The Picture of Dorian Gray

In Basil Hallward's studio, Lord Henry Wotton admires Basil's full-length portrait of Dorian Gray and urges him to exhibit it. Basil refuses, first saying that he has put too much of himself into the work and then explaining that he fears the portrait reveals the secret of his own soul.

Basil tells Lord Henry that he met Dorian two months earlier at Lady Brandon's gathering. He says Dorian's personality affected him immediately and has since changed the way he sees and creates art. Dorian has become the source of a new artistic manner for Basil, and Basil says that work produced since meeting him is the best of his life. Basil also admits that Dorian can be thoughtless and can hurt him, even though Basil regards him as his dearest friend.

Lord Henry recalls that his aunt, Lady Agatha, has spoken of Dorian as an earnest young man with a beautiful nature who plans to help her in the East End. Basil asks Lord Henry not to meet Dorian because he fears Lord Henry's influence would be harmful. The request becomes impossible when Parker announces that Dorian is waiting in the studio, and Basil goes inside with Lord Henry to introduce them.

Dorian Gray meets Lord Henry in Basil's studio while Basil works to finish the portrait. Dorian insists that Lord Henry stay, and Lord Henry argues that influence makes a person echo another, that self-development is life's aim, and that resisting temptation leaves forbidden desires brooding in the mind. Dorian asks him to stop, conscious that the words have stirred thoughts and impulses that Basil's friendship had never awakened.

In the garden, Lord Henry turns to Dorian's youth and beauty, warning that both will disappear and urging him to seek new sensations while he is young. Dorian is fascinated and frightened by him. When Basil finishes the portrait, Dorian sees his own beauty differently and becomes distressed by the thought that he will age while the image remains young. He wishes that their fates could be reversed and says he would give his soul for it.

Dorian's reaction alarms Basil. After Dorian accuses him of valuing art more than friendship, Basil takes up a palette knife and announces that he will destroy the portrait, but Dorian stops him and says he is in love with it. Basil confirms that the picture belongs to Dorian and will be sent to him. At the end of the chapter, Dorian declines Basil's request to dine with him and chooses to go to the theatre with Lord Henry.

The next day Lord Henry visits his uncle Lord Fermor to learn more about Dorian's family. Fermor says that Dorian's mother, Margaret Devereux, eloped with a penniless young army officer who was killed in a duel at Spa within a few months of the marriage. He repeats an "ugly story" that people said Lord Kelso paid a Belgian adventurer to insult Dorian's father and provoke the duel. Margaret returned to Kelso and died within a year. Fermor also explains that the Selby property came to Margaret through her grandfather, while Lord Henry says that Dorian has Selby and is not yet of age.

Walking to Lady Agatha's lunch, Lord Henry reflects on Dorian's history and on the pleasure he takes in exercising influence. He decides that he will try to dominate Dorian in the way Dorian, without intending it, has transformed Basil's art. At Lady Agatha's, Lord Henry joins a group of society guests and turns conversation about America, philanthropy, suffering, youth, and mistakes into a stream of paradoxes.

Dorian watches Lord Henry closely while Lord Henry consciously tries to fascinate him. After the gathering begins to break up, Dorian asks to accompany Lord Henry to the park. Lord Henry reminds him that he had promised to visit Basil, but Dorian says he would rather go with Lord Henry and asks him to keep talking.

One month later, Dorian waits for Lord Henry at his Mayfair house and meets Lord Henry's wife, Victoria. After she leaves, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he is in love with an actress named Sibyl Vane. He says that Lord Henry's earlier talk gave him a desire to know more of life and sent him searching London for new experiences, which led him to a small East End theatre.

Dorian recounts seeing Sibyl perform Shakespeare and returning night after night. On his third visit he meets her backstage, where she calls him "Prince Charming." He idealizes both her acting and the different heroines she plays, while Lord Henry questions his romantic language. Dorian says that Lord Henry has a curious influence over him and makes plans for Lord Henry and Basil to see Sibyl perform Juliet the following evening.

After Dorian leaves, Lord Henry reflects on his own influence and thinks of Dorian as, to a large extent, his creation and as a subject through whom he can study human passions. Late that night, Lord Henry returns home and finds a telegram from Dorian announcing that he is engaged to Sibyl Vane.

In the Vane family's Euston Road lodgings, Sibyl tells her mother how happy she is with the man she calls Prince Charming. Mrs. Vane worries about debts to the theatre manager, Mr. Isaacs, and asks whether Sibyl's admirer is wealthy. Sibyl's younger brother James, who is preparing to leave for Australia, distrusts the unknown gentleman and repeatedly tells their mother to watch over Sibyl.

Sibyl and James spend his last afternoon together. Sibyl imagines an adventurous future for him in Australia while James warns her about Prince Charming. When Dorian passes nearby in a carriage, Sibyl recognizes him, but another carriage blocks James's view before he can see Dorian. James declares that if the man ever harms Sibyl, he will kill him.

