Beyond the Book: The Portrait of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

It was Oscar Wilde who provided me with the first significant literary experience that I did not start reading because of the well-known school reason of "I must read it because it's compulsory." It was my father who handed me the story of ‘The Canterville Ghost’. The tale of the brave little girl who saw with her heart rather than her mind, and the desperately redemption-seeking ghost captivated me. I believe it was my first consciously grasped lesson that things are not always what they seem, and as Saint Exupéry says, "One sees clearly only with the heart, what is essential is invisible to the eye."

I believe that this theme also plays a significant role in Oscar Wilde's novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' among many other important lessons. In the story, Dorian Gray's beauty bewitches those who only see with their eyes. As he encounters few people who discern his true nature with their hearts, he manages to escape the consequences of his cowardice and, later, the crimes he commits. Fortunately, Oscar Wilde believed that the essence of things, the truth, will eventually be revealed, and so Dorian's punishment catches up with him.

Certainly, many have examined and analyzed this story in various ways. What I love about surreal, magical stories like this one is that they can be interpreted in many ways; they have a thousand layers, and all these interpretations are valid. We all decode the exciting elements, often unconsciously woven into surreal stories by the writer, according to our current level of consciousness, emotional state, and intellect. It's always a great experience for me when readers discover new layers of the stories I write.

That's why I decided to examine this novel from an exciting perspective that I have a lot of experience with as a family constellation therapist, which ultimately led me to further develop and enhance the method of family constellation.

From this point on, there will be spoilers in the text, so if you haven't read the novel yet and don't want to be informed about certain details in advance, you should not read any further.

I have been dealing a lot lately with fairy tale therapy, which, within its framework, helps people learn certain problem-solving patterns through folk tales. In these tales, we find those archaic patterns encoded in symbols that have been helping humanity survive and improve life for centuries. These symbols, stored in the collective human consciousness, remain comprehensible to our subconscious even today. However, to understand them consciously, we must make an effort to examine the tales and their symbols more closely and in greater depth.

In fairy tale therapy, the first and most important thing when decoding a story is that every character is ourselves, each character is an aspect of our personality. The heroes of the stories need to somehow cooperate or overcome these aspects. Even though everyone wants to identify with the brave knight or the wise princess, we are as much the brave knight and the wise princess as we are the iron-nosed witch, the old man, or the dragon. To create our kingdom, to be worthy of sitting on the throne of our own lives, we must defeat the dragon, negotiate with the iron-nosed witch, resist the fairy's temptation, and withstand the trials. If we look at Oscar Wilde's novel in this way, we can see that Dorian Gray fails miserably and ultimately is not worthy of sitting on the throne to live a peaceful, happy life.

Let's see what happens in this novel!

If we decode the novel so that all the characters are actually Dorian Gray himself, then we can see that this young man not only fails to cooperate with his own parts and eventually sit on the throne as a wise king, he wasn't even able to prevent his own destruction.

Who are the characters of the novel, if we look at it from this perspective?

There is Dorian Gray, a young, not overly wise man, who quickly reveals that he has no solid, well-developed moral compass, therefore he is very easily influenced.

Although we do not know much about his childhood, it is clear that he also lacks a healthy self-esteem, as he too readily accepts that in life, the only true value and thus his only true value is beauty. Lord Henry Wotton, who implants this realization into Dorian's ear, represents the hedonistic, vain part of the young man's personality that wants power over the other parts of his personality and, through this, over other people. Since Dorian is fortunate enough to be blessed with good looks, he does not have to do much to be considered valuable by this measure, and he immediately accepts this viewpoint. Here, Dorian chooses the easy path, only to realize that beauty fades with the years, and he begins to fear its loss.

As Dorian sits for Basil Hallward, the painter, he becomes increasingly desperate not to lose his value and wishes from his heart that the painting would age instead of him. In life, we always get what we wish for; the problem is that often our wishes are subconscious programs, which is why it seems that the things we want do not come to fruition, but that is a topic for another article.

Dorian gets what he desires: the painting, which the painter gifts to him, begins to age in his stead. Basil Hallward's character is interesting because he is the only one in the story who always sees Dorian for who he really is. When he paints him, he sees a beautiful, innocent young man, and later he is the one who sees the distorted portrait as well and tells Dorian that if he does not redeem himself somehow, he is lost. For this statement, he pays with his life towards the end of the novel. That is, Dorian destroys a crucial part of himself—the part that perpetually confronts him with the truth.

Indeed, the painter truly sees Dorian precisely because, as an artist, he sees with his heart and notices things invisible to others. In my opinion, Hallward is not Dorian's conscience but rather that voice we all know, which tells the truth even when we do not want to hear it. That voice warns us that if we do this or that, we will destroy something important to us. We often silence this voice within ourselves, though not as drastically as Dorian did. Only later, when confronted with the consequences of our actions, do we realize that we should have listened.

Sybill Vane, the object of Dorian's sudden and just as quickly extinguished passion, represents the naïve, childlike part of the man that is creative, talented, and needs encouragement, attention, and love to flourish. This part also has the potential to collaborate with Dorian to create something in his life that he could base his self-esteem on proudly. But the man turns away from this creative, childlike part at its first mistake and cruelly neglects it afterward. This childlike part withers from the cruel treatment, barring Dorian from the chance to have a truly happy life.

Janus Vane, Sybill's brother, who seeks to avenge his sister's suicide caused by Dorian, is nothing but that part of Dorian's personality that we all know well. This self-destructive part wants to annihilate the person for perceived or, in this case, actual faults. I am sure we have all experienced making a decision in a given situation that caused harm or difficulty and which we later saw clearly was a mistake. Janus Vane represents this part of Dorian's personality when he tries to take his life.

I will not speak of the other, lesser characters in the novel, as that would make this analysis very long, and after all, the conflicts among the aforementioned characters are what give the story its essence.

Of course, there is still the painting, the living imprint of Dorian's conscience. As Dorian plunges deeper into the depths of the swamp he has chosen, his portrait becomes more hideous, for it bears witness to the atrocities he has committed and concealed with his charming appearance. Eventually, the truth becomes so oppressive and the prospect of his secret being revealed so terrifying that Dorian does not even shy away from murder to keep it concealed. When he finally tries to destroy the painting to rid himself of the risk of his true nature being discovered, he himself dies, because what he truly sought to destroy was his soul. This is what the painting represented. Because in the soul, all our actions, every single word we utter are stored, hence there is no escape. The soul cannot be destroyed; it is only our ego, our personality, that can be killed. This is what Dorian does, although it was not his intention.

Oscar Wilde's novel is the perfect antithesis to the stories we see in folktales. There is no solution born, no dragon is conquered, no witch is destroyed, and the hero does not listen to that central part that could lead him out of the dead end into which his vain, hedonistic side has driven him. This story illustrates well that if a single part of us takes control and undeservedly sits on the throne of our life, ruling us with its madness, then bitter destruction is the end. Dorian also had the opportunity to reconsider his decisions, to turn around, to listen to his soul present in the form of his portrait, or to the truthful part shown in the figure of the painter, but he did not.

This novel is a wonderfully complex fairy tale written for adults, which shows in detail how not to live, how not to succumb to the temptation of a narrow-minded part of us towards the easy path. It tells us that as we grow up and become mature, it is crucial to find those parts of ourselves, those inner voices that we can trust unconditionally, even if they say things that initially infuriate us or cause us pain.

I recommend this book to everyone and look forward to hearing what others think about it!

– Eszter

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