- The magic of the painting, of
course
- “He had spared one innocent thin”
(Hetty Morton)
- “the hideous thing” (the picture)
- “Confess?” (Basil’s murder, the
only crime of Dorian’s that the reader knows to be punishable by death)
- “There was no trace of the
murdered man anywhere” (Alan Campbell)
Notice the logical structuring of the extract based on the “dialogue” between Dorian and the painting: Dorian thinks, “I have done a good thing;” the picture tells him, “You have not, you are hypocritical and cunning. You must confess,” etc.
Notice the voices in the passage:
conscience’s voice and the voice of the self.
Once again, you can see the direct
communication between Dorian and the picture: he can immediately see cunning
and hypocrisy in it, refined subjective concepts which are difficult to render
unambiguously in painting. On the other hand, Dorian does not accurately anticipate the evolution in the picture: he is surprised to discover it has worsened still instead of improving. He does not seem to know everything about it although it does seem to know everything about him.
Once
again, you can notice the mirror relationship between Dorian and the picture:
just as the picture accuses Dorian, Dorian accuses it of being unfair (l. 49) and is indignant at this unfairness (l. 19).
However, in this confrontation, the
picture/conscience has the upper hand: Dorian eventually acknowledges the truth
of the picture’s accusations. Dorian’s inferior position in relation to the
portrait is revealed in this passage. This passage also marks Lord Henry’s
triumph: Dorian cannot find one trace of morality in his soul (the picture):
the sole motivation for every one of his actions is the pursuit of pleasure
associated to aesthetic curiosity for novelty. Dorian’s picture has not changed because he never really wanted to become better: he only wanted his picture to look better.
Still Dorian refuses to submit to
the law that the portrait stands for and proclaims to him: to the end, he looks
for a way to escape.
Notice that the picture changes only one way: although Dorian thinks it can go back towards its original purity, it always changes from good to bad. This is indeed a markedly tragic element: tragedy is an inescapably one-way mechanism. Dorian does not seem to understand this.
The
stabbing of the portrait: Notice its sexual quality: “He
seized the thing and stabbed the picture with it.” This is not to say that
there is a prurious, naughty subtext to the text, but that it is deeply
symbolic (according to Lacan, the phallus is the “signifier of signifiers”) and
connected to identity. Dorian identifies the portrait to
Basil (l. 72). He has punished Basil for giving him the picture, now he wants
to punish the picture for tormenting him and depriving him of unadulterated
irresponsibility. Conclusion: Obviously, you should mention the
epilogue of the novel. I advise you to deal with the stabbing last before your
conclusion so as to move seamlessly from one to the other. The epilogue shifts the
identification to Basil from the portrait to Dorian: the knife that has killed
Basil kills Dorian, not the portrait. The portrait has killed Basil (all the
more since Dorian looked like the picture then) and Dorian. The two people who
have seen it after its initial beauty have been punished. It also puts the seal on the mirror
relationship of Dorian and the picture: Dorian becomes the ugly picture stabbed
while the picture becomes the eternally beautiful Dorian.
Possible outline:
1. The confrontation: a dialogue between two voices: Dorian’s voice or the voice of the self and the picture’s voice or the voice of conscience.
This confrontation structures the passage formally and logically in trying to assess Dorian’s morality.
Conclusion of the first part and transition: Dorian wants to get rid of conscience by destroying the picture. However, as soon as he does this, he is “killed” by the picture: this denouement is indeed a moral one.
2. Moral and justice.
In the conflict between self and conscience, Dorian selfishly chooses to destroy his moral conscience, but he is punished so that morality actually “wins the argument”. In this light, the novel appears as a morality play about morality itself: it is impossible to entirely absolve oneself of responsibility.
However, the actual death of Dorian is ambiguous.
On the one hand, it can be seen in a “pagan” way as a “curse” story: Dorian is punished in the same way as Basil for the same profanation. They are the only two persons who have seen the picture in its degraded state and both die the same way.
On the other hand, it may be seen in a “moral” light: isn’t Dorian punished for trying to destroy the picture? Since the picture returns to its original beauty, the end may appear as a posthumous vindication of Basil. The parallelism in their deaths may point not to a similarity between them but to Dorian’s death being a retribution for the murder of Basil.