More
than a century after its publication, Oscar Wilde's novella The Picture of Dorian Gray is recognized
as one of the classics of English literature, a masterpiece of fin-de-siècle Aestheticism and in many
respects a harbinger of the Modernist movement. Its current iconic status could
not have been foreseen in 1890 when the story first appeared—simultaneously in
Britain and the United States—in the pages of Lippincott's Magazine. This review from London's Daily Chronicle voiced the outrage of
many:
Dulness
and dirt are the chief features of Lippincott's
this month: The element that is unclean, though undeniably amusing, is
furnished by Mr. Oscar Wilde's story of The
Picture of Dorian Gray. It is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of
the French decadents—a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with
the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction—a gloating study of the
mental and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden youth, which might
be fascinating but for its effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its
theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophizings…. Mr.
Wilde says the book has "a moral." The "moral," so far as
we can collect it, is that man's chief end is to develop his nature to the
fullest by "always searching for new sensations," that when the soul
gets sick the way to cure it is to deny the senses nothing.
"Unclean," "corruption,"
"leprous," "putrefaction," and "French decadents"
were of course all coded terms for "homosexuality"—a word that would
not enter the English language until two years later, and a concept that could
not be openly discussed in a respectable newspaper of the time, nor mentioned
in polite company; when Dorian Gray was
revised for publication in book form a good portion of the material deemed
unclean and leprous had to be removed. In fact, there had already been
substantial cuts made in the Lippincott's
version by its editor, J. M. Stoddart, a process over which the author, in
accordance with magazine protocol of the era, was given no control whatever. And
Wilde and his subsequent editor would make further changes for the publication
of Dorian Gray in book form a year
later, in 1891.
Strangely,
considering the cult status The Picture
of Dorian Gray would eventually attain, Wilde's original version has never
been published until now, more than one hundred and twenty years after the
Lippincott edition. It has been made available by Harvard's Belknap Press in a
richly annotated and illustrated volume edited by Nicholas Frankel. It is not often that a piece of serious
scholarship is accorded such deluxe treatment, and in this case it is a cause
for real celebration, for Frankel has provided a wealth of supplemental
material and visual matter, as well as a "Textual Introduction" and a
series of notes that explain references and cultural context, help the reader
understand the editing processes, and point out the passages that were singled
out for deletion, such as this speech the portrait painter Basil Hallward
addresses to Dorian:
"It
is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man
should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman…. From the
moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over
me…. I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was jealous of everyone to
whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was
with you."
(This was a little strong
even for an era when "romantic friendships" between men were
acceptable, and in fact even the hero's name, "Dorian"—"Greek"—was
more than a bit suggestive.) Altogether, the revised 1891 manuscript that
eventually appeared in book form encompassed a whole series of changes and
omissions designed to alter and conventionalize the "moral," such as
it is, by heightening the beautiful Dorian's monstrosity and thus rendering him
a far less sympathetic character than he had appeared to be in the original
typescript. Looking at the typescript, then, we find more comprehensible Wilde's
oft-quoted statement on the book's autobiographical elements: "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."
Frankel has done much to
place Wilde and his novel within the context of their time—"a heated
atmosphere of hysteria and paranoia" about sexual "deviation." The
1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act was extended by Henry Labouchère, a radical
Member of Parliament, to include the criminalization of acts of "gross
indecency" between men. (The Labouchère Amendment was not repealed until
1956.) The vagueness of the amendment's language—just what acts did "gross
indecency" encompass, anyway?—caused fear amounting to paranoia among the
homosexual community; as Frankel writes, "The conditions had been created
for a series of homosexual scandals that would rock London and increase the
level of homophobia in British society."
The so-called Cleveland
Street Affair, which broke only months before Dorian Gray's first appearance, was the most spectacular of these,
involving the infiltration and arrest of a ring of "rent boys" who
worked by day as telegraph messengers and by night as prostitutes out of a
brothel in Cleveland Street. A number of aristocrats and prominent military men
were implicated; Lord Arthur Somerset, the Prince of Wales' equerry, fled the
country; a shadow was even cast on the name of the Prince's elder son, though
that suspicion was subsequently proved groundless. "In the wake of the
Cleveland Street Scandal," Frankel explains, "Wilde's emphasis on
Dorian Gray's youthfulness, or susceptibility to the 'corruption' of an older
aristocratic man (Lord Henry), is one of the features of the novel that most
outraged reviewers."
Nowadays,
the knowledge of Wilde's poignant subsequent history casts a shadow over Dorian Gray. Married since 1884 to a
beauty, Constance Lloyd, Wilde had been secretly leading a homosexual life at
least since 1886 and probably much longer. ("The one charm of marriage,"
Lord Henry quips in Dorian Gray, "is
that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.") In 1889
Wilde began courting a beautiful young poet named John Gray, the probable model
for Dorian. (At least Gray himself believed this to be so, and the name would
seem to be a clincher.) After the novel was published Wilde began his
disastrous affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. His feud with his lover's violent
father, the Marquess of Queensberry, resulted in one of the most famous
lawsuits in history, Wilde's eventual arrest on charges of sodomy, and his
sentencing to two years' hard labor. The most celebrated playwright and wit in
England had become its most despised pariah. He never saw his two sons again;
Constance changed their name, and hers, to "Holland," and taught the
boys "to forget that we had ever borne the name of Wilde and never to
mention it to anyone." After his release from prison Wilde went into exile
in France, where he assumed the name "Sebastian Melmoth" and died, in
penury, in 1900. "I will never outlive the century," he had
predicted. "The English people would not stand for it."
Whether the original text
is actually "better" than the book version published in 1891 is a
moot point. Some of Wilde's original material may have been lost in the latter
(even the word "mistress" was deemed unsuitable for publication at
that time, and the novel's heterosexual material was censored as ruthlessly as
its homosexual innuendos). But much was gained, too, in the expanded version
Wilde prepared in 1891, with the brilliant Lord Henry being given some
wonderful new material. This annotated version, though a treasure for scholars
and for anyone with a serious interest in Wilde, the 1890s, and Aestheticism,
should serve as a supplement to the standard text rather than a replacement.
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