JOURNAL #2

PROMPT: [The significance of the aging portrait of Dorian. How does it relate to the theme of aesthetics? Also, how does the portrait show Wilde's view on the relationship of art/artist and morality?]

    Eternal youth and innocence. These two fascinating words-in many ways portraying very similar symbols and nuance-have captivated people regardless of time and place. Many who were enthralled by the concept, including Emperor Shi Huangdi from Qin dynasty of the ancient China and Juan Ponce de Leon, set out ridiculously lengthy journeys to defy the natural flow of time. Similar line of captivation can be found not only in the lives of historical figures, but also in literature: Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece which was heavily influenced by the Aesthetics movement. In the novel, a beautiful young man named Dorian Gray succeeds in getting both, or at least superficially; he himself does not age or decay, but a fine-looking portrait of him gets old and deformed instead. Every time he does something morally unacceptable, his portrait self takes the blame instead. Such radical demolition of the boundary between real-life and artistry is of huge significance.

     Art is a mirror of one’s life for both Dorian and Lord Henry. They even happily take the extreme stance of considering their lives as pieces of art, which basically illustrates the Aesthetics attitude of life. Such attitude is well reflected in the magical switch of Dorian’s life and his image. The young one is so obsessed with total appreciation of the arts is that he even views his own life as an on-going work of art, and thus blurs the boundary between artist’s life and the artwork. Fascinating and sweet it may sound, but the having such extreme attitude is a violation of an important axiom in the preface: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Dorian violates this warning that artists should not reveal themselves in their artwork; he not only puts much of himself into his work, but also becomes a part of it by treating his life as a dramatic work of art. For that misdemeanor, Dorian later gets punished: He not able to atone for his sins and is finally left with no other choice than to kill his own soul-by stabbing the demoralized self in the portrait.

     From the crippled misbehaviors of Dorian, the author Oscar Wilde poses a debatable question: Can morality be violated for artistic causes? Generally, moral standards have to be kept no matter what because doing so is a respectable sign of being human. However, the field of arts, considered largely individual and distant from other values in life, may be the only exception in the aforementioned generalization. In other words, artists sometime brazenly defy moral standards of society. Dorian, too, considers his work of art-his Hyde self-first priority in front of all other societal virtues and morality. He sometimes even seems to be glad at his despicable deeds mainly because his artistic representation takes all the blame. Nevertheless, Wilde never gives up hope in regard to human conscience. All the time Dorian committed hideous actions and never seemed to feel guilty, his sense of guilt had been reflected in the painting-his hidden Jekyll inner side. At the denouement, Dorian tries to atone for his sins by stabbing the image in the portrait and eventually pays for them through his death.

     The magical yet cursed portrait is perhaps the most important ‘character’ in the novel, maybe even more significant than Dorian himself. The two personas of Dorian that appear in the story, as I have referenced earlier, are Dorian himself and the portrait. Surprisingly, there is quite amazing similarity between the relationship of the two personas of Dorian and that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: the real-life Dorian similar to Mr. Hyde, and Dorian’s portrait to Dr. Jekyll. The irony here is that the beautiful Dorian whose eternal youth is guaranteed is in fact the demonic self of a man, and the ugly and deformed portrait is actually the good-hearted self, for the image feels guilty and is aware of Dorian’s wrongdoings as is reflected in the deformation. All in all, the two seemingly incompatible concepts-eternal beauty and hideous deeds-aptly portray Wilde’s views on the relationship of art and morality based on the theme of Aestheticism through the discrepant yet reciprocal personas of real Dorian and the portrait.