Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

The Picture of Dorian Gray 151
is able to see the moral degeneration that takes place and is reflected
in the painting. Thus, Wilde makes Dorian’s self-realization much
more personal and psychological than the public “ethics of shame”
that Wilde himself had to face in his public trials for homosexual
relationships. When Dorian first notices the changing in his portrait,
he lays out the implications as follows: “[The picture] held the secret
of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty.
Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?” (Wilde 228). In other
words, because Dorian is allowed to cross the boundary and see his
soul as a separate entity from his body, he is able to witness and even
appreciate its gradual decay as “a guide to him through life, [it ] would
be to him what holiness was to some, and conscience to others, and
the fear of God to us all” (Wilde 231). At this point, Wilde allows art
to be something he had believed all his life it should not: a cautionary
tale, a moral beacon that guides character. The rest of Wilde’s novel
reveals to readers the folly of Dorian’s attitude toward art.
Dorian’s disastrous relationship with Sybil shows that the changing
image of the portrait has not taught him to take responsibility for his
decisions. Through Henry’s influence, Dorian is able to dissociate
himself from every action and relationship by adopting the privileged
perspective of an artist. He distances himself from the responsibility
that every personal relationship imposes by living his life as though
it were a work of art. He loves Sybil not for her personality, but
for her ability to successfully become other personae or characters
through her acting. The relationship is a test case of the extent to
which Dorian has adopted an artistic take on his own life. Ironically,
Sybil’s love for Dorian spurs her to reject the artificial, unauthentic
life she had led before they met. In Sybil’s response to Dorian, Wilde
is parodying the sentimental and facile treatment of romantic love in
literature as a way to reach higher moral ground and reject the artificiality
of art. Her intense love for Dorian makes her a bad actress;
she loses her protean ability to “be” other people. Dorian can only
see this loss of artistic skill in Sybil and fails to understand how she
has been transformed by his love to see the world of art and theater
as false. Since he loved her because she was a good actress, Dorian
ceases to love her when she learns to be herself. So he castigates her
with his question, “What are you without your art?” (Wilde 225). Her
inability to answer it incites her to commit suicide. Dorian, looking
back at this evening, correctly understands his responsibility for this