Who is the Real Monster?
When reading The Picture of Dorian Gray it may seem that Dorian is the obvious "monster", but as we take a closer look the shift in the antagonist changes.
Lord Henry
Lord Henry
- "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral-- immoral from the specific point of view" (Wilde 19)
- From the moment Lord Henry meets Dorian he begins to corrupt him by filling Dorian's head with his own ideas, the chief of which being "youth is the one thing worth having" (Wilde 24). Lord Henry telling Dorian that youth should be held above all else is the catalyst for the events of the rest of the novel and every poor decision that Dorian makes can be traced back to the first day he meets Lord Henry and the massive influence that he has over Dorian. Lord Henry is aware that Dorian will listen to him, and absorb his philosophies, and treats him like another one of his social experiments, born out of wealth and boredom, so the more time Dorian spends with Lord Henry the more corrupt he becomes.
- Lord Henry intentionally instilling his views unto Dorian is extremely hypocritical however, because he is quite vocal about negative effects that external influence can have on a person.
- "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self" (20).
- In the above quote Lord Henry himself says that if one commits a sin, but the idea comes from someone else, that sin is borrowed. So even though Dorian commits many crime throughout the novel, he can entirely not be held responsible for them, because the ideas behind his actions were borrowed from Lord Henry, and therefore, by extension his sins were.
Dorian Gray
- While Lord Henry spends the entire novel proclaiming his theories about all aspects of Victorian life, he never actually does anything about them. Then he meets Dorian, who is young and impressionable, and really takes Lord Henry's philosophies to heart, and actually acts on them. First by begging the universe to have the painting age instead of his body, which causes Dorian to see himself and his soul separate from his actions, so he shows no remorse.
- Then falling in love with Sybil Vane, only because she is an actress, and ceasing to love her the minute her performances begin to lack, he truly encapsulates Lord Henry's ideas of art, youth and beauty that have been presented throughout the novel
- "You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name... What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face" (Wilde 91).
- Yet Dorian, once again takes these theories that Lord Henry presented to him, and goes a step beyond and actually acts upon them and uses the idea of an artist being nothing without their art to break Sybil's heart, which is what causes her to kill herself.
- Yet, despite his horrible actions, Dorian has none of outward features that make a monster. So despite the rumors circulating about his actions later in the novel, no one (Lord Henry especially) believes that they are true, because there is no way someone as handsome as Dorian could commit such sinister crimes. Because as Lord Henry says at the beginning of the novel "People like you—the wilful sunbeams of life—don't commit crimes, Dorian" (56).