The Picture of Dorian Gray: "What did it mean?"

In chapter VII of The Picture of Dorian Gray, soon after Dorian has returned at dawn from the theater where Sibyl Vane has just bombed as Juliet, and where Dorian has broken off all relations with her in a particularly harsh and cruel manner ("You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity" [85]), he suddenly notices that the portrait has changed: "his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise. The he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he had taken the buttonhole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange" (87). He opens the blinds, and in the early-morning light, "the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering, ardent sunlight showed 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" (87-88). He then compares the portrait to his actual reflection in a mirror: "No line like that warped his red lips. What did it mean?" (88).

Indeed, this supernatural morphing of Basil's "masterpiece" seems to "mean something" to the reader of this novel, and Dorian immediately makes the connection to the "mad wish" he had spoken when the painting was first finished, "that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins" (88). Wilde is clearly using the painting--and its mysterious transformation--as a means of symbolizing or signifying something about Dorian Gray's character. So, What does it mean? At this point in your reading of the novel, how do you interpret its central symbol? What does the painting seem to represent? What analogies in the "real world" does its transformation suggest to you? How do you see Dorian as affected by the transformation of the portrait in subsequent chapters?

Please take five minutes now and reflect on the possible meanings of this central symbol in your notebook, and be prepared to share your ideas with the class. 

Manifesto!

For your first writing exercise of the second semester, you're going to have the opportunity to create your own manifesto, either as a solo composition or in collaboration as a group of two or three. Use Wilde's "Preface" to The Picture of Dorian Gray as one model: Wilde's provocative and paradoxical aphorisms can be seen as a "manifesto of aestheticism," and this model was taken up and pursued with a passion by a number of modern artists and writers (see Marinetti, Pound, Loy, and Lewis). You or your group should identify yourselves as the vanguard of a "movement," although it doesn't have to be built upon an especially serious or dire set of issues. For authenticity, you might add an "-ist" to your group's name: if you want to hail the superiority of the cashew over every other variety of nut, for example, you might confront readers with "The Cashewist Manifesto." 

Your manifesto should draw directly on the examples of modernist manifestos we've read for today's class (and Wilde's "Preface") as models of the form. Imitate the style of their sentences, the format of their assertions, and even the typeface and arrangement of words (see Lewis's Vorticist Manifesto or the reproduction of Loy's Feminist Manifesto). It should include a minimum of 10 distinct assertions or aphorisms or statements of provocation. Note how all of these manifestos share a desire to break decisively with the past--they are all "revolutionary" in some form, and the affirmation of the movement is always framed in terms of a rejection of a stilted or outdated or obsolete past. All manifestos in this sense could be described as "futurist": they all share the posture of hailing an imminent future at the expense of the exhausted past. Think of what issue or set of issues you would like to sound off on, in such a forceful and decisive voice.

If you collaborate, all members of the group should sign the manifesto, and all members should contribute assertions and aphorisms. You can edit the final draft together, to produce the strongest, most uncompromising, authoritative assertions you can create. Please have fun with this assignment. The final draft is due (via Canvas) by the end of the day Friday, January 17, and you will have the opportunity to share your work with the class. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!