Dorian Gray

Some books are so weird they stick with a person.  I think The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is  one of those kinds of books.

Its author claims "there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.  Books are well written, or badly written.  That is all."  At the same time, his main character encounters first an immoral man, then a book which opens his mind to a hedonistic lifestyle and it's all downhill from there.

The plot of the book centers around the beautiful, innocent-looking Dorian Gray who was the subject of a painting in his youth.  "He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood" (110).  Who could imagine that his wish would come true--that his visage would remain innocent, young, and beautiful while the portrait grew ever uglier to reflect the stains on his soul as he pursued the pleasures of sin for a season.

Yet through his hedonistic pursuits, he never found love, happiness or contentment.  "That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification.  The more he knew, the more he desired to know.  He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them" (151).  He corrupted women and he led his friends into destruction until "he wanted to be where no one would know who he was.  He wanted to escape from himself" (214).

The pleasures of sin for a season, indeed.  The story was hauntingly similar to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes in some senses.  Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.  "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"  Even Lord Henry, Dorian's cynical mentor in sin's vices, grew world-weary and tired of it all.

Which brings me to Lord Henry himself.  He idolized youth and beauty, cared about nothing but himself and his pleasure, and held himself mockingly aloof from those about him.  While he was quite the horrid influence, I sometimes could relate to his cynicism and by turn either pondered or got a kick out of his pithy sayings such as the following: 

"But I can't help detesting my relations.  I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves" (23).

"Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot:  that is all one can say" (45).

"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self.  Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.  One's own life--that is the important thing.  As for the lives of one's neighbors, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not one's concern" (97).

"Women are wonderfully practical, much more practical than we are.  In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us" (95).  (I insert here an involuntary chuckle HA!)

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them" (85).

"When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband.  When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife.  Women try their luck; men risk theirs."

"We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible. . .I have never searched for happiness.  Who wants happiness?  I have searched for pleasure" (224).

I must admit I host a cynic inside me as well and books like this waken her.  Combine the premise of this book with the book I am currently reading (The Atonement Child which tells of a young, innocent, sheltered christian girl being impregnated through rape) and I start questioning some of our parenting choices.  This world is ugly--just plain rotten--and someone, somewhere, sometime will delight in setting Pandora's box before my children and exposing them to temptations of hedonistic pleasures.  Someday they will experience heartbreak, betrayal, disappointment. . .Sometimes my cynical self wonders if it's even possible to adequately prepare or protect them so what's the point of even trying. Yet try to prepare them I must, ever pointing them to the Lord and Savior who stretched out His arms to claim our guilt and shame when we are drawn away of our own lusts and enticed.

An interesting and thought-provoking book indeed.  I find it interesting that it beautifully illustrates the vanity of a life spent in pursuit of selfish pleasure, even as I understand Oscar Wilde himself to have been an adherent of hedonism.  I'm quite glad I read it for Carrie's book club (even as I finished later than the deadline specified).