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The Picture of Dorian A* quotes and analysis
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A* level quotations and analysis, grouped by theme & chapter, for the prose section of English Literature Edexcel A-level - THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde
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Dorian GrayInfluence
Preface
- ‘There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly
written. That is all.’ – Dorian influenced by book saying he should give expression to every
hedonistic desire
Chap 1
- “Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been
able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able
to see the people, which was worse.” – witty chiasmus of LH
- ‘Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad.’
Chap 2
- ‘One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward
worshipped him.’ – foreshadows Gothic transformation, James 1:27, without sin is
‘unspotted’
- ‘Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think.’ – wants to go back to innocent naivity,
morality from principles dogmas to individual consciousness
Chap 4
- ‘I am putting it into practice as I do everything you say.’ – D committed to be disciple of H,
but H’s provocation is just linguistic games – not principles of life, the distortions are a result
of Dorian’s naïve interpretation
Chap 8
- ‘Sybil Vane is dead’ – significant that LH tells him, turning point of immoral influence
Chap 9
- ‘people who act lead the most commonplace lives.’ – mimetic, Dorian is adopting LH’s
words, an unstable notion of life and art = copy
Chap 10
- ‘a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled.’ – book
represents painting, contaminated. ‘a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who
spent his life trying to realise in the 19 th century all the passions and modes of thought that
belonged to every century except his own… full of argot and of archaisms, of technical
expressions and of elaborate paraphrases [LH!!!]
- ‘he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made
him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.’ – art’s power to intoxicate
Chap 13
- ‘eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched and his parched tongue seemed unable to
articulate.’ – Basil is visually disfigured by his encounter with the portrait
, Chap 14
- [Cambell was] ‘strangely melancholy at times’, ‘so absorbed in science that he had no time
left in which to practice.’ – corrupting influence of Dorian mirrors LH, made life an art form
without morality
Chap 19
- ‘Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with anyone of her own rank.’ –
Dorian more powerfully sullies in his attempts not to
- ‘They have had my own divorce case, and Alan Campbell’s suicide.’ – playful epigrams of
idealise influence have combusted.
- Cyclical influence: ‘I don’t think there have such lilacs since the year I met you.’ – return is
reflected in surroundings
Boundaries of life and art
- Walter Painter and aestheticism – fixation on subjective consciousness and individual
desire. Wilde reflects om Victorian morality and anticipates a modern sense of replica
without substance.
- Aestheticism – highly conscious/sensual engagement to every moment (lover’s suicide is
perfect fulfilment)
o French symbolism and decadence – response to utilitarianism and industrialisation
- Nietzsche, Wagner and Hegel – tragedy is the highest form of art, it can deal with darkest
and most sublime aspects of human nature (esp during darkness of industrialisation).
Tragedy confronts the grim reality and redeems us from vulgarity it through an overture of
human passion.
- Constant use of chiasmus – acknowledges Dorian’s moulding to high society, but embraces
a sense of primitivism.
Chap 1
- ‘there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate
perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.’ – sense of synaesthesia, creates atmosphere of
intoxicating beauty
- ‘Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.’ – Oscar Wilde
complicates the boundaries between artifice and sincerity
- ‘I like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an
auctioneer treats his goods.’ – life is a series of impressionistic and hedonistic poses,
revelling in the beauty of the moment
Chap 2
- ‘That entirely depends on how you sit today, Dorian.’ – mild flirting, tense of control and
trying to dominate subject – slightly at adds with innocence Basil wants to present, also
shown in imperitives ‘now’, ‘get up’, ‘don’t move’.
- ‘as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished.’ – difficult to distinguish between art and
person
Chap 4
- ‘never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired: women, because they are
curious: both are disappointed.’ – marriage forms a dogmatic commitment that is
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