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The Picture Of Dorian Gray
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Chapter 14 - Quiz
• At what time does Dorian’s servant wake Dorian up the
morning following Basil’s murder?
• Youth smiles without ____ _______.
• How many years before were Alan Campbell and Dorian
‘great friends’?
• At what university did Alan study?
• What first brought Dorian and Alan together?
• For how many months did their ‘intimacy’ last?
• How many hours did Campbell say that his ‘experiment’
would last for?
• After murdering Basil, in what way has the portrait
changed?
Chapter 14 – Quiz
Answers
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At 9 o’clock the next morning’ p.155
Youth smiles without any reason. P.155
They had been great friends once, five years before. P.158
Cambridge p.158
In fact, it was music that had first brought him and Dorian
Gray together p.158
• For eighteen months their intimacy lasted p.159
• It will take about five hours p.165
• Loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on
one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated
blood? P.165
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Chapter Summary
• Dorian begins his day at leisure and sends the servant
with a note for Alan Campbell
• When he begins to feel troubled, he reads the poetry
of Gautier
• Alan Campbell arrives and Dorian asks him to dispose
of the body. He is reluctant, but Dorian shows him a
letter which he will send if Alan refuses to help him.
• Many hours later the body of Basil is gone.
Analysis
• ‘…As he opened his eyes a faint smile passed
across his lips, as though he had been lost in
some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed
at all. His night had been untroubled by any
images of pleasure or pain’
• Wilde is playing with conventions. Use of pathetic
fallacy – ‘there was a genial warmth in the air. It
was almost like a morning in may’ – laughter and
play. Spring
• Gradually the events of the preceding night crept
with silent blood- stained feet onto his brain and
reconstructed themselves there with terrible
distinctness.  The events are personified – so
that Dorian doesn’t have to take the blame.
• ‘He winced at the memory of all that he had
suffered’
• ‘The dead man was still sitting there, too’
• Notice how he is no longer Basil. In the same way
when Sibyl died she became ‘the girl’ p.101 –
Dehumanizes.
P.156, 157
• ‘He spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting
the various dishes…’
• ‘As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and
began sketching upon a piece of paper, drawing
first flowers, and bits of architecture and then
human faces’
• ‘As he turned over the pages his eye fell on the
poem…’
• ‘Suddenly he remarked that every face that he
drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to
Basil Hawllward’1.
• This line which effectively indicates the onset
of Dorian’s psycho-logical decline, had earlier
been used by Wilde in his study of the
poisoner Wainewright, ‘Pen, Pencil and
Poison’.
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Sur un gamme chromatique,
On (a background of) a chromatic range,
Émaux et Camées
Le sein de perles ruisselant,
Pearls* flowing along her breasts,
La Venus de l'Adriatique
The Adriatic’s Venus soar
Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.
Emerge (from the water) her rosy and white body
Devant une façade rose,
In front of a rosy facade*,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier.
On the marble* of stairs
Les dômes, sur l'azur des ondes,
The domes*, on the azur water,
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
Because of the contour’s purety of the phrase*,
S'enflent comme des gorges* rondes
Are swelling so as the plumpness of breasts
Que soulève un soupir d'amour.
rise up for a love sigh.
L'esquif aborde et me dépose,
The boat accost and land me,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
After having thrown its hawser at the pillar,
Chromatic range : range of different colours
Pearls : drops of water
Adriac's Venus : the lacustrine city Venice
Domes : round and bulging church's roof
Phrase : reference to the circular base of the domes
(?)
Facade : vertical front part of a building
Gorge : (old and sophisticate way to use "throat"
instead of "breasts". Actually in use in the word
"soutien-gorge" (bra).
On the marble : the stairs are made of marble, but
French language sometimes use to consider the
material rather than the object.
Literary Illusion
• Wilde uses literary illusion to illustrate the
Damage to Dorian’s psych (human soul, mind
or spirit)
• As Dorian tries to distract himself with poetry,
the images reflect his inner landscape. First
comes a snatch of poetry about the hand of a
murderer and Dorian gazes at his own hands.
In psychology, desensitization (also called
inurement) is defined as the diminished
emotional responsiveness to a negative or
aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it
‘all I ask of you is to perform a certain scientific
experiment’ p162
‘the horrors that you do there don’t affect you’
Irony
• ‘Your friend Lord Henry Wotton can’t have taught you much about
psychology’
• Dorian has learned from Lord Henry the technique of hypnotic
speech. He plies Alan with false logic: Alan is a scientist and
scientists handle dead bodies; therefore this would be no different
from an experiment.
• Dorian also hints that Alan’s treatment of dead bodies makes him
as callous as Dorian is himself. This prepares the ground for a final
master-stroke. The victim is convinced the whole situation is his
fault. Dorian’s accusation: ‘you treated me as no man has ever
dared to treat me’ and the frightening addition ‘no living man at
least’ suggest that he now thinks of Blackmail as a relatively lenient
punishment for a man who has crossed him
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Dorian’s letter to Alan
HE WROTE ONE TO SIBYL TOO.
