A novel by Oscar Wilde Irish-born English playwright, poet, wit extrodinaire.
Dorian Gray an extraordinarily beautiful, untouched youth, has had his portrait painted by Basil Hallward, a skilled artist, who considers it his masterpiece.. Dorian ruefully observes that they portarit will remain forever young and fresh, even as he in real life grows old and ugly. He says that he would give his soul if the reverse was true; that is, if he himself were to remain forever young and handsome and if the picture were to age and grow ugly. By some miracle, the FAUSTIAN bargain is struck.
Hallward reluctantly introduces Dorian to Lord Henry Wotton, who has fallen in love with the haunting portrait. Wotton, a sensualist and a cynic, initiates the young man into a life of vice. As Dorian sinks deeper and deeper in debauchery, the portrait keeps changing, reflecting his growing coarseness and cruelty, while he himself seems unaffected by his own depravity. The portrait, not his face or body, has become the mirror of his corrupted soul.
Dorian hides the portrait from everyone, keeping it in a locked room, but he is drawn to it every day to watch in horror it's deterioration. One night after having commited unspeakable atrocities, including the murder and dismemberment of Hallward, he lunges at the picture with a knife. Household servants, hearing a terrible shriek, break down a door and discover the body of an unrecognizable, withered, ugly old man stabbed through the heart. On the wall above him hangs the picture of a radiant youth, Dorian Gray.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is, astonishingly for Oscar Wilde, a moral tale: The sins of the flesh inevitably corrode the soul.
~ Facts on File Dictionary of Historical and Cultural Allusions.
A footnote:
The tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps."
