on which to perform and an opportunity, therefore, to become a spectator in his own-though borrowed or co-opted-life. In this respect, influence (or "domination," as Henry later calls it) is the consummate creative act, partly because it requires extraordinary skill (the victim must be unaware of the influence and assume that it is coming from himself, as Dorian does [p. 42]) and partly because it results in the deepest satisfactions of doing, making, and growing: "To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that" (p. 60).
In many respects, Henry sounds like a spokesman for Wilde. Most of his ideas-his rejection of altruism, his theory of self-development, his hedonism-are recurrent themes in Wilde's essays, and Henry's wit and wisdom are delivered in the urbane style of Vivian in "The Decay of Lying" and Gilbert in "The Critic as Artist." Furthermore, Wilde as the narrator of Dorian Gray often expresses Henry's sentiments-sometimes in Henry's characteristic tone. [14] Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that Henry speaks for his creator. The effect of Henry's influence on Dorian is, after all, disastrous, and Henry is blissfully unaware of Dorian' s gradual degeneration. Early in the novel, he says to Dorian, "People like you . . . don't commit crimes" (p. 77). Late in the book, he tells Dorian, "There is no one who would not be delighted to change places with you" (p. 241). And in his last conversation with Dorian (long after the latter has caused Sybil's suicide, murdered Basil, cold-bloodedly disposed of the body, caused the suicide of Alan Chapman, and indirectly brought about the accidental murder of James Vane), Henry restates his belief in Dorian's inability to commit murder (p. 252). He even tells his disciple, who has also become an opium addict, that he has not been "marred" by his experience (p. 255). Finally, Henry informs Dorian that he "could change places with [him]" because the world has always worshiped him and will continue to do so. "I am so glad that you have never done anything," he continues. "Life has been your art." To these almost moronic words of praise, Dorian calmly replies: "You don't know everything about me. I think that if you did, you would turn from me" (p. 256).
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Source: Studies in the Novel, Fall99, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p296, 21p.
