Dorian Gray's wish for eternal youth

Dorian Gray's wish for eternal youth is the central supernatural event of Oscar Wilde's novel, a Faustian bargain that transforms a beautiful young man into a monster while his portrait bears the physical cost of his sins. Uttered in a moment of anguished vanity as he first confronted the full reality of his own beauty, the wish is granted with terrifying literalness, becoming the engine of the plot and the source of Dorian's tragedy.

The Moment of the Wish

The wish was born in Basil Hallward's studio on a June afternoon, as Dorian Gray stood before the just-finished portrait. Basil Hallward had painted the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and as he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face. Lord Henry Wotton's earlier words—his strange panegyric on youth and his terrible warning of its brevity—had stirred Dorian deeply. Now, as he gazed at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. He saw that there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colorless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become ignoble, hideous, and uncouth. As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck like a knife across him, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and a mist of tears came across them. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. "How sad it is!" he murmured, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this—for this—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!" He was jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. "Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives something to it. Oh, if it was only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day,—mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away, and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as if he was praying.

The Psychological Groundwork

The wish did not arise from nothing. It was prepared by the profound psychological transformation Lord Henry had begun in Dorian that very afternoon. As Lord Henry spoke, entirely fresh impulses were at work within Dorian, and they seemed to him to have come really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to him—words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them—had yet touched some secret chord, that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses. Music had stirred him like that, but music was not articulate. 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. Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-colored to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it? The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry, with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.

The Wish Granted and Its Immediate Consequences

The wish was granted almost immediately. When Dorian returned home after his cruel rejection of Sibyl Vane, he found that the portrait had already begun to change. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-colored silk blinds, the face seemed to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing. He winced, and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory Cupids, that Lord Henry had given him, he glanced hurriedly into it. No line like that warped his red lips. What did it mean? He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it again. There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparent. He threw himself into a chair, and began to think. Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his prayer had not been answered? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.

The Pact's Enduring Logic

The wish established a permanent supernatural bond between Dorian and the portrait. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all. He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him,—life, and his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins,—he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all. For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer. When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the colored image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.

The Wish's Fulfillment and Ultimate Failure

For years, the wish held true. The boyish beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed never to leave Dorian. Even those who had heard the most evil things against him could not believe anything to his dishonor when they saw him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world. But the wish could not be undone. When Dorian, in a final attempt at reformation, spared Hetty Merton, he went to the locked room to see if the portrait had changed for the better. He could see no change, unless that in the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome,—more loathsome, if possible, than before,—and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilt. In despair, he seized the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward and stabbed the canvas with it, ripping the thing right up from top to bottom. The wish was broken only by his own death. When the servants entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was. The wish had been fulfilled, but its fulfillment was the death of the wisher.