The World of Senses in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and in Parker’s movie Dorian Gray

The World of Senses in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and in Parker’s movie Dorian Gray

 

The Picture of Dorian Gray ¹(1891), written by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)², is a novel in which the author explores the dark sides of the Victorian society, in which people’s faces are nothing but masks they wear in their public lives, to hide their sinful private desires. It is a society whose key word is hypocrisy, where people have a double life, and in which there is a great opposition between what is real and what seems to be real. The main focus of the novel is the dichotomy between ethics³ and aesthetics⁴, and Wilde does so through the use of a language of senses and through the juxtaposition of life and art, in order to represent the inner conflict of a man torn between decorum and desire. Through his hypnotic and sensory language, Wilde is able to portray the story of a man whose transformation makes the reader astonished. Dorian, initially naïve, turns to be a man for whom sin becomes a source of life. The evolution of his character is made possible through Wilde’s highly accurate narration, as well as through the description of the portrait which mirrors all Dorian’s sinful experiences instead of his own face.

 Ethics, aesthetics, beauty, sin, pleasure, art and life are the main concepts of this novel, and what links all these notions together in the novel is Wilde’s representation of the double life of Dorian, and of the dichotomy between ethics and aesthetics. Through his language, through the portrait and through Dorian’s sinful experiences, Wilde has focused on the depiction of his corrupt life in a way that has made this novel a unique one. This double life is the real protagonist of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and it has been the cause for which this novel has been seen for ages as an immoral one⁵. However, in the modern age Wilde’s only novel has been given attention again, and it has been described as a real representation of life and of human experience⁶, and this is proven by its adaptation into the movie Dorian Gray in 2009.

Thus, through the analysis of the world of senses in which Dorian indulges, one reaches a deeper understanding of the double life typical of the Victorian society, and by comparing the different representations of senses in the novel- by analyzing Dorian’s sinful life and his portrait- and by comparing the world of senses of the novel to that in the movie, one sees not only how senses, pleasure and sin can be represented in different media, but also how life and art are interrelated and intermingled.

1. The world of senses in the novel

            In the novel, Wilde presents the world of senses on three different levels: first, through his sensory language; he uses in his description details from the five senses to make readers visualize everything described by his words. This applies to Wilde’s narration in general, as well as to the description of Dorian’s corrupt experiences. Second, the world of senses is presented also through Lord Henry’s witty aphorisms about life and human experience, which are the primary source of temptation to Dorian. Finally, the portrait of Dorian is in itself the incarnation of the five senses, since it holds the sings of his sinful life.  

            From the very first line of the novel, readers are introduced to the sensory language of Wilde in his description of Lord Henry’s studio.

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn. (Wilde 5)

The “odor”, “scent” and “perfume” of flowers not only make readers engaged in the description, but they also train them to the pleasures of life, which will be soon experienced by Dorian, and indirectly by readers. After being introduced to the perfumes of the studio, the description continues, involving the other four senses:

[f]rom the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ. (Wilde 5)

Readers feel they can touch “the divan of Persian saddlebags”, smell the odor of Lord Henry’s cigarettes, touch and see “the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of [the] laburnum” and see “ the fantastic shadows of birds” out of the window, touching “the long tussore-silk curtains”. While reading this passage, one also hears “the sudden murmur of the bees” juxtaposed to “the dim roar of London [which] was like the bourdon note of a distant organ”, and feels that the studio is like a world by itself, a small world of pleasure, in which senses perceive beauty in all its forms.

            After being introduced to this new world of senses, Dorian is entrapped in it; he cannot escape, because his senses are always thirsty for new experiences and for new pleasures. He is never satisfied, he wants more, and his ultimate aim is that of discovering the mysteries of the world of senses. Wilde says that Dorian “knew that the senses, no less that the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal” (Wilde 128-129). For this reason he decided to

[s]tudy perfumes, and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one’s passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul. (Wilde 129)

Once more, Wilde uses words related to perfumes, like “heavily-scented oils” or “odorous gums”, and he also lists different types of  natural resins, roots, woods and flowers whose perfumes capture his senses, such as the “frankincense”, “ambergris”, “violets”, “musk”, “champak”, “sweet-smelling roots”, “scented pollen-laden flowers”, “aromatic balms”, “fragrant woods”, “spikenard”, “hovenia” and finally “aloes”. By doing so, Wilde proves to have a great knowledge of perfumes, especially exotic ones, which give unique experiences to the aesthetes of the West. Since their aim is that of experiencing all what the senses can perceive, Wilde and the protagonist of his novel are both interested in exploring the exotic, since it is unknown and mysterious.

            However, the focus of Dorian is not only on perfumes, but also on music, especially eastern music. Music invades his soul, isolates him from the outside world, and introduces him to a pleasurable experience. Music, through notes, is able to reach every small part of his body; it hypnotizes him and makes him transcend time and place. Dorian

[u]sed to give curious concerts in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert’s grace, and Chopin’s beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. (Wilde 129)

The concerts given by Dorian are “curious” in the sense that they are different, exotic and wild. In these concerts, the musicians are not Schubert, Chopin or Beethoven, but instead Tunisian and Indian people playing on lutes, drums and pipes, creating a “barbaric music” which makes his ear indifferent to the Classical one he is used to listen to.  His focus is that of finding out the hidden spheres of pleasure, the undiscovered realms of life, forgetting those experiences his ordinary life used to give him.

