As a classic I did not expect myself to rate it a five star already as they are much harder for me to read. However, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a beautifully written novel which makes you think and rethink about vanity, your fears and the lengths you would go to in order not to be tarnished by your actions. I believe everyone should read this book at their own pace, take it, read it, digest it.

The end and how the whole story cycles back to its mere beginnings was beautifully done and I can't help but hurt for Dorian Gray.

At times, I was confused as to what I was writing as there is alot of description and time setting. It was also the second time I tried to finish the book yet I still still very much enjoyed it although I could not read it at my usual speed.

"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."

First of all Wilde's writing is gorgeous.
I mean:
"I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain."

"Life is a question of nerves, and fires, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams."

The slow decline of Dorian is so enthralling. The beginning of the story it is spring, everything is new, and Dorian in his beautiful youth and then comes the slow decline. Even the weather deteriorates as we go and becomes foggy and instead of searching for beauty our main character searches for ugliness. Like Basil, I would love to know what parts of himself Wilde put into his characters.
"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril."

Oscar Wilde is, of course, a wonderful writer. His writing is cynical, philosophical, and witty. I like that his style is also very clear and easy to grasp, while still maintaining beautiful prose. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a brilliant, thought-provoking classic, and his two fairytale short stories (Happy Prince and Infanta) were very nice and bittersweet. I wasn’t a fan of the last short, (Arthur Savile), I think I’ll need to give it another try soon. But overall, Wilde is a fascinating writer and I’d like to read more of his work!

The Picture of Dorian Gray: 4 stars
The Happy Prince: 4 stars
The Birthday of the Infanta: 3 stars
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime: 2 stars

4.5/5

best read of 2024 so far.

*PSA I only read Dorian Gray I didn’t read the other short stories, this was just the edition I used tehe*

So, yes. This book was crazy. What I’m most impressed by are not Wilde’s beautiful depictions of scenes and specific images (which alone are stunning), but the ability for him to delve so deeply into an idea that he is criticizing. Throughout the novel, Lord Henry and Dorian are such hedonistic pricks, with the narrator justifying their actions. While the whole thing is a large criticism of their philosophies, he buys into it in the actual text, and you realize how irrational they are through sarcasm. The book does not try to be moral, by any sense. The depictions of things are shallow, offensive, and outright disconnected from reality. Yet, this is completely on purpose. The book is a direct portal to the lives of the characters, and has the reader feel what it’s like to be in their circle. Moreover, the dialogue is incredible. Each character has such a notable personality and their conversations hit every time. While the book is from the 19th century, it is still legible in modern day, leave the random words for fancy shit that I had to look up. This novel is seriously an inspired work of intentional genius. While it may not be the most fun read nor is it smutty or romantic, it is a fascinating deep dive into the psyche of hedonism and pleasure.

Meow.

Wilde allegedly said the main characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray were reflections of himself: "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps." This makes me wonder whether Wilde actually read his own book. I can't imagine why anyone would like or appreciate, much less emulate, any of the characters in this book. All of them are selfish, melodramatic, entitled, snobby, prissy, superficial, attention-hungry, and/or morally bankrupt. Like a medieval morality play, each character can be summed up in one word: Vice, Artistry, Pleasure! Needless to say, I expected something more nuanced from one of the "classics" of literature. At a bare minimum, I expect good character development from the classics, but this book's characters were all incredibly flat and two-dimensional. Lord Henry was especially annoying in this respect. Every sentence he uttered was a snarky, cynical Wilde-esque quip that you might find plastered on the wall at your local Borders or in one of those books of quotations by famous people. The first few times, it was clever; after that it increasingly grated on my nerves, because it seemed like Wilde was just funneling his own clever aphorisms into the mind of this character and using that in lieu of actual dialogue or meaningful conversation. In fact, reading these characters' conversations with each other made me want to stab my eyes out. Each sentence was some pseudo-witty observation on life or some cute paradox that you could imagine Wilde coming up with just to be contrary. It got old REALLY fast, because no one was actually saying anything – they were just engaged in an ongoing quip contest.

