Cape May MAC Book Club: The Picture of Dorian Gray
A recap of our discussion of Oscar Wilde’s only novel
This past Saturday was our very last book club meeting for the first ever Cape May MAC Book Club! Over the course of this summer, we read six books from the Victorian era. From a wartime memoir to a hilarious travelogue to a vampire novella that predated Dracula, our book club covered a wide range of styles — and finished off with Oscar Wilde’s one and only novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray. See the livestream below or read on for a written recap!
Wilde’s novel was certainly the most well-recognized of our summer book club selections, and for good reason. Wilde was a renowned poet, playwright, and literary critic, and Dorian Gray has been adapted extensively — and its original publication was so infamous that it ultimately contributed to the evidence levied against Wilde for charges of sodomy and moral indecency.
Originally published as a novella in an 1890 edition of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, Dorian Gray was upon first publication quite overtly homoerotic, not to mention the murder, suicide, and all manner of debauchery included alongside. At the behest of his editor and in lieu of critics’ disdain for the homoerotic overtones of the novella, Wilde both expanded the work into a full-length novel and cut back significantly on the overt homosexuality — though no reader of the 1891 version (which is the version largely read today) could miss those undertones entirely.
Despite the changes, the original novella remained in the public mind and in 1895, Wilde was prosecuted for “gross indecency,” — which could also be read as having a consensual sexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. During the trial, sections of the original Dorian Gray were read aloud as evidence against him. After a raucous, celebrity-esque trial, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor.
The novel itself details the corruption of young and beautiful aristocrat Dorian Gray. The muse to painter Basil, Dorian’s youthful beauty is captured in a portrait. The portrait prompts Dorian to lament the fact that the painted version of himself will never age, will never grow ugly, while he himself will. Be careful what you wish for feels an apt idiom for Dorian Gray — as soon as the internal plea passes, his wish comes true. As Dorian ages — and commits ever-increasing sins — the portrait bears the weight of his crimes, growing hideously vile (with the look of fresh blood upon his painted hands). Until, as you would expect, his sins finally overtake him in the end.
As with all the books we read this summer, there was a lot to unpack with Dorian Gray. One point of interest, for me, was the seemingly blatant morality tale at work versus the fact that Wilde claims the novel to have no moral imperative at all. Written at the tail-end of the 19th century, when “moral” storytelling was becoming quite passe, the preface to Dorian Gray makes the modern claim that books cannot be morally good or morally wrong, they can only be poorly written or written well. And yet, it seems impossible to read Dorian Gray without viewing the portrait itself as a literal metaphor for sin versus virtue.
Some questions that came to mind during our discussion: Is there a voice/a character of good and one of evil in this novel? Which character, if any, represents the author’s point of view? Is the novel’s lush prose written as tongue-in-cheek or in earnest?
If you have any takes on this very interesting novella-turned-novel, leave a comment! Thanks to everyone who has followed along with the very first Cape May MAC book club this summer — it’s been a great joy to read alongside such a fun group. Until next time!
Evelyn Maguire (she/her) is on the Digital Marketing team at Cape May MAC. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