            In addition to this sensory use of language, Wilde uses also Lord Henry’s aphorisms to stress the idea of the importance of pleasure and to highlight the significance of sensuous experiences. From their first meeting, Lord Henry says to Dorian that “[n]othing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul” (Wilde 23), and these words, like many others uttered by Lord Henry, spellbind Dorian, making him willing to discover this world of senses. He starts to be curious, to be attracted to this new world he never experienced, and

[t]he few words that Basil’s friend had said to him – words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them – had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses. (Wilde 21)

Words for Dorian have a greater influence that music. Once he hears one of Lord Henry’s sentences, he cannot stop thinking about it; these words influence him like nothing else, and they invade his body and mind like a poison.  Dorian sees that words are not only sounds in the air, but they are real; they have a great impact on him, and therefore they are not something to be underestimated. They are more powerful that music’s notes and the trouble they cause him is greater.  Lord Henry’s words are inescapable, and even if music has manipulated him before,

[m]usic was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? (Wilde 22)

Furthermore, in one of his most influential speeches to Dorian, Lord Henry talks about the notion of Beauty. His words are charming, the way he explains his thoughts is hypnotizing and persuasive and his self-confidence while pronouncing them fascinates Dorian. Lord Henry addresses Dorian saying,  

You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr Gray…And Beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.  (Wilde 24)

Lord Henry, by using similes, compares beauty to sunlight, spring-time or to the reflection of the moon in dark waters. He compares it to positive aspects of nature, and then he says that it of more value that thought. By stating so, he puts appearance on a higher level than intelligence, giving it more importance, and making Dorian afraid that, once he gets old and loses his beauty, he will have no significance. Undoubtedly, Lord Henry’s words have a great influence on Dorian, and they will be the cause why he will wish to be forever young and handsome, while his portrait bears the signs of age and sin. Lord Henry keeps hypnotizing Dorian through his witty sentences, telling him,  

You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats…Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. (Wilde 24-25)

Dorian has to live to the fullest, to use his beauty before it fades away, to succumb to temptation and be guided by his senses, to live without thinking and just to follow his instincts, in order to live before it is too late. In order to convince him more, Lord Henry decides to use a more sensory language and to glorify Dorian’s beauty, targeting his narcissistic self, to make him indulge in sensations and to definitely hypnotize him. He says,

The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last – such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!’ (Wilde 25)

Lord Henry succeeds in convincing Dorian by saying that, while the cycle of nature never stops, remaining always beautiful, a human being’s beauty is destined to vanish, so one has to seize the moment.

These aphorisms, not only fascinate Dorian, but they also shed light on the idea of the double life typical of the Victorian society.  Dorian Gray, as soon as he realizes that his portrait will bear all the signs of his moral corruption instead of his own body, he starts a life full of sin, pleasure and depravity, being sure that his angelic appearance will never be ruined. He deceives people by conducting a respectable public life, but at the same time he has a hidden existence full of immoral actions which go beyond all types of ethical boundaries. By being too focused on the limitless experiences he can have, he forgets about morality and makes his conscience sleep. Thus, what makes Dorian Gray live to the fullest and at the same time maintaining the respect of people, is his portrait. Thanks to it, he tastes the pleasure of a double life, exploring all types of sensations and discovering all the hidden spheres of life.  The portrait is the final level through which Wilde represents the world of senses, and it is the incarnation of all the concepts illustrated by Lord Henry hypnotic language, as well as the embodiment of the sensuous experiences narrated by Wilde throughout the novel.

 “The strength of The Picture of Dorian Gray derives primarily from the central and unifying idea of the picture itself. The artist Basil Hallward, obsessed and inspired by the youthful beauty of Dorian Gray, is about to complete his masterpiece, a full-length portrait” (Raby 68).

Dorian…passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder…The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. (Wilde 27)

Through this description, “Wilde insists that disclosive moments of self-recognition entail a complex semiotic interchange between the one who ap-prehends himself in an image and the visual image that has already apprehended the ‘‘same’’ him over there” (Craft 113). Here starts the unusual relation between Dorian and his portrait, and from now on it will mirror his actions. Every time he succumbs to temptation a certain mark appears on the portrait, as if it is the objective correlative of his conscience.

With the passing of time the portrait starts reflecting Dorian moral corruption. For instance, when Dorian rejects Sybil Vane and makes her commit suicide, “there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth” of Dorian (Wilde 99); moreover, after killing Hallward, Dorian asks himself ,“But what was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood?” (Wilde 230). Everything he does is immediately transferred to the portrait, while his appearance remains untouched. At the end, when he destroys it, his beauty and youth are back to the portrait, while all the scars of his immoral life are transferred to his body, making him “withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage” (Wilde 249).

