*Play recording to enhance e-book experience.
THIS E-BOOK CAN IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON IPHONE/ANDROID VIA WEB
They would shut him up if he persisted in his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell? ... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.
But this murder—was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself—that was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and watched.
Video presentation of Dorian Gray and his painting being destroyed with the famous knife.
Gray despises the figure in the portrait, but that is who he has become - the evil figure he has seen for years. When he slashes at the painting with the knife, the same knife that killed Basil, Dorian kills himself.
The picture is terrible in the eyes of Dorian - just as ugly as the rotten soul that Dorian despairs. He cannot imagine how he can get back to what he was, innocent. Just as a normal man cannot regain his youth, Dorian cannot regain his innocence.
His foul soul is seen here where he has no regret for the death of his friend who even introduced him to the world in which he was living in.
The map shows how Dorian travels around London looking for new and different ways to experience the New Hedonism. Each time he gratifies his senses, it just makes him want to do so even more.
The theme of having a split personality—a conscience that is separate from a person—is also present in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” This theme shows how Victorians tried to repress the pleasures of the senses—the Freudian id, but those repressed desires would surface in dangerous ways.
Unlike Dr. Jekyll in “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” who repents the crimes committed by his evil double, Mr. Hyde, and uses the last of the potion to write his confession, Dorian Gray never does repent his evil actions. Instead, Dorian sees himself as blameless.
The painting camouflages his immoral actions; therefore, even though he realizes what he has done, no one can hold him accountable for it except himself. No one looking at his beautiful, innocent face could believe that he would act so horribly. He believes that if the painting goes back to being beautiful, then his soul will go back to being innocent.
The Victorian Era saw a large surge in the popularity of religion. England was primarily Christian at this time. Click on the link to learn more about religion in the Victorian Era. The New Hedonism that Dorian follows is in contrast to the “harsh Puritanism” that was being revived by the Victorians. According to Dorian, Puritanism starved the senses into submission or killed them by pain for no good reason (101). Now that Dorian has decided to be good, he thinks he must confess his sin to the public so he can be seen for who he really is.
Dorian decides to destroy the painting because it haunts him. He is terrified of anyone seeing it because then they would see what he really is and he could no longer hide his true self behind his beauty. The painting does not let him enjoy the life of the senses that he has devoted himself to because it suggests that that life is immoral.
The sin that Dorian thinks he has committed is not the sin of killing Basil but his intention to destroy Hetty Merton’s innocence and purity.
Dorian realizes that he was not “good” in sparing Hetty. He did not spare her so he could atone for his sins and become good. He spares her through vanity because he believes that the painting will revert back to its original beauty. His motives are purely selfish.
Dorian believes that, by destroying the painting, he would destroy his conscience and return to a life of gratifying the senses with no regrets. He wants to live in a world with no past.
