Hiding the portrait

The hiding of the portrait is the decisive, irreversible act that seals Dorian Gray's double life. After witnessing the first horrifying change in the canvas—a touch of cruelty appearing around the mouth following his brutal rejection of Sibyl Vane—Dorian understands that his mad wish has been granted: the portrait will age and bear the burden of his passions and sins while he himself remains untouched by time. The concealment of the picture becomes the central practical and symbolic mechanism of his existence, allowing him to pursue a life of infinite sensation and secret corruption behind a facade of unblemished youth.

The Decision to Hide

The impulse to hide the portrait arises directly from the shock of its first alteration. Returning home at dawn after Sibyl Vane's disastrous performance and his own cruel words, Dorian notices that the expression on the canvas has changed: the mouth now shows a distinct touch of cruelty. He remembers the mad prayer he uttered in Basil Hallward's studio—that he might remain young while the picture grew old—and realizes with terror that his wish has been answered. The portrait has become the visible emblem of his conscience, a mirror that reveals the true state of his soul. He immediately draws a large screen in front of it, shuddering as he does so, and resolves to resist temptation, to marry Sibyl Vane, and to begin a new life. But when Lord Henry brings news of Sibyl's suicide, Dorian's brief moral awakening collapses. He looks again at the portrait and sees that it has already registered the girl's death, the vicious cruelty in the mouth now fully established. At that moment he makes his choice: he will keep his eternal youth, and the portrait will bear the burden of his shame. The hiding of the picture is the practical enactment of that choice.

The Locked Room

Dorian chooses as his hiding place the old school-room at the top of the house, a large, well-proportioned room that had been built by the last Lord Sherard for the use of his nephew—whom, being childless, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. Dorian has not entered it for more than four years. It still contains the huge Italian cassone in which he hid as a boy, the satinwood bookcase filled with his dog-eared school-books, and the same ragged Flemish tapestry on the wall. Every moment of his lonely childhood comes back to him as he looks around, and it seems horrible that this room, with its memories of stainless purity, should now house the fatal portrait. But no other place in the house is so secure from prying eyes. He alone has the key, and no one else can enter. He procures from Mrs. Leaf, the old housekeeper, the key to the room, which has not been opened for nearly five years. Then he summons Mr. Ashton, the frame-maker from South Audley Street, and with the help of his assistant carries the bulky picture—still covered with a large purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered in gold, a splendid piece of Venetian work that had once perhaps served as a pall for the dead—up the front staircase to the top landing. Dorian unlocks the door and has the picture leaned against the wall. When the men have gone, he locks the door and puts the key in his pocket. He feels safe now: no eye but his will ever see his shame.

The Burden of the Canvas

Once hidden, the portrait becomes the secret center of Dorian's life. He knows that beneath its purple pall the face on the canvas will grow bestial, sodden, and unclean, but he tells himself that it does not matter—no one can see it, and he himself will not look at it. He keeps his youth, and that is enough. Yet the portrait exerts a constant, terrible pull. For weeks he will not go near the locked room, forgetting the hideous painted thing and getting back his light heart and passionate pleasure in existence. Then, suddenly, some night he will creep out of the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there day after day until he is driven away. On his return he will sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but at other times filled with that pride of rebellion that is half the fascination of sin, smiling with secret pleasure at the misshapen shadow that has to bear the burden that should have been his own. He grows more and more enamoured of his own beauty and more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul, examining with minute care and often with monstrous delight the hideous lines that sear the wrinkling forehead or crawl around the heavy sensual mouth. He places his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture and smiles. The portrait becomes the most magical of mirrors, revealing to him not only his own body but his own soul.

The Final Destruction

The hiding of the portrait is not permanent. After years of secret degradation, after the murder of Basil Hallward and the blackmail of Alan Campbell, Dorian attempts a reformation. He spares a village girl named Hetty Merton, leaving her as flower-like as he found her, and hopes that this good deed will have erased the signs of evil from the canvas. But when he creeps up to the locked room and drags the purple hanging from the portrait, he sees no change—only a look of cunning in the eyes and the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite around the mouth. The scarlet dew on the hand seems brighter, more like blood newly spilt. In a fit of rage and despair, he seizes the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward and stabs the canvas, ripping it from top to bottom. The servants hear a horrible cry and a crash. When they force their way into the room, they find hanging on the wall a splendid portrait of their master in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor is a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart—withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It is only by examining the rings that they recognize who it is. The hiding of the portrait, which had for so long preserved the illusion of Dorian's innocence, ends with the revelation of the truth that the picture had always contained.