Basil Hallward's murder by Dorian Gray

Basil Hallward's murder by Dorian Gray is the pivotal act of irreversible violence in Oscar Wilde's novel, transforming Dorian from a passive consumer of sensation into an active criminal and sealing his moral damnation. The killing occurs on the night of November 7, Dorian's thirty-second birthday eve, after Basil confronts him with the rumors of his corrupting influence and demands to see his soul. Dorian, in a fit of hatred and pride, leads Basil to the locked schoolroom where the portrait is hidden, reveals its hideous transformation, and then stabs him to death with a knife. The murder marks the culmination of Dorian's long descent from aesthetic fascination into absolute evil, and its aftermath—the disposal of the body, the blackmail of Alan Campbell, and the eventual destruction of the portrait—drives the novel's final act.

Causes and Background

The murder is the direct consequence of a confrontation that Basil Hallward forces upon Dorian on the foggy night of November 7. Basil, who has not seen Dorian for months, intercepts him at the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street as Dorian walks home from dining with Lord Henry Wotton. Basil insists on entering Dorian's house, claiming he must speak seriously before catching the midnight train to Paris. Once inside the library, Basil reveals that the most dreadful things are being said about Dorian in London: that the Duke of Berwick leaves a club room when Dorian enters, that Lord Cawdor declared no pure-minded girl should know him, that a young guardsman committed suicide after being Dorian's friend, that Sir Henry Ashton had to leave England with a tarnished name, that Adrian Singleton met a dreadful end, that Lord Kent's only son was ruined, and that the young Duke of Perth's life has been destroyed. Basil also mentions that he has seen a letter from Lord Gloucester's dying wife in which Dorian's name was implicated in a terrible confession. Basil tells Dorian that he has a wonderful influence and should use it for good, not evil, and that people say Dorian corrupts everyone he becomes intimate with. When Basil declares that before he could answer whether he truly knows Dorian, he would have to see his soul, Dorian's reaction is immediate and violent: he starts up from the sofa, turning almost white from fear, and then breaks into a bitter laugh of mockery. He seizes a lamp and cries out that Basil shall see his soul that very night, that it is his own handiwork, and that he can tell the world all about it afterwards if he chooses, for nobody would believe him.

The Murder

Dorian leads Basil up the stairs to the locked room at the top of the house, a dusty, mildewed space that has not been lived in for years, containing only a faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, an almost empty bookcase, a chair, and a table. When Basil hesitates, Dorian tears the curtain from its rod and flings it on the ground, revealing the portrait. Basil sees in the dim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering at him: the face is still recognizably Dorian's, with some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual lips, but the expression is that of a satyr, with the eyes of a devil. Basil recognizes his own brushwork and the frame of his own design, and in the left-hand corner his own name traced in vermilion letters. He cries out that it is impossible, that the room is damp, that the paints he used had some mineral poison in them. Dorian tells him that the portrait has destroyed him. Basil, horrified, urges Dorian to pray, to kneel down and remember the words "Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities." Dorian replies that it is too late. As Basil continues to gaze at the accursed thing, an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward comes over Dorian—the mad passions of a hunted animal stir within him, and he loathes the man seated at the table more than he has ever loathed anything in his life. He glances wildly around and sees a knife glimmering on top of a painted chest, a knife he had brought up days before to cut a piece of cord and had forgotten to take away. He moves slowly towards it, passes behind Basil, seizes it, turns, and rushes at him, digging the knife into the great vein behind the ear, crushing Basil's head down on the table, and stabbing again and again. There is a stifled groan and the horrible sound of someone choking with blood. Basil's outstretched arms shoot up convulsively three times, waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. Dorian stabs him once more, and the man does not move. Something begins to trickle on the floor. Dorian waits for a moment, still pressing the head down, then throws the knife on the table and listens. He can hear nothing but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet.

Immediate Aftermath

Dorian opens the door and goes out onto the landing. The house is quite quiet; no one is stirring. He takes out the key, returns to the room, and locks himself in. The thing is still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed head, humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that slowly widens on the table, one would have said the man was simply asleep. Dorian feels strangely calm. He walks to the window, opens it, and steps out onto the balcony. The wind has blown the fog away, and the sky is like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looks down and sees a policeman going his rounds, flashing a bull's-eye lantern on the doors of the silent houses. A woman in a ragged shawl creeps by the railings, staggering. He shivers and goes back inside, closing the window. He passes to the door, turns the key, and opens it, not even glancing at the murdered man. He feels that the secret of the whole thing is not to realize the situation. The friend who painted the fatal portrait, the portrait to which all his misery has been due, has gone out of his life. He remembers the lamp—a curious Moorish one of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel—and turns back to take it from the table, noting how still the man is, how horribly white the long hands look, like a dreadful wax image. He locks the door behind him and creeps quietly downstairs, stopping several times when the woodwork creaks. In the library, he sees Basil's bag and coat in the corner and hides them in a secret press in the wainscoting, planning to burn them later. He pulls out his watch: it is twenty minutes to two. He sits down and thinks. Every year, almost every month, men are strangled in England for what he has done. But what evidence is there against him? Basil left the house at eleven; no one saw him come in again. Most of the servants are at Selby Royal; his valet has gone to bed. Basil was supposed to have gone to Paris by the midnight train. With his curious reserved habits, it will be months before any suspicions are aroused. Dorian puts on his fur coat and hat, goes out into the hall, waits until the policeman passes, then slips out, shuts the door gently, and rings the bell. When his valet Francis appears, half-dressed and drowsy, Dorian apologizes for waking him, says he forgot his latch-key, asks the time, and instructs him to wake him at nine. He asks if anyone called; Francis reports that Mr. Hallward stayed till eleven and then went to catch his train. Dorian says he is sorry he missed him. He then takes down the Blue Book and finds the address of Alan Campbell, the man he will blackmail into disposing of the body.

Consequences and Thematic Significance

The murder of Basil Hallward is the point of no return in Dorian's moral trajectory. It transforms the abstract corruption of his soul, which had previously manifested only in the portrait's changing expression and in the rumors about his life, into a concrete, irreversible act of violence. The killing is not a crime of passion in the ordinary sense—Dorian feels no remorse, only a strange calm and a sense of relief that the man who had painted the portrait, the origin of all his shame, is gone. The murder is also deeply ironic: Basil, who had worshipped Dorian and poured his own soul into the portrait, is killed by the very subject of that portrait, and his death is the direct result of his own insistence on seeing Dorian's soul. The portrait itself, which Basil had hoped would be his masterpiece, becomes the instrument of his destruction. In the aftermath, Dorian's ability to calmly orchestrate the cover-up—blackmailing Alan Campbell into destroying the body using chemical means, then later burning Basil's belongings—demonstrates how completely he has become the monster the portrait depicts. The murder also sets in motion the final chain of events: Alan Campbell's eventual suicide, Dorian's brief attempt at reformation through sparing Hetty Merton, and ultimately Dorian's own death when he destroys the portrait. The knife that killed Basil is the same knife Dorian uses to stab the canvas, and the servants who find Dorian's body recognize him only by his rings, as the face on the floor is withered, wrinkled, and loathsome—the face that the portrait had worn, now transferred to its original.