The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel by Oscar Wilde first published in 1890.
Summary
Dorian Gray is a handsome and naive young man living in England. His artist friend, Basil Hallward, is obsessed with his beauty and paints a perfect
portrait of him. Dorian sees the finished painting and wishes that the picture would grow old and ugly instead of him - so he
would stay just as the picture looks and the picture would look like him. Lord Henry, a friend of Basil famous for his cynicism,
also befriends Dorian and becomes the agent of Dorian's transformation from an earnest naif to a sarcastic misanthrope.
Warning: Plot details
follow.
Dorian falls in love with an actress, Sibyl Vane. She loves him back, but being in love makes her act poorly. He thus rejects
her, causing her to commit suicide. After this, Dorian notices that his painting has
a sneer on it, so he locks it in an unused room. Over eighteen years, Dorian becomes more and more evil, but looks the same as
always, while his painting has become ugly and distorted. Dorian eventually kills Basil for discovering his secret.
Dorian feels guilty over this, and goes to an opium parlor to lose himself. There, he
sees Sibyl's brother, who tries to kill him, but he escapes. Later, the brother is accidentally killed by some hunters. Dorian
decides to make up for the past life and become a new man, but with the help of his painting, he realizes he is just a hypocrite.
He stabs the painting. His maids hear a crash, and goes to see what happened. The painting is just like it was when it was
painted, and Dorian is lying stabbed on the floor, looking like an old, ugly man.
Other references
External links
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