The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

Classic Literature

229 pages

***

"I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious and marvelous to us."

"If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."

"I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said."

"But the picture? what was he to say to that? It 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?"

Teaser

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged - petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral - while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years.

Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. Laced with vivid depictions of upper-class refinement, it is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde's manifesto of the creed "Art for Art's Sake."

Review

This book is incredibly fascinating, but also exceptionally dull at times. It provides an excellent look at the internal struggle between what is right, and what is fun. Another central conflict in this book was that of the importance of beauty over intelligence. Men with education were next to worthless, for anything except their selected area of skill, in these times. Vanity is a huge part of this piece also. All of these things are masterfully blended together to create some very enthralling conversations. This book is very well written in the respect that it flows well, however, I did notice that the action seemed to come in spurts, followed by some down time that tended to be boring. Overall I enjoyed this book. It had parts that I absolutely loved and the ending is totally worth pushing through the dull parts for.