THE IRONY OF PARADOX AND THE PARADOX OF IRONY

The Picture of Dorian Gray was a novel by my favourite author Oscar Wilde. In fact it was the only novel he wrote while most of his writings were plays. He is known for his paradoxical witty sayings which were often criticized but it is an irony that he became famous mainly due to them. Had he been alive today and were he an Indian, he would have certainly become a very successful cine script writer. He is an author of such lively dialogues.

The novel's story or summary is not as important as the conversations put into it. Any story would do for Oscar Wilde. All he needed was a situation in which two people must talk. That was enough for him to pour out his genius. And that is what one sees or reads page after page in this novel.

THE STORY IN BRIEF

But still, let me give a short summary of the story to make things easy for you.
The novel revolves round four characters mainly: Basil the artist, Lord Henry his friend, Dorian Gray his subject for a painting and Sibyl a poor but talented actress with whom Dorian falls in love. The hero is of course Dorian Gray or I should say his extraordinary beauty. The character and picture painted by Wilde of Dorian is autobiographical because Oscar Wilde was one of most handsome of writers the world has ever known.

Wilde was accused of homosexuality and served two years' imprisonment too on account of his relationship with male prostitute boys and young men like Ross and Douglas. Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. In British legislation of the time, this term implied gay activities. On 25 May 1895 Wilde was finally convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour. Yet, we are not sure of his homosexual acts but we can say that his views on sexuality were certainly revolutionary. Wilde was really wild with regard to sexual orientation!

The artist Basil paints a picture of Dorian Gray his handsome subject of whom he enamoured. More for the new painting dimension inspired by Dorian’s beauty than for the handsomeness per se. As the painting sessions progressed, Lord Henry and Dorian become friends. Henry’s way of speaking attracts Dorian. Basil’s picture seems to be a masterpiece in deed. On seeing it and after hearing Henry’s world views, Doran thinks that the only thing worth having in this world is beauty. He wishes that instead of him the picture should become old! But his strange wish gets fulfilled gradually! The success of this novel as an art form lies in this imaginative element, I think. The idea is highly imaginative and wonderful in deed. The novel develops on this strand of imagination and perfects itself out of it. There is an element of surrealism or magical realism in it. 
This happens after rejecting the love of Sybil the poor, beautiful and talented actress with whom he fell in love and whom he proposed to marry. Dorian invites Basil and Henry to see Sibyl perform Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl loses her acting abilities through the experience of true love with Dorian. Dorian rejects her, saying her beauty was in her art, and he is no longer interested in her if she cannot act impressively.

The first thrilling and climax-like event occurs now. When he returns home he notices that Basil's portrait of him has slightly changed. Dorian realizes his wish has come true - the portrait now bears a subtle sneer and will age with each sin he commits, whilst his own appearance remains unchanged!

He decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Henry informs him that Sibyl has killed herself by swallowing hydrogen cyanide. (Maybe the first cyanide death in literature and an inspiration for Liberation Tigers).

Slowly Dorian’s views are poisoned by the speeches of Henry and lust and looks become more important to him in life than anything else. Over the next 18 years, Dorian experiments with every vice, mostly under the influence of a "poisonous" French novel, a present from Lord Henry.

One night, before he leaves for Paris, Basil arrives to question Dorian about rumors of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny his debauchery. He takes Basil to the portrait, which is as hideous as Dorian's sins. In anger, Dorian blames the artist for his fate and stabs Basil to death. He then blackmails an old friend named Alan Campbell, a chemist, into destroying Basil's body. He also escapes an attempt by Sybil’s brother to shoot him down in an opium den which Dorian visits by showing his unchanged and un-aged youth. Sybil’s brother James releases Dorian but a woman from the opium den chastises him for not killing Dorian and informs him of the strange fact that Dorian has not aged for 18 years!

Sybil’s brother is accidentally shot and killed by one of the hunters. After returning to London, Dorian informs Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not breaking the heart of his latest innocent conquest, a vicar's daughter in a country town, named Hetty Merton.

At his apartment, Dorian wonders if the portrait has begun to change back, losing its senile, sinful appearance, as he has changed his immoral ways now. He unveils the portrait to find that it has become worse. In a rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil and plunges it into the painting. His servants hear a cry from inside the locked room and send for the police. They find Dorian's body, stabbed in the heart and suddenly aged, withered and horrible. It is only through the rings on his hand that the corpse could be identified. Beside him, however, the portrait has reverted to its original form.

There are references to dainty Delhi muslins and Persian saddlebags in the novel, to my surprise.

BEAUTIFUL QUOTES FROM THE NOVEL

• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
• Real beauty ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
• When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them.
• The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
• We tell each other the most absurd things with the most serious faces.
• Every portrait painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion.
• As for believing things, I can believe anything provided that it is quite incredible.
• She is peacock in everything but beauty.
• I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
• There are only two eras of any importance in the world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art.
• There is no such thing as a good influence. All influence is immoral.
• The highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself.
• They feed the hungry, clothe the beggar, but their souls starve and are naked.
• Terror of god is the secret of religion.
• The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. 
• The only difference between a caprice and a life-time passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
• American girls are as clever in concealing their parents, as English women are at concealing their past.
• I am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after politics.
• As bald as a ministerial statement in the House of Commons.
• The way of paradoxes is the way of truth.
• To get back one’s youth, one merely to repeat one’s follies.
• He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
• Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
• Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
• Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
• As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
• The people who love only once in their life are really the shallow people.
• Faithfulness is simply a confession of failure.
• Only the sacred things are worth touching.
• When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always end by deceiving others. That is what the world calls romance.
• Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself in the poetry of life is a honor (This is, according to me, is the best quote from Wilde and one that needs a lot of experience to understand).
• Experience was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
• The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish.
• As for spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.
• When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
• It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
• Married life is merely a habit, a bad habit.