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The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) - Coggle Diagram
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
PLOT AND SETTING
Set in London at the end of the 19th century.
The painter Basil Hallward makes a portrait of Dorian Gray.
Dorian’s desires of eternal youth are satisfied
Influenced by the brillant but corrupt Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian throw himself into a life of pleasure
The signs of age and vices appear on the portrait
Wanting to free himself of the portrait, Dorian stabs it / he kills himself --> the picture returns to its purity, while Dorian's face becomes wrinkled and loathsome.
Main characters
Dorian
--> Ideal of youth, beauty and innocence/ Gray = MORALLY INDEFINITE.
Lord Henry Wotton
--> amoral aesthete and a brilliant talker, He belives youth is the most important value
Basil Hallward
, an intellectual who falls in love with Dorian’s beauty and innocence.
WHEN
1891
🡪 revised and extended.
1890
🡪 first appeared in a magazine.
Narrative technique
obtrusive third-person narrator.
identification between the reader and the character. internal perspective
Language --> brillant paradoxes and witty dialogue. The language of the senses is used to describe the settings.
It reflects Oscar personality --> It was considered immoral by the Victorian public.
THEMES
and
ALLEGORICAL MEANING
Contrast between reality and appearance
--> every excess brings its own punishment and reality cannot be escaped
The picture stands for the dark side of Dorian’s personality,
Example of duality --> struggle between good and evil in Dorian/ contrast between his body’s youthfulness and the painting’s ugliness.
DORIAN transfers all of his physical decadence of aging into the portrait --> the evil part takes control over the good part/ bringing the character into a destructive and draining way to death
Symbolical representations of double identity in Victorian society --> compromise between good and evil = Victorian compromise