After they return home, James confronts his mother about his own father. Mrs. Vane admits that she and James's father were never married, says that he was a gentleman who was not free to marry her, and says he would have provided for them had he lived. Before James leaves, he again vows that if Sibyl's admirer wrongs her, he will find and kill him. Mrs. Vane does not tell Sibyl about the threat.

At the Bristol, Lord Henry tells Basil that Dorian is engaged to an actress. Basil objects to the social disparity and fears the marriage could harm Dorian, while Lord Henry treats the engagement as another potentially interesting experience. Dorian then arrives and recounts the previous evening: after Sibyl's performance as Rosalind, they kissed, and he told her that he loved her. He says there was no formal proposal; Sibyl replied that she was not worthy to be his wife, and Dorian now regards them as secretly engaged.

Dorian tells Basil and Lord Henry that Sibyl changes him. In her presence, he says, he regrets Lord Henry's teachings and forgets his theories about life, love, and pleasure. The three men argue about marriage, pleasure, goodness, individualism, and the possible cost of living only for oneself.

They leave for the theatre to see Sibyl play Juliet. Dorian and Lord Henry ride together while Basil follows alone. Basil, who cannot bear the proposed marriage, feels a strong sense of loss and thinks that Dorian will never again mean to him what he did before.

Dorian brings Lord Henry and Basil to the theatre to see Sibyl perform Juliet. Sibyl is beautiful, but her acting is unexpectedly poor: her delivery sounds artificial, her gestures are awkward, and the audience begins to hiss. Basil suggests that she may be ill, but Dorian stays through the entire performance after Lord Henry and Basil leave.

Backstage, Sibyl is joyful rather than ashamed. She tells Dorian that before loving him she had mistaken the theatre for reality, but now the stage seems false to her and she can no longer convincingly imitate passions she does not feel. Dorian responds that her art was what made him love her. He calls her shallow and stupid, says she has killed his love, refuses her pleas for forgiveness, and leaves her.

Dorian wanders until dawn and returns home. Looking at Basil's portrait, he sees what appears to be a new expression of cruelty around the mouth, while his own face remains unchanged. He remembers his wish that the portrait might bear the effects of age and passion in his place. Although he struggles to accept that the painting could really have changed, he treats it as a possible visible emblem of conscience. Regretting his cruelty to Sibyl, he decides to return to her, make amends, marry her, and resist Lord Henry's influence, then places a screen in front of the portrait.

The next afternoon, Dorian examines the portrait again and confirms that it really has altered. The new cruelty around the mouth makes him conscious of how cruelly he treated Sibyl, and he writes her a long letter asking forgiveness. He intends to marry her and imagines the portrait serving as a visible guide to his conscience.

Lord Henry arrives and tells Dorian that Sibyl is dead. He reports that she was found dead in her dressing room after swallowing a poisonous substance and says that he has no doubt the death was intentional, although the public account will treat it as an accident. Dorian is horrified and blames himself, but Lord Henry repeatedly recasts Sibyl's death as a dramatic and artistic event. Dorian gradually adopts that framing, saying that the tragedy seems like the ending of a play and that Lord Henry has explained him to himself.

After Lord Henry leaves, Dorian looks at the portrait and finds no further change. He speculates about whether it responds to events, to his soul, or to some unknown cause. He then decides not to pray for the connection to end. Drawn by the prospect of remaining young and by curiosity about watching the portrait change, he accepts that the picture will bear his shame while he keeps his youth. He covers it again and later joins Lord Henry at the opera.

The next morning Basil visits Dorian after learning of Sibyl's death and discovering that Dorian had gone to the opera. Basil is shocked by Dorian's detachment and by his description of Sibyl's death as a romantic tragedy. Dorian says that Lord Henry has helped him see events differently, insists that he did suffer before the feeling passed, and asks Basil to help him remember Sibyl through art rather than grief.

Basil then asks to see the portrait. Dorian becomes terrified and threatens to end their friendship if Basil looks behind the screen. When Basil says that he intends to include the portrait in a Paris exhibition, Dorian reminds him that he once refused to exhibit it and presses him to explain why.

Basil confesses that Dorian's personality dominated his art and that he feared the portrait revealed his private worship and jealousy. He also says that after the painting left his studio he came to think he had exaggerated what the work revealed, which is why he later decided to exhibit it. Relieved that Basil has not discovered the portrait's actual change, Dorian refuses to let him see it and decides after Basil leaves that the picture must be hidden somewhere inaccessible to his friends.

Dorian decides to move the portrait to the old schoolroom at the top of his house, a room for which he alone will hold the key. He asks Mrs. Leaf for the key, sends Victor away on an errand, and covers the portrait with a purple-and-gold Venetian coverlet that he thinks may once have served as a funeral pall. Before covering it, he observes that the painted expression seems unchanged, although his loathing of it has increased.

