The Picture of "Dorian Gray," or the Forces of Evil in Man

"I am quite certain, Mr. Hallward, that if you sent this oil painting to the Academy, or to any place you liked, you would win a large money prize — and I see you in dire need of one."

"But I cannot exhibit it, Mr. Henry, because I am afraid — afraid that people will see it as I see it with these two eyes of mine. There is a great deal of myself in this picture. I have put into it the lofty sensations and exalted feeling that stir in my breast, and so it has gained beauty upon beauty." Mr. Henry was taken aback when he heard these last words from his companion and interlocutor, the painter Hallward, and he gazed on, smiling, his eyes moving between the canvas and the painter: he saw a vast difference between that innocent, beautiful angel and that big, ugly, powerful man. He went on: "Truly, sir, I do not deny you the marks of intelligence and acumen; I do not deny you your wise soul and your thinking mind. But do you not see with me that there is a vast difference between you and that canvas, which looks as though it were made of ivory and crowned with red roses, appearing like Adonis in the flower of his beauty and vigor??" The painter answered him mockingly: "I see what you see. But do you not know that true beauty fades and retreats when the first trace of intellectual thought appears? If keenness of mind is lost, the beautiful face is spoiled. That companion with whose picture I have fallen in love is nothing but the beautiful image of a man who does not think and does not use his mental powers. This canvas I am so taken with is, in my eyes, nothing but beautiful, artful features that spare us in winter the beauty of flowers, and suggest to us in summer an outward beauty stripped of all sensibility. The canvas that is colored with the painter's feeling and the stirrings of his soul — that is the true canvas, the one that belongs to the artist and not to the sitter; and the one who sat to me is nothing but a beautiful young man with sweet looks. If I paint him now in this canvas of mine, I paint the beauty of his face and of his looks; I do not paint the sensations and feelings that move within his soul, for his feelings would spoil the beauty of the canvas and disfigure my art. And so I have lent my own self and spirit to make of them a dwelling for that beautiful, bewitching body."

A few minutes later the subject of the painting entered, with his bewitching beauty, his light spirit, and his musical movements. And only minutes passed before "Dorian Gray" came objecting to the beauty of his portrait, which would keep its youth, its freshness, and its charm. He came to break that canvas — wishing that the workings of the years to come might tell upon it, while the cares and troubles of life left his own soul and youth untouched. He wished that picture to age and grow, and his feeling to grow with it, without his growing old himself and the marks of the years and days showing on his face. He wished to sacrifice his money and his station, on condition that it should change while his own beauty did not. He wished it to lose its charm without his losing his own youth and vigor... And what he wanted was granted him....

There, in Dorian Gray's house, in a great hall, was placed that enchanting canvas over whose surfaces were reflected the signs of youth in its loftiest meaning. There it conversed with its owner every day, the passing of the days neither taking anything from it nor adding anything to it. But the days soon changed Dorian Gray's life, through his acquaintance with a dancing girl in whom he loved her inclination to acting and her mastery of performance, together with her captivating beauty... And that girl, once she knew him, clung to his love and forgot acting, and her art was spoiled and sank away. And when she learned that Dorian Gray had loved her for her art and her fame, she took her own life — and her crime was written down against his soul, and the blood of her life etched the first marks of criminality upon the picture of Dorian Gray. Mr. Gray started when he saw his canvas at first glance, with criminal, hateful wrinkles drawn about its mouth; he felt its glances changing, and he removed the painting from his sight. But there was a hidden force driving him to look at the canvas, which he had thrown into an old room after wrapping it in carpets and cloths.

His spirit began to change with his knowing the girl. God began to change his picture without changing his person. The picture grows, and criminality grows with it. It ages, and ugliness and hideousness age with it. It changes in a strange fashion. Have the colors some connection with its changing? Did Mr. Hallward put deadly poison in his colors, so that they have turned to torment me and rob me of my sleep? It calls me every night to see its hands stained with blood, and its eyes striking sparks that terrify me. I must kill the painter; I must ruin his happiness as he ruined mine. — And the painter was killed at the hand of his dear companion Dorian Gray. He killed the man who had so often given the young man his ideal counsels. He killed the man, and the picture grew more hideous and more ugly, and its owner more criminal and more dissolute. And here he is today, killing his chemist companion, after turning the painter's corpse to ashes. And here he is, days later, murdering the only brother of his friend, the girl who took her own life.

Dorian Gray did not change; he went on keeping his beauty and his youth. Only that picture changed. It alone changed the course of his happiness. Why, then, should he not break it and throw it away? Why not tear it to shreds with the knife with which he had killed his first three companions? A strange idea — it must be carried out.

And Dorian Gray advanced upon the painting, the criminal knife in his hand. When he had stripped away the carpets and the coverings, he screamed with his tormented voice a resounding scream. For the picture was stained with blood, and over its features hung the marks of crime. The picture was looking at him with sharp, cruel looks that all but tore his heart apart. But he sought to destroy those looks with a thrust of his knife — which rebounded upon his own image, then sank in and came to rest in his depths.

...And the oil painting returned to its vigor and its charm. It returned bearing the true, beautiful image of Dorian Gray. It returned to laugh at the corpse sprawled on the floor — the corpse that crime had corrupted, whose youth had been shattered by immersion in vice, which had spread hideousness over its features. The painter Hallward had not painted merely the picture of a man; he had painted the picture of a spirit and a soul. He painted that soul in moving colors — colors that move with the inner influences that grow within a man, and with the good and the evil that accompany them.

Oscar Wilde did not merely tell us a story; he portrayed for us the tendencies of the human soul. He told us of the effects that appear upon it in the wake of criminal thinking and wretched inclinations. He told us the story of a struggle between a man's conscience and his obstinate passions. He told us the story of every human being, and of every individual's inclination to evil as much as his inclination to good.