A contemporary critic called the book "mawkish and nauseous" when it was first published, and I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of critics at the time didn't like the book because of the overt, in-your-face, sometimes gratuitous homoeroticism between the three main characters, and I think I agree. I didn't feel like homosexual relationships were important to the story in any way and were just there because of Wilde's inability to gain distance from his own life experiences and write about anything other than gay Victorian men seizing the day in England. They say to write what you know, but in this case it just seemed like Wilde was too self-absorbed to consider a story beyond the limits of his own life. And the entire swaths of the book about embroidery, music, and jewels were completely unnecessary. Maybe Wilde thought that was character development – Dorian likes pretty things! – but really, all those passages accomplished was to reiterate that Dorian was a profligate gay man with a lot of money, which isn't really character development so much as Wilde's autobiography veiled as character development.

This story has a somewhat interesting Faustian plot, but utterly fails in the execution. As a cautionary tale about over-valuing beauty and youth and trying to violate the natural order of life, it fails. Dorian never truly repents for any of the horrible, selfish acts he's committed over the years, and although he frets and gripes about his lifestyle and makes several half-assed promises to reform his ways throughout the whole book, he never actually changes his behavior. His final act is to destroy his conscience (the portrait) so that it will finally shut up and let him go on living without further intrusions from this strange guilt-like emotion he begins to feel by the last two pages of the book. Obviously we're not supposed to like or approve of Dorian – even before he turns evil, he's an incredibly vain, shallow, and uninteresting person with no mind of his own, and after the Faustian bargain, he's all of that in ADDITION to being a jerk. Sometimes really good authors can pull off having an unlikeable protagonist, but Wilde can't do it. If you make the main character utterly, unredeemably uninteresting or reprehensible and close off the reader's potential identification and connection with him, you had better have some awesome writing or some other good characters to make up for that fact. This book has neither.

There's also the issue of whether such a cautionary tale is even necessary in the first place. Maybe if you're a flamboyant, melodramatic, hyper-sensitive aesthete, you may need reminding that there is more to life than beauty and youth (I know, shocking, right?). But most normal people – people who have productive lives outside their own minds and healthy relationships and are not daydreaming about the senior prom anymore – realize that there is more to life than vainly clinging to your appearance and obsessing about your own physical beauty. I didn't feel like the "lesson" of this story (such as it was) was really necessary for anyone except maybe Wilde himself. Maybe the one demographic group who would really benefit from reading The Picture of Dorian Gray is high school girls who feel entitled to the world because they're young and want to stay hot cheerleaders forever. But for those of us who are more mature and self-aware, this book is an irritating soap opera that lacks bite. If you're looking for an interesting Victorian-style gothic horror, read Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is far more interesting and suspenseful.

Oh, and just in case you needed another reason to avoid this book: there are several scenes of uncomfortable anti-Semitism and misogyny throughout the story. While I realize that those viewpoints were more socially acceptable at the time the book was written, and while I fully admit that many, many great works of literature have positions on race, sexuality, gender, etc. that modern readers find repugnant, it doesn't change the fact that I didn't like reading those sections of The Picture of Dorian Gray, especially since they didn't contribute to the story in any way and also because I had the uncomfortable hunch that those sentiments were shared by Wilde himself.

wow okay this book was crazy. also technically I didn't read the last three stories so am I lying by marking this read? but it was so good I loved it so much you should read it I don't know how to explain it but you really should. the dialogue is insane and the characters are so interesting and the pacing is perfect. literally loved this book so much!

Full of wit and purpose, this is a book that actually deserves to be a classic. Taking off a star for Lord Henry's blowhard speeches and that one chapter in the middle that mostly tested my knowledge of gemstones and fabrics. I understand why they're there, but the book elevated itself to 5 stars once I decided to skim and skip these bits. The Lord Arthur Savile story included in this edition was also a gem!

“one should never do anything that one can’t talk about after dinner”

Exquisitely written thriller. His coming of age story depicts that of a more metaphorical man that suffers from the impediments of his never-changing attractiveness despite his age. The novel connects the invisible gap between youth and youthful sins, whilst describing a more complex relationship between the two.

I loved the story and the ending was such a wonderful plot twist. I was constantly enraged by most anything that Lord Henry said, but later I realize that this was Wilde crafting his famously poisonous personality. The story is about naivetée, loss of innocence, youth, and the privileges of beauty. Dorian's downward spiral and his lack of remorse are what make the book the masterpiece that it is. Despite knowing the historical context and time period in which this book was written, I personally cannot let go of the blatantly misogynistic and sexist themes in the book; it is the only reason this book does not get 5 stars. 8.5/10 I would recommend.

Clairement mon premier coup de coeur de l’année, j’ai adoré à quel point l’histoire est racontée de façon à nous rendre addict au livre ET à nous amener dans le chemin philosophique. Gooooooood good good good good book