No citation is needed. Choose 2 from the discussion promts, answer the bonus promt as well. 3 prompts in total.
General Notes:
I would like you to wait until after the first lecture on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to respond here.
Respond to only one prompt at a time, and keep your reply short, 1-2 paragraphs, roughly the length of what you might say in class in contributing to discussion. Do not attach a document; type or copypaste your response into the text box that opens when you click on reply. You may respond to any prompt; they don’t need to be addressed in numerical order. However, do identify by number the prompt you’re addressing.
Posts cumulatively contribute to your participation mark; they’re not graded, and so don’t need to be elegantly formatted. Obviously any material that draws on external sources needs to acknowledge those sources clearly.
Once responses start appearing, you may reply to each other’s posts (keep using the reply button to keep the discussion threaded): you might identify the person you’re replying to by name. Remember to keep the tone respectful and constructive.
The prompts are not questions with right or wrong answers; they are designed to get you thinking about the novel. For that reason, don’t read classmates’ posts until after you’ve posted your own response.
You may respond to more than one prompt or more than one post by a classmate but do not spam the board with several posts at once as this discourages others from participating.
I might post supplementary questions depending on the direction of discussion both in class and here.
The Discussion Prompts
Note: Please avoid “life in general” points (e.g. what the text demonstrates about all people) and please do not look up and reproduce assessments of the legacy or reputation of the text: for one thing, doing so without acknowledgement of the source is plagiarism, so it’s not something you want to risk doing on the home paper or the exam.
1. There are lots of narratives treating the gift/curse of immortality, sometimes accompanied by eternal youth (not always: Dracula really only looks young when he’s well fed). What is the significance of Dorian’s eternal youth being associated with a painting: a work of representative art? (If you know Terry Gilliam’s movie The Brothers Grimm, there’s a sort of reversal in the wicked queen being eternally young in her mirror but grotesquely aged in “real life”.)
2. As in many novels of the 19th century, contemporary standards of mainstream fiction restricted some elements of The Picture of Dorian Gray, though there are some exclusions that contribute to the novel’s tone of uncanny horror, notably whatever Dorian threatens Alan Campbell with to get him to dispose of Basil’s body, also what the picture in the attic actually looks like as it absorbs the consequences of Dorian’s actions. What is the effect of leaving such information to the reader’s imagination?
3. Is there anything in the nature of Dorian’s pursuit of and initially rapturous devotion to Sybil Vane that might be a clue to the life he eventually undertakes? Do you think Dorian really loves Sybil or some image of Sybil he’s invented?
4. One reason there are so few (if any) sympathetic characters in this novel may be that it is as much a satire as a horror story. What sort of social world does it take place in? What sorts of lives do its principal characters lead? What elements of late-Victorian society are being critiqued? Is there any sort of ideal held up in contrast, or at least hinted at? One way of thinking about this might be to consider the novel’s central puzzle: Dorian has lots of friends and a busy social life. Why are they virtually all incapable of seeing that he doesn’t age?
5. How would having the novel narrated in first person by Dorian have altered its effect? What about having Henry Wotton narrate it? (I’m limiting options to characters who survive through to the end.)
6. Is Dorian’s youth (he’s around 20) at the time he stops aging important? Would it be different to stop aging at, say, 35 or 45, or, like Claudia in Interview with the Vampire, as a child? Other than actual adaptations of this novel, can anyone think of any representations in fiction (or film) of human beings who gain immortality? Do they tend to be around Dorian’s age, or can you think of older or younger examples? Do their ages and appearances contribute anything to their experience of immortality?
7. The writing style in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only novel, is interesting. It employs both a lot of dialogue or conversation and a lot of description (both generally observant and specifically introspective). These create the novel’s atmosphere, its depiction of a world which is at once decadent and superficial. In thinking of this writing style, consider this: to what extent is this novel “plot driven”? If its main emphasis is not on the working out of the plot, what is it on?
Bonus Prompt:
Can you think of a contemporary actor (someone who’s still very young now, ideally under 25) who would make a convincing Dorian Gray? What’s a movie or streaming series that features this actor? (Extension: If you were making a movie of The Picture of Dorian Gray, who would you cast in the other key roles: Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, Sybil Vane, Alan Campbell?)
