Who am I?
A humble artist who claims that he has painted a portrait that he will never exhibit, since he has "shown in it the secret of [his] own soul."
Who is Basil Hallward?
This creature is commonly interpreted as symbolizing Dorian's sense of innocence, but I made the case that it actually symbolizes Dorian's pretense of heterosexuality.
What is the hare?
"You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have. 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... 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..."
What is the value (or pursuit) of beauty?
The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was written during this literary period.
What is the Victorian Era?
A male figure in the culture of 18th and 19th century England who adopted the lifestyle, behavior, and habits of the upper class. This type of "gentleman" placed enormous emphasis on the value of physical appearance, wit, etiquette, and reputation.
What is a dandy?
"A girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, and lips that were like the petals of a rose..." A girl who becomes Rosalind, Desdemona, or Juliet, depending on the night.
Who is Sibyl Vane?
According to Dorian, this is a "visible emblem of conscience," which reveals to him "the degradation of sin" and "the ruin men brought upon their souls"
What is the portrait of Dorian Gray?
"Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a ________."
What is a double life?
This artistic movement--known for its famous creed, "l'art pour l'art"--claimed that art and literature did not need to serve any practical, rhetorical, or didactic function.
What is Aestheticism?
This philosophical perspective claims that human life revolves around the pursuit of pleasure above all other values.
What is hedonism?
A sailor with tattoos on both of his arms. After hunting "Prince Charming" for eighteen years, he is eventually shot and "hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard."
Who is James Vane?
This location represents Dorian's innermost thoughts and feelings. It prefigures a sort of closet where Dorian hides away his secrets.
What is the locked room?
"Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has [an evil habit], it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even."
What is visible vice?
This artistic movement, founded in 1848, claimed that art should revive the Greek, Roman, and medieval classics to combat the corruption of 19th-century society. They hoped to "sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt... to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading."
What is the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood?
A term used in the novel to refer to the culture of ancient Greece as viewed through the Neoclassical lens of Victorian intellectual and artistic culture. In the novel, it includes the philosophy of ancient Greek thinkers as well as the male-to-male relationships that were traditionally associated with ancient Athenian culture.
What is Hellenism (or the "Hellenic ideal")?
A career scientist who had once been "great friends" with Dorian, but "then their intimacy had come suddenly to an end. When they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled. [He] never did."
Who is Alan Campbell?
This object represents the thematic concept of "poisonous influence"
What is the yellow book?
"There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise... No other activity was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one’s own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one’s temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that—perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims... " -Lord Henry
What is poisonous influence?
This term describes a movement (or group of related movements) that emphasized aesthetic excess. Its name comes from the idea that the decline of the Roman Empire could be explained by a period of extreme moral decay. Some critics consider French Symbolist literature and Impressionist visual art to belong to this category.
What is the Decadent movement?
In 1895, Oscar Wilde was put on trial for this crime under the Labouchère Amendment. It was used to prosecute English men for various unspecified types of homosexual relationships.
What is gross indecency?
A fashionable, beautiful, and intelligent woman who is trapped in a relationship with a man several decades her elder. She is one of the few female characters in the novel to verbally spar with Lord Henry as his intellectual equal.
Who is the Duchess of Monmouth (Gladys)?
According to one of Oscar Wilde's letters, these three characters represent three parts of Oscar Wilde's understanding of his own identity. (Put the names in order corresponding to the three statements.)
"What I think I am."
"What the world thinks of me."
"What I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps."
Who is Basil, Lord Henry, and Dorian?
(Here's the full quotation:
"Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps."
"The love that [Basil] bore him—for it was really love—had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now."
What is "the love that dare not speak its name"?
While studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, Oscar Wilde sent this famous art critic a letter praising his book, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. He is now remember as a major proponent of Aestheticism.
Who is Walter Pater?
This French Symbolist novel written by Joris-Karl Huysmans, considered one of the most famous examples of Decadent literature of the late 19th century, served as the inspiration for "the yellow book" in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
What is À Rebours ("Against Nature")?