The portrait is the manifestation of senses and of pleasure. It is the physical representation of a man, and at the same time, it reflects his corrupt conscience, encapsulating the outer and inner aspects of Dorian. “Dorian’s portrait confers visibility upon an internal corruption that otherwise escapes sensory apprehension” (Craft 114), and it shows to Dorian, and indirectly to the reader, what otherwise would have been hidden forever.

2. The world of senses in the movie

The representation of the world of senses in Parker’s movie Dorian Gray is different, not only because it is a different medium, but also because “the book is as difficult to adapt as it was to write” (Lawrence, "Dorian Gray. Not as scary as Lady Bracknell”). To represent the sensual atmosphere described by Wilde, the world of senses in which Dorian indulges, Lord Henry’s aphorisms and the dichotomy of ethics and aesthetics is highly challenging, and in addition to this “many have dismissed Gray, an impulsive, absurdly romantic young man, as a near-impossible person to animate on screen” (Lawrence, "Dorian Gray. Not as scary as Lady Bracknell”).

In the novel Dorian’s sinful life was not described explicitly; “Wilde’s aim was to keep this vague — “Man sees his own sins in Dorian; what Dorian’s sins are, no-one knows” — and yet [in the movie] we see all his sins unfold” (Lawrence, "Dorian Gray. Not as scary as Lady Bracknell”). On screen everything becomes too explicit; the director “brings a modern sense of the lurid to a classic story. While Wilde's wit remains firmly entrenched...the elements of the original which existed in the subtext or were merely hinted at are brought graphically into the open” (Berardinelli, "Dorian Gray”). Moreover, the movie focuses more on the sexual experiences of Dorian than on the idea of discovering beauty in all its forms. Hence, the aesthetic concept of pleasure highlighted in the novel is not present in the movie, and the audience does not grasp Dorian’s hedonism like in the novel.

Thus, the spirit of the novel has vanished, and even the world of senses reflected on the portrait is not highlighted in the movie. This is proven by the title Dorian Gray, in which we find no reference to “the picture”; the focus is on the protagonist’s life, more than on his portrait. As Eggert says in his review “Dorian Gray”, “Parker’s film over-emphasizes the story [focusing more on] the title character’s behavior behind bedroom doors”.

By following this approach, the director fails to portray the real atmosphere of the novel, in which the psychological development of Dorian and his discovery of the world of senses is not only related to sex. In the novel, Dorian is hypnotized by Lord Henry’s words, he is confused, he wants to experience new things, and by “new things” Wilde meant also perfumes, music, dance and many other activities beside the sexual experience. The movie has not succeeded in transferring the love for beauty typical of Aestheticism; it has not focused on Lord Henry’s aphorisms about life and beauty, and by not focusing on the development of Dorian’s psychology mirrored in the portrait, it has skipped one of the most important aspects of the novel. Parker has created a modern movie which lacks the Victorian spirit described by Wilde, and those who have read the novel, feel that the world of senses represented in the novel has no place in the scenes of Dorian Gray. 

However, even if the approach is different, the adaptation has given importance to a novel in which senses play a highly significant role. In this novel readers are faced with the reality of a man who has decided to succumb to temptation and to live fully. Whether the world of senses is presented through Wilde’s sensory language, through Lord Henry’s sayings, through the portrait or simply through sex scenes, there is no doubt that this world is something charming not only to Dorian, but also to the rest of mankind, and the conflict between ethics and pleasure is something that is inside every human being until today.

Notes

¹           “Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray originated as a story for Lippincott’s Magazine, where it was published in the July number, 1890. The central idea consists of a beautiful young man ‘selling his soul in exchange for eternal youth’; the portrait, which is the physical representation of his soul, reflects Dorian Gray’s sins.” (Raby 67)

²              Wilde adopted “the aesthetic ideal”, seeing and living his life as a work of art. He was a rebel to society, and also a dandy – an elegant bourgeois artist, whose use of wit shocks and whose main aim in life is that of being free. For Wilde life had to be full of pleasure, and pleasure meant being surrounded by beauty. Beauty in life was for Wilde strictly related to beauty in art, and the concept “Art for Art’s Sake” was his strongest belief. Moreover, “he believed that only “Art as the cult of Beauty” could prevent the murder of the soul.” (Spiazzi & Tavella E139)

^{3              “}The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior”. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy)

⁴               “The term ‘aestheticism’ derives from Greek, meaning “perceiving through senses” and is a nineteenth-century European concept that rejects the moral rules and conventions of Victorian society, and focuses instead on beauty and the resulting pleasure in life.” (Rudzki-Weise 2). It can also “be defined narrowly as the theory of beauty, or more broadly as that together with the philosophy of art”. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy)

⁵              “ It was, inevitably, misunderstood, and Wilde turned his energies to constructing public replies to his critics, in particular those of the St James’s Gazette and the Scots Observer. (Raby 67) As a response, Wilde declared that ‘quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticised from a moral standpoint’.”  (Wilde, Art and Morality)

⁶              This is proven by his words “Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray” (Wilde, Art and Morality)

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