‘The assumption is that Dorian is privy to some
secret in Campbell's past. The two most likely
possibilities seem to be (1) a homosexual
encounter, or (2) drug use. The first is supported
by Wilde's own homosexual proclivities, while the
second seems to be indicated by Dorian's own
later movements in a London opium den.’
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Analysis
• Same kind of symmetry used as in Chapter 2 and
4: Dorian is posed to echo and contrast with a
previous image of him. Here he lies peacefully
asleep. (Notice chapter 8 opens in the same way,
after the betrayal of Sibyl)
• Chapter VIII (8) ‘It was long past noon when he
awoke’ p.91
• Chapter XIV (14) ‘At nine o’clock the next
morning… Dorian was sleeping quite peacefully….
He looked like a boy who had been tired out with
play, or study’
• Words like musical or artistic were often used
in the 19th century as a way of implying that a
man was homosexual , and the references to
the shared interest in music are in part a way
of coding the relationship between Dorian and
Alan as homosexual . They also of course
symbolize harmony and happiness, and Alan’s
abandonment of music is a sign that he is not
at peace with himself.
Blackmail
• Blackmail – over sexual or financial misconduct – was a
common theme in Victorian literature and features in
Wilde’s play ‘An Ideal Husband’
• Rapidly, the Labouchere Amendment became known
as ‘the blackmailer’s charter’. The practiced way in
which Dorian produces a letter written in advance in
order to force AC to get rid of Basil’s body suggests that
he is all too familiar with the mechanics of this process
• ‘It is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than
one person. Sit down’ -> threat? p160
The perfect Blackmailer
• A blackmailer exploiting a past relationship may try to
move his victim emotionally. Dorian shows an assured
technique here, making fleeting allusions to his own
pain: ‘You don’t know what he had made me suffer’, ‘I
almost fainted with Terror (foreshadows when he
actually does faint with Terror – seeing James Vane).
• By not dwelling on it, he gives Alan a chance to reflect
on any feelings that he may still have for Dorian.
• He is willing to grovel, using words such as ‘beg’ but he
also lets Alan know that he is capable of murder.
POEM What the shallows told =
DORIAN’S TASTE FOR OPIUM
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• ‘He grew nervous and a horrible fit of terror came
over him’P.158
• ‘he… began to pace up and down the room,
looking like a beautiful caged thing’
• ‘then suddenly time stopped for him’ p.159
• Frightening images in poem – predatory
crocodiles and vultures – hint at visions of a kind
to suggest that Dorian has a taste for opium. As
time itself seems to slow down we would be
reading an account of the drug’s affects.
Dorian’s Response – about the guy he
murdered.
• ‘Poor Basil,! What a horrible way for a man to
die’
http://www.gradesaver.com/thepicture-of-dorian-gray/studyguide/section10/
Chapter 14 Summary
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Characters
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Characters
• Alan Campbell and Sibyl Vane Similarities:
• Both brilliantly talented and finally destroyed
• Chooses his laboratory as the setting for his own
death.
• Both Commit suicide.
• Dorian writes them both letters after his bad
actions.
• Dorian sleeps well – in chapter 8 and 14, the
morning after Sibyl’s suicide and Basil’s murder.
HANDS
• P132 (yn)THE POWER WAS IN THE HANDS OF DORIAN
• Page 159. His hands were curiously cold (dor)
• P.160 ‘He kept his hands in the pockets of his Astrakhan
coat, and seemed not to have noticed the gesture with
which he had been greeted’. Campbell doesn’t shake
Dorian’s hand but once the blackmailing letter is produced
– Dorian can touch him and know that he will not be
shaken off.
• Loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on
one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated
blood? P.165
• ‘First comes a snatch of poetry about the hand of a
murderer’  Dorian looks at his own hands
Ticking Clock
Motif – the clock seems to enter the minds of
both Alan and Dorian, ‘dividing Time into
separate atoms of agony’
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Key Cards/Revision
• character
• How we can relate it to A01 AO2 AO3 AO4
• Alan Campbell’s relationship with Dorian
before hand (Page 158)
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How far do you agree that Dorian is to blame for his own actions?
In the novel the consequences of innocence are no worse than the consequences of sin. Discuss
From what narrative perspective is the novel narrated and is it appropriate?
What conclusions does the novel make about the importance of love?
What is the difference between the morality of the story and issues of morality expressed by the
characters?
What value does the narrative place on youth and beauty?
How important are conversations in the narrative progress of the novel?
Discuss the role of influence and responsibility with respect to Dorian’s actions.
What makes Wilde’s narrative style distinctive?
How does the novel address the prospect of redemption?
How far do you agree that Lord Henry is the devil who convinces Dorian to sell his soul?
How far does the difference between the way Dorian looks and the things he does suggest duplicity
is a key theme?
What role does Sybil Vane play in Dorian’s story? Is she of central significance or merely a plot
device?
How does Wilde create distinctive voices for his characters?
How important is the supernatural element of the novel?
To what extent do you consider the ending of the novel to be inevitable?