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148
Oscar Wilde
breaking out it should blast, blight, and destroy whatever it
comes into contact with. (Campbell 224–25)
Dorian is both a figure representing the sacred virtues of art and also a
hedonist, dedicated to gratifying his senses. The word “taboo” can refer
both to Dorian’s prohibited actions that require concealment as well as
his “sacred” pursuit of artistic beauty. Dorian’s portrait symbolizes the
sacred and taboo experiences he shares with Basil, Henry, and Sybil.
The novel is primarily about the relationship between the artist,
his subject, and the created work of art. To that end, the first few
chapters give us a glimpse of the complex relationship between Basil
Hallward and his subject Dorian Gray. At the beginning of the novel,
Basil is protective of his painting as well as his subject, because he fears
he has revealed too much of himself: “The reason I will not exhibit
this picture is that I am afraid I have shown with it the secret of my
own soul” (Wilde 188). The relationship between Basil and Dorian
has subsumed that of the artist and his subject, so much so that Basil
feels overwhelmed with love for him. Basil’s reticence to paint Dorian
is overcome by this affection: “I knew that I had come face to face
with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I
allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul,
my very art itself ” (Wilde 189). In confronting Dorian as a subject
of his painting, Basil recognizes that he must confront his innermost
feelings. Since the process of creation involves revealing and recreating
this self, Basil understands that such a revelation means giving up his
own self; hence he feels the need to conceal the painting from the rest
of the world. Thus in the first few pages of the novel the painting has
become a means of both presenting and concealing the self to and
from the rest of the world.
Both Basil and Henry attempt to influence the impressionable
young Dorian. 1 While he is the subject of Basil’s painting, he also
becomes the receiver of Henry’s philosophy of “new Hedonism,”
and there is a struggle between Basil and Henry for Dorian’s attention.
Henry, in explaining the meaning and danger of such influence,
deems it “immoral” because “to influence a person is to give him one’s
own soul. . . . He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor
of a part that has not been written for him” (Wilde 198). This is the
obverse of Basil’s reaction to the painting where he had revealed too
much of his own soul through Dorian’s likeness. Just as Basil fears