The picture of Dorian Gray

¶ … Portrait of Dorian Gray

The Nature of Sin -- the Fall from Eden

For Oscar Wilde, sin has its origin in awareness and knowledge of desire, just like the fall from grace in Eden. When Adam ate of the tree of knowledge, Adam disobeyed God and created the fall of humanity. Adam also created the existence of human sexuality, death, and an awareness of social conventions, like nakedness and clothing. When Dorian Gray is recognized as beautiful in a picture, Dorian becomes aware of his beauty, and thus begins to sin.

At first, Dorian enters the decadent world of the aristocratic Lord Henry and the artist Basil Hallward as an innocent. In Chapter 2 of the Picture of Dorian Gray, the title character is described like a Greek sculpture, and his movements are equally artless, although he has recently been memorialized in art. "He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely chiseled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling."

The notion of chiseled nostrils suggests a sculpture, a Greek sculpture of nature. This world also underlines the vaguely homoerotic tone of the setting and the feeling of the two men for Dorian. Dorian's hair is described as gilded, as if he is made of gold, a metallic and valuable material, rather than human flesh. Like a crowned sculpture, there are leaves in his hair, and his hair is wild, bareheaded. Dorian is art; he does not recognize himself as art -- yet. The fact he is not wearing a hat and has been amongst nature before suggests his innocence as well -- he is outside of the society where people are observed, dress in careful fashions, and are overly concerned about what other people think. The sense that emotion can change the physical appearance in a normal individual is suggested in the image of the hidden nerve turning Dorian's lips scarlet and trembling. The fact that Wilde uses this passage to show the ability of morality to affect the body more seriously is suggested by the fact that Wilde gives this passage to the narrator to speak, rather than Henry's unreliable, humorous, and sarcastic observations of Dorian or society.

Lord Henry, the serpent-like temptation figure is the reason for the innocent Dorian's fall from grace, after being amongst the trees in Basil's Eden-like garden. This literary parallel also underlined in the final description of the portrait of what Dorian Gray has become at the end of the book, Chapter 20: "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 spilled. Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh?"

Again, there is scarlet, but this is the scarlet of blood letting, not an innocent blush of the young Dorian's lips. Once again, at the words of Lord Henry, even the older and more jaded Dorian is moved to tremble. He blanches at the sight of the picture, but for a different reason, because he can see the monster he has become, rather than fears the passage of age as he did as a young man. His own portrait is described as loathsome, like a serpent, and the diction of the passage is Biblical and elevated, "the scarlet of blood," "desire," and "scarlet dew" as a euphemism for blood. Once again, the narrator has taken over from the dialogue-heavy pages that have preceded it, to inform the reader with authority about the portentous nature of Dorian's crimes against humanity (murder) and against nature (not aging).