In this essay I will be looking at how successful Oscar Wilde was at creating a gothic novel. I will be using Edgar Alan Poe's short story 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and the film 'Bram Stokers, Dracula' and the

The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In this essay I will be looking at how successful Oscar Wilde was at creating a gothic novel. I will be using Edgar Alan Poe’s short story ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and the film ‘Bram Stokers, Dracula’ and the earlier version ‘Nosferatu’ as reference pieces to the gothic form. Other pieces I shall be looking at are Goya’s ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’, and Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’.

What is gothic? The dictionary defines gothic as ‘the style of architecture prevalent in Western Europe in the 12th – 16th centuries and revived in the 18th – 19th centuries characterized by pointed arches’. But it is much more than that; gothic represents freedom and human nature at its best. Gothic is action without reaction and feeling without consequence. It allows use to indulge our most secretive fantasies, this is one the main reasons the gothic genre came back in the 18th century because the upper classes were becoming bored with just sitting and going out all the time, with the only worry of what other people thought of them, but when gothic came back in it allowed them to indulge in most secret desires such as bestiality, vampires, homosexuality and other erotic pass times. Gothic architecture is castles and churches, these usually have large tall pillars and high spiked roof tops, the idea was when you prayed the pray floated up to g-d so if the roof was spiked at the top, the prays would build up and finally be projected towards the heavens.

When Oscar Wilde wrote ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ in 1891 the gothic phase was coming to an end but Oscar Wilde still managed to cause uproar when it was published. I shall now be looking at the novel its self and certain gothic passages in the novel with reference to Edgar Alan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. The story is about a young man in his early twenties and how he sells his soul to the devil for eternal youth and beauty. When he does this the newly painted self portrait of himself ages instead of him, this then allows him to explore his greatest fancies and not worry about his soul and the repercussions it shall have upon his friends nor his soul. This already shows signs of the gothic genre, as he is able to become completely free. In the end it destroys him and he dies. In Chapter 16 Oscar Wilde writes about how Dorian Gray visits opium dens. The opium dens almost take Dorian Gray out of reality and into the dream world. On page 177 Oscar Wilde writes an amazing line that is very gothic ‘…the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened, he felt afraid.’ This is just like how ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ describes the house that the Usher family live in you can find this in the first two paragraphs of the story. When we first meet Dorian Gray he is a young naive boy untouched by the world but the day he meets Lord Henry, the extremely illogical, destructive and selfish friend of Basil Hallward, Lord Henry says something that changes Dorian Gray’s life forever. Despite Basil Hallward’s warning to Dorian Gray about Lord Henry and his ‘words of wisdom’, because it will be Dorian Gray’s relationship to Lord Henry that eventually leads to his downfall. The first gothic set piece in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ is on pages 48 - 49 in chapter 4 where Dorian Gray wonders the streets late at night for no apparent reason, but stumbles upon a small theatre owned by a Jew and Dorian Gray enters to watch the play. In this passage we find Dorian Gray quoting Lord Henry more and more for instance ‘I felt that this grey, monstrous London of ours, ... as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me.’ The passage is also a classic gothic night adventure with nightmarish characters like the Jew. Within this theatre Dorian Gray finds he is falling for the young actress Sibyl Vane and proposes to her. Sibyl Vane refers to Dorian Gray as ‘Prince Charming’ this makes us think of fairy tales that are never far off from the idea of gothic with castles and evil etc. She falls in love with him. However she feels she cannot pretend her love on the stage now that she has found true love with Dorian Gray. Then after Dorian Gray casts her aside in a terribly cruel way. The next day Dorian Gray tries to correct his error with Sibyl Vane as he begins to see his portrait change, a line in the book that relates to his sudden urge to be good is when he says ‘He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors’ this is very familiar to Goya’s painting ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’, but just after finishing his apology letter to Sibyl Vane, Lord Henry enters to tell him that she had killed herself, this relates to his family history which is very gothic, with the romantic marriage, duels to the death, plotting parents, suicide of young brides and orphans.

In Chapter 11 on page 126-127 there is a perfect reference to Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ where Oscar Wilde writes ‘There are few of us who have not sometimes been wakened before dawn,….In black fantasies shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there.’ The reason this is a good reference to the book and the painting is the shadows crouching in the corner of the room are like the horse hidden in the shadows of the painting ‘The Nightmare’ both these pieces are very gothic.

In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ we see Dorian Gray’s ...

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In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ we see Dorian Gray’s descent into sheer horror slowly but in Chapter 13 on pages 151-152 Dorian Gray kills Basil Hallward the artist who painted the picture of him this is the first act in which Dorian Gray commits a huge sin that changes his portrait the most as when he has killed Basil he gets Alan Campbell a scientist to get rid of the body, but for Alan to do this Dorian Gray has to blackmail Alan. Alan does get rid of the body for Dorian but later in the book kills himself. Again we see here more blood on Dorian Gray’s hands and more suffering he causes in the world for eternal youth and beauty. Dorian Gray in the end is tormented by the painting that he thought would save his soul. He then kills himself by accident while trying to destroy the painting. He grabs the knife used to kill Basil Hallward and lunges and stabs the painting not realising that the painting is in most ways himself and that in destroying it he will destroy himself. This may be his punishment for living the life of a hedonist and for prizing beauty too highly, in which case the novel would be a criticism if the philosophy of aestheticism. However, it could just be as possible that Dorian Gray is suffering for having violated the creeds of aestheticism. In other words, one can argue that Dorian Gray’s belief that his portrait reflects the state of his soul violates the principles of aesthetics since, within that philosophy, art has no moral component.

In other gothic stories we have studied, we have seen that Oscar Wilde was very successful at creating a gothic novel and that I can now understand why it was so ahead of its time. When we look at ‘Nosferatu’ and Bram Stokers ‘Dracula’ we not only see the gore and the vampirism that the movie is about, we see the love aspect and the romance associated with other genres that aren’t gothic. When you study gothic fully you do realise that it is the dramatic romance and the freedom that make gothic what it is, a perfect genre for the people who wish to indulge their darkest fantasies or just want a bone chilling read for the holidays. In ‘Dracula’ and ‘Nosferatu’ we see gothic set pieces like the old castle, the good and evil sides of human nature with damsels in distress begin rescued by their true love. In the end gothic is either something you live by or something that you enjoy every so often. But who ever you are there is a macabre fascination for this insight into the taboo of love and evil combined.

By Raphael Yadgaroff

Rtpu.

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde.

Ibid.