The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the enchanted portrait painted by Basil Hallward that becomes the repository of Dorian Gray's soul, aging and bearing the marks of his sins while he himself remains perpetually young and beautiful. It is the central symbol and mechanism of the novel, embodying the Faustian bargain at the heart of the story and serving as Dorian's conscience, his secret shame, and ultimately the instrument of his destruction.

Creation and First Revelation

The full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty is the masterpiece of the artist Basil Hallward, who considers it the best thing he has ever done. Basil is reluctant to exhibit it, confessing to Lord Henry Wotton that he has put too much of himself into it and is afraid he has shown with it the secret of his own soul. The portrait is painted in Basil's studio, where the rich odor of roses and the heavy scent of lilac fill the air. When it is finished, Basil stoops down and writes his name in thin vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas. Lord Henry declares it one of the greatest things in modern art. When Dorian Gray first sees the finished portrait, the sense of his own beauty comes on him like a revelation. He realizes that while the picture will remain always young, he himself will grow old, wrinkled, and hideous. In a moment of passionate despair, he utters a mad wish: that he might remain always young and the picture grow old instead. He declares he would give everything for this exchange.

The Magical Change and Dorian's Discovery

The wish is granted. After Dorian cruelly rejects Sibyl Vane, he returns home and notices that the expression on the portrait's face has changed: there is a touch of cruelty in the mouth. The quivering, ardent sunlight shows 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 winces and glances hurriedly into a mirror, but no line like that warps his own red lips. The portrait has altered, and Dorian realizes his prayer has been answered. He feels a sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, which has already altered and will alter more. For every sin he commits, a stain will fleck and wreck its fairness. He resolves to resist temptation and return to Sibyl Vane, but when he learns of her suicide, he examines the portrait again and finds no further change—it had received the news of her death before he knew of it himself. The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had appeared at the very moment the girl drank the poison. Dorian accepts his fate: the portrait is to bear the burden of his shame, while he keeps eternal youth, infinite passion, and wild joys.

Hiding and the Double Life

Dorian hides the portrait in a locked room at the top of his house, the old school-room that has not been opened for nearly five years. He wraps it in a large purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that had perhaps served as a pall for the dead. He locks the door and keeps the key, ensuring no one else can enter. For years, Dorian lives a double life. He creeps up to the locked room, opens the door with the key that never leaves him, and stands with a mirror in front of the portrait, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas and now at the fair young face that laughs back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast quickens his sense of pleasure. He grows more and more enamoured of his own beauty and more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He examines with minute care, and often with a monstrous and terrible 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 his own soul. Yet he also feels moments of pity for the painted image, and sometimes he loathes it and himself, but at other times he is filled with that pride of rebellion that is half the fascination of sin.

The Murder and the Final Stain

When Basil Hallward confronts Dorian about the terrible rumors surrounding his life and begs to see his soul, Dorian, in a fit of hatred and madness, seizes a knife and stabs Basil to death in the locked room, crushing his head down on the table and stabbing again and again. After the murder, Dorian forces Alan Campbell to destroy the body using chemicals, leaving no trace. The portrait, however, now bears a new horror: a loathsome red dew gleams, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood. The red stain is larger than it had been, creeping like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers, and there is blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had dripped—blood even on the hand that had not held the knife.

Destruction and Death

Years later, after sparing a young village girl named Hetty Merton in what he believes is his first good action, Dorian goes to the locked room to see if the portrait has changed for the better. He finds no change, unless that in the eyes there is a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing is still loathsome, more loathsome than before, and the scarlet dew on the hand seems brighter and more like blood newly spilt. Realizing that the portrait is the only bit of evidence left against him, Dorian decides to destroy it. He seizes the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward and stabs the canvas, ripping the thing right up from top to bottom. A horrible cry is heard, and a crash. When the servants finally force their way into the room, they find 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 is a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He is withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It is not until they have examined the rings that they recognize who it is.