Dorian Gray Critics, Characters And Themes Quotes

Front 1

Sybil Vane

Sheldon Liebman

Back 1

'Sybil is lessrestrained than Basil only because she is even more innocent than he is.'

Front 2

Morality

Liebman

Back 2

' Wilde'suniverse can sustain no traditional moral system. In other words, Basil andSybil may be good, but they are not wise.’

Front 3

James Vane

Professor John McRae

Back 3

‘themost important subsidiary character in the book – he is revenge, he is realism;he represents the dead hand of the past that will catch up to Dorian Gray.’

Front 4

Dorian Gray

Prof. John McRae

Back 4

We have a 'thrilling complicity' with Dorian. We aspire to his 'untouchablility'

Front 5

Dorian Gray

Liebman

Back 5

Dorian Gray is 'Wilde's Everyman'

Front 6

Lord Henry intellectual

Liebman

Back 6

'He (LH) isactually one of the most philosophical characters in British fiction. As morethan one critic has noted, Henry is, first, a scientist and

intellectual, who’smost outstanding trait is his curiosity.’

Front 7

Lord Henry Philosophy

Liebman

Back 7

‘How does one live ina world in which nothing can be believed and no one can be trusted? Henry'sanswer is what philosophers call ethical egoism.'

'Henry has 'outgrown his moral childhood.And only he endures because he no longer allows himself to get burned.'

Front 8

Lord Henry - Death

Back 8

'Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hateit.’

Front 9

Basil Hallward Morality

Liebman

Back 9

‘Themoral order that Basil believes in does not exist. At the end of Dorian Gray,the stage is strewn with the bodies of the innocent...and populated also by the degraded victims of Dorian'sinfluence.’

Front 10

Oscar Wilde

Prof. John McRae

Back 10

'It iseasy to be tricked into seeing Oscar Wilde as any one of the roles he played,both wittingly and unwittingly … The trust is that he was all of these things,but he was also a philosopher and a thinker, a serious moralist whodeliberately questioned and subverted the standards of his times.’

Front 11

Oscar Wilde, Aestheticism

Liebman

Back 11

'HoustonA. Baker made the interesting point that in ‘The Critic as an Artist’ Wildecalls not for a choice between ‘conscience and instinct’, but for a ‘merging’of these two faculties. And Dorian’s fate, Baker continued, is a result of hisinability to reconcile these two aspects of his personality.’

Front 12

Oscar Wilde, beliefs

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Back 12

'Attempts toappropriate or reinvent Wilde come in various shades of green, red, and pink:Wilde the Irish rebel, Wilde the subversive socialist, Wilde the gay martyr.' Have not been sucessful

Front 13

Setting

Synthesia

Back 13

'Heavy scent of the lilac'

Front 14

Setting, Duplicity

Prelapsarian, Chiaroscuro, Gothic, Duality

Back 14

'Delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn'

Front 15

Lord Henry's House

Art vs. Life

Back 15

'Gilt Daisies'

'Parrot-tuplips were arranged on the

mantel shelf'

Front 16

Sybil's House

Nature, Art vs. Life, East End

Back 16

'The flies buzzed round that table, and crawled over the stained cloth.'

Front 17

East End

Gothic, Classical intertextuality

Back 17

'Labyrinth of grimy streets and black, grassless squares.'

Front 18

East End

Gothic, Madness

Back 18

'Dimly-lit streets, past gaunt black shadowed archways and evil looking houses.'

Front 19

Dorian's House

Art vs. Life, Light imagery, Hedonism, Cruelty

Back 19

Dorian was 'Sipping some pale-yellow wine from a delicate gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass, and looking dreadfully bored.'

Front 20

Gothic Language

Madness, death

Back 20

'The Lamp was casting fantastic shadows on the wall.'

Front 21

Gothic Language

Life and Death, Light vs. Dark

Back 21

'Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle'

Front 22

Attic

Dorian's childhood trauma

Back 22

'There was a huge Italian cassone with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt moulding, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy.'

Front 23

Nature

Basil's Studio

Back 23

'Honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum'

Front 24

Nature

Basil's studio, fragility, foreshadowing

Back 24

'Tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs.'

