Gaby’s Comments (group member since Oct 16, 2021)

Gaby’s comments from the Dorian Gray Read Along 2021 group.

I finished the novel yesterday and the ending made me think a lot:
For me, Basil is the only character of moral integrity. He adores/loves Dorian for his beauty and innocence, but he also sees Dorians moral weakness. He doesn't want Dorian to meet Lord Henry because he anticipates that Henry will spoil him. When Basil sees the changed portrait, he urges Dorian to take responsibility for his dreadfull actions: "The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also." (Chapter XIII) But this impertinence infuriates Dorian and signs Basil's death.
Lord Henry is for me the personification of immorality. For him life seems to be nothing but a game that has to be played artfully. Repentance is preposterous: "What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything...Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music." (Chapter XIX)
But I wonder if Lord Henry's immorality is less a practical than a theoretical one. Has he ever done something dreadful himself except for spoiling others and then observing their moral degradation?
And Dorian himself? After the murder of Basil and the encounter with James Vane Dorian realizes that he can't go on as before. He is haunted by dark premonitions. He decides to reform himself and to become 'good'. But even though he is aware of the terrible things he has done, he does not really regret. His wish to become good is a selfish one: "It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was of himself, and his own future, that he had to think." (Chapter XX) He still is not willing to take responsibility for his past and to repent what he has done. Nothing has been his own fault, "it was the portrait that had done everything", or it might be Basil or the mysterious book to be blamed. Dorian has no pity for the people he has abused and corrupted and at last killed - they are "nothing to him".
Dorian believes that he will be able to whitewash the past by becoming better in the future. After the first little action of self-denial he expects the portrait to have changed to the better. But the portrait is not corrupt - on the contrary, the bloodstains on it have become even more obvious. Frustrated by this, Dorian decides to destroy the picture in order to get rid of his own conscience and to become free. But in killing his conscience, he kills himself.
"Und die Moral von der Geschicht'?" as we would ask in Germany:
For me the moral of the story seems to be that a life without feeling of responsibility for the consequences of the own actions is at long last self-destructive.
That's the impression the novel has given to me. I've read it for the first time.
I'm sorry that my skill to express my thoughts in English is so bad!

I anticipated already at the end of chapter XI that Dorian sooner or later would commit a murder. He is so fascinated by the last chapters of the'wonderful novel', which deal with death and blood and murder, so I thought he would not be at rest before he himself had made the experience.
But I didn't expect it so soon and I didn't expect that it would happen in rage and even less that Basil would be the victim.

Wow! This was a sudden end to the Sibyl Vane-romance, I didn't expect it so soon.
I'm struck by Lord Henry's devilish power of manipulation and by his cynism and misogyny: "I'm afraid that women appreciate cruelty...We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters..." (Chapter VIII)
I haven't yet read the introduction to avoid spoilers, so I'm curious how it will go on.

I'm Gaby from Germany. This is my first Victober. I've finished re-reading Wuthering Heights and I'm currently reading East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood and Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell.
The only Oscar Wilde I've ever read was The Importance of Being Earnest in an abridged version for English lessons in German schools for over fourty years ago. I vaguely remember that I liked it.