Entry #7

The Picture of Dorian Gray 

“The monster within and a mistaken wish” is how I would describe this book to help understand what was going on and who the real monster was. 

I think it helps to understand realistically what Dorian may have been struggling with; moral insanity. In short, a person suffering from ‘moral insanity’ displays an emotional or behavioral disturbance but appears otherwise rational, or ‘normal’. Their intellectual faculties are not impaired and they are unlikely to show obvious, outward signs of illness i.e. delusional episodes (Prichard). 

Throughout the book, after Lord Henry had shared his words with Dorian he became different. I think that is from the moral insanity he started to struggle with because he couldn’t control his “natural impulses” when it came to doing things. Especially when he dumped Sibyl with an uncontrolled temper, murdered Basil, and continuously went to that one bar where everything and anything was used, drunk, and done. Dorian was not right in the head as he was not truly remorseful for the things he caused or led to occur. He always had some kind of excuse as to why what happened was justified. 

Symptoms of moral insanity are as follows; madness consisting in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder or defect of the interest or knowing and reasoning faculties, and particularly without any insane illusion or hallucinations (Prichard).

This is where I would say the next part of this understanding comes in with a little supernatural influence as there was an insane illusion from the portrait throughout the book as Dorian continued to follow through with bad things. Dorian says right at the beginning of the book ‘Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! … I would give my soul for that!’ (Wilde, 31).

Essentially I feel as though at this moment Dorian wished a wish from the Devil without knowing it and thus began the spiral decline into insanity. Basically he “trad[ed] his soul for 18+ years of the Devil’s favors” (Robinson). This enabled him to live so many years conducting bad and wrongdoings without any true repercussions and aging. As Dorian was “infatuated with his own image and dies tragically because of this” (Robinson). He traded his soul for youthfulness leading him to kill himself because he wanted to end his contract with the Devil to stop all the bad things from happening and instead be good. However, in order for that to be so he needed to destroy the “capsule” of his soul (the portrait) to be rid of all things bad, but because of the way the Devil works no matter what happens there is no escaping him due to the fact your soul is already his and the only way to truly escape is death. By destroying the portrait Dorian took his soul back but with the cost of taking all the repercussions of the bad things he did and his life.

Sources:

Prichard, James. “Medical Texts About Madness,” https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/medical-text-about-madness. 

Robinson, David E. “The gothic genre, classical allusion and other influences in oscar Wilde’s the picture of dorian gray,” https://une.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/gothic-genre-classical-allusion-other-influences/docview/2490450508/se-2

Wilde, Oscar. “The Picture of Dorian Gray”