Front 25

Basil's Studio

foreshadowing, East vs. West

Back 25

'The Dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.'

Front 26

Sybil Vane

Nature x 3

Back 26

'Her hair clustered around her face like dark leaves round a place rose.'

'The curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily.'

'She flung herself at his feet, and lay their like a trampled flower.'

Front 27

Gothic

East End vs. West End , Religious, Nature

Back 27

'The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire.'

Front 28

Dorian Gray

Back 28

'He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.'

Front 29

Lord Henry to Dorian Gray

Passing of time, beauty, Nature, Mortality

Back 29

'In a month there will be purple stars in the clematis, and year after year the green of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we will never get our youth back.'

Front 30

Time

Gothic, beginning of the novel

Back 30

'The monotonous ticking of the Louis-Quatorze clock annoyed him.'

Front 31

Time

Gothic, Degrading of Picture

Back 31

'Hour by hour, week by week, the thing upon that canvas was growing older.'

Front 32

Time

Gothic, Personification

Back 32

'Time being dead raced on nimbly in front of him, and dragged a hideous future from its grave.'

Front 33

Time

Gothic, Madness

Back 33

'The ticking of the clock on the mantel piece seemed to him to being dividing Time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne.'

Front 34

Time

Gothic, Religious

Back 34

'Out of the black cave of Time... rose the image of his sin.'

Front 35

Religious - Lord Henry

Society, Ennui

Back 35

'Sin is the only real colour element left in

modern life' - LH

Front 36

Religious

Gothic, Death

Back 36

'The terror of God - which is the secret of religion'

Front 37

Religious

Morality, Aestheticism, Afterlife

Back 37

'Fin de Siecle.'

Front 38

Society - Lord Henry

Religious, dinner parties

Back 38

'Ugliness is one the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made out England what she is.'

Front 39

Religious - Dorian Gray

Chapter 11, Hedonism

Back 39

'The daily sacrifice (communion) stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of sense as by the primitive simplicity its element and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolise.'

Front 40

Religion

Hedonism, Evil, Murder

Back 40

'Some red star had come too close to earth.'

'When the high spirit, that morning-star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel he fell.'

Front 41

Religion / Fantasy - Sybil Vane

Innocence, Basil, constrast DG and LH

Back 41

'He must be sure.. to say he prayers each nigh before bed.'

Front 42

Intertextuality

Classical, Homoerotism

Back 42

'Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you sat on the prow of Adrain's barge, drawing across the green turbid Nile.'

Front 43

Intertextuality

Narcissus x 4, homoerotism, love, self-love

Back 43

'You have lent over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the marble of your own face.'

'He is a Narcissus ... Beauty, real beauty,ends where intellectual expression begins.'

'In boyish mockery of Narcissus.'

'White Narcissus' - Ironic

Front 44

Intertextuality

Historical, religious, violence

Back 44

Dorian had 'heard men cry of Nero Caesar as he passed by.'

(Nero known as the Emperor who 'fiddled whist Rome burned.'

Front 45

Intertextuality

Linguistic, courtly-love, self-sacrifice

Back 45

'I have grown sick of shadows.' - Sybil

Lady of Shallot

Front 46

Chiaroscuro

High society, light imagery

Back 46

'Apricot-coloured light of a summer day in London.'

Front 47

Chiaroscuro

Religious, Passion, Sin

Back 47

'Scarlet flame.'

Front 48

Religious

Colour, sin, passion

Back 48

'Swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin.'

Front 49

Chiaroscuro

Purity, innocence, Sybil

Back 49

'The White girl'

'White feet.'

'White butterfly.'

Front 50

Chiaroscuro

Death, self-love

Back 50

'The black hands off jealousy.'

Front 51

Women

East end, Gothic

Back 51

'Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter.'

Front 52

Gothic

Light and Dark, Religious, Evil, Madness

Back 52

'Lanterns with flames like tongues.'

Front 53

Gothic

London, Evil, Madness, Natural, Setting

Back 53

' The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull... from time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across to hide it.'

Front 54

Degrading

Time, decay, The Picture

Back 54

'Yellows crows feet would creep around the fading eyes.'

'Cold blue veined hands, the twisted body.'