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Hmmm....I'll have to find a copy of this. I have read it, but it was a long time ago. Now you're rekindling my curiosity.

I just checked out a copy from the library & started it. 'Tis longer than I remember, but then it has been a very long time since I read it & maybe the version I read was condensed. Must have been--it was in an anthology.

On the one hand, we have the picture as witness to the beauty of Dorian's soul on the day that he meets Lord Henry, and we have Basil's word for his unsoiled nature. Dorian attributes his corruption to Lord Henry as well, ("You corrupted me with a book").

On the other hand, Basil is hardly a reliable character witness; he keeps assuring Lord Henry that he can't be as bad as he seems, that "Your cynicism is merely a pose," when everything else indicates that the one thing about Lord H that is not a pose is his cynicism. There is also Basil's statement that "Now and then...he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain"--this before Dorian meets Lord H. We also know that Dorian is inclined to blame fate & others for decisions that are manifestly his own Also, he was on his road to corruption well before Lord Henry sent the book.

That leaves the picture and only the picture as witness, and can its initially beauty be trusted any more than any other beauty we see in the book?

In any case, Dorian is certainly a willing accomplice to his corruption. He has barely met Lord H before he is seeking his company and following his directions.
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One thing that struck me about the book was how present corruption is all the way through it, and how absent goodness. The closest thing to a good man in the book is Basil and he is hardly ever present.

How long does your paper have to be? Is it for highschool or university? When we studied the novel in our gothic class we examined decadence. If you look at all of the images of flowers and excess that would fit in with your thesis regarding boredom. Are you arguing that privelege and the resultant excess time/ lack of definite goals plays a part in Basil's desire to corrupt him? By painting Dorian's portrait and by "teaching" him Basil redefines Dorian which ultimately leads to his corruption. It has been a while since I read the novel but we looked at how Basil's commens regarding art and life corresponded to Wilde's own philosophy. I think Bookwyrme brings up an excellent point: we have to question the narrator's reliability. Is Dorian ever truly pure or is that just Basil's idealization of him; consequently, the corruption may have already existed within him but Basil gives it the opportunity to flourish. Dorian's beauty may very well conceal a darker side which is inadvertently revealed through the portrait. Both the novel and the portrait, which provides a metaphor for both the novel and art in general, reveal the multidimensional nature of artistic rendering, especially within a literary context. If you return to Keat's an Ode to a Grecian urn, the urn itself is stagnant because it is simply fixed images on an object; however, Keat's poem breaths new life into them by providing a story which allows them to live on forever (it also provides a multidimensional view rather than a simple 1D or 2D pictoral). The portrait is like a novel in that it is constantly changing to reflect the life and soul of it's original and the novel allows the readers to fully appreciate and experience Dorian's metamorphosis and thus see beyond his initial beauty. Like I said, it has been a while since i have read the novel but I should pick it up again over the summer. I hope I was not too off topic biggrin