Mr. Hubbard, a frame-maker, and an assistant carry the covered portrait upstairs. In the schoolroom Dorian remembers his lonely childhood and Lord Kelso's hostility toward him. He considers both the possibility that his nature might improve and the certainty, in his own mind, that the portrait will age even if it escapes further marks of sin. Once the workmen leave, he locks the room and feels that his secret is safer.

Later, Dorian reads a newspaper report stating that the inquest into Sibyl Vane's death returned a verdict of death by misadventure. He then opens a yellow-covered book sent by Lord Henry. The book, a psychological study of a young Parisian devoted to experiences and ideas from many ages, fascinates him so completely that he loses track of time and arrives late to meet Lord Henry for dinner.

For years Dorian remains under the yellow book's influence and obtains nine differently bound copies of its first edition. He treats its young Parisian protagonist as a type that anticipates his own life. Meanwhile his outward youth remains unchanged, while the portrait grows older and more corrupt. Dorian repeatedly compares his face in a mirror with the altered image and takes pleasure in the contrast, although he sometimes feels fear or selfish pity for what he has done to his soul.

Dorian tries to develop a deliberate philosophy of life centered on experience and the "spiritualizing of the senses," a new Hedonism resembling what Lord Henry had predicted. He moves through temporary intellectual and sensory pursuits, including religious ritual, mysticism, materialist ideas, perfumes, music and unusual instruments, jewels, textiles, and ecclesiastical vestments. His collections also serve as ways to forget, for a time, the fear associated with the portrait.

As Dorian grows older without appearing to age, rumors and social suspicions accumulate around him. The text reports allegations that he has visited disreputable places and associated with criminals, while also noting that many people refuse to believe the stories because of his appearance, wealth, and manners. Some former intimates shun him. Dorian becomes increasingly afraid that someone will discover or steal the portrait and sometimes rushes back to London simply to check it.

Dorian also studies portraits of his ancestors and imagines possible inheritances of temperament, then turns to infamous figures from history and from the yellow book as imaginative predecessors. The chapter ends by stating that Dorian has been poisoned by the book and that at times he regards evil itself as a means of realizing his conception of beauty.

On the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, Dorian encounters Basil in the fog as Basil is preparing to leave for Paris. Basil follows him home and says he must address the terrible rumors circulating about Dorian. He names former associates whose lives or reputations have ended badly and repeats accusations about Dorian's conduct, while emphasizing that he has resisted believing them because Dorian's youthful face still looks innocent.

Dorian rejects Basil's attempt to infer responsibility from what has happened to other people and dismisses English society as hypocritical. Basil nevertheless presses him to answer the charges directly. He says that Dorian's friendships appear destructive, repeats further reports about his behavior, and finally admits that he does not know whether the accusations are true.

When Basil says he would have to see Dorian's soul before he could truly know him, Dorian decides to show him the portrait. Basil asks one last time for a simple denial of the accusations, but Dorian does not give one. Instead he leads Basil upstairs, calling the hidden portrait a diary that will answer Basil's questions.

Dorian takes Basil to the locked schoolroom and uncovers the portrait, telling him that he is showing him his soul. Basil recognizes his own work and signature beneath the hideous changes and asks what has happened to the painting. Dorian reminds him of the wish he made when the portrait was completed. Basil concludes that the picture reflects what Dorian has done with his life and urges him to pray for forgiveness.

Dorian begins to weep, but then an uncontrollable hatred of Basil comes over him, described as though it had been suggested by the image on the canvas. Seeing a knife he had left in the room days earlier, Dorian takes it, attacks Basil from behind, and repeatedly stabs him until he is dead.

Dorian hides Basil's coat and bag, reasons that Basil's intended trip to Paris will delay suspicion, and stages his own return home by going outside and ringing the bell. His current valet, Francis, confirms that Basil had visited earlier and left at eleven intending to catch his train. Dorian then looks up Alan Campbell's address in a directory, deciding that Campbell is the man he needs.

The morning after Basil's murder, Dorian wakes from an undisturbed sleep and tries to keep the previous night out of his mind. He sends Francis with a message for Alan Campbell, a former close friend whose intimacy with Dorian ended abruptly about five years earlier. While waiting, Dorian becomes increasingly terrified that Campbell may refuse to come.

Campbell arrives but refuses to become involved in Dorian's affairs. Dorian first claims that the dead man upstairs committed suicide, then admits that he murdered him and asks Campbell to use his chemical knowledge to remove every trace of the body. Campbell repeatedly refuses. Dorian then writes something on a piece of paper and shows it to him, while also producing an addressed letter he threatens to send. The contents are withheld, but the threatened disgrace is enough to force Campbell's cooperation.

Dorian sends Francis away to Richmond while Campbell works. On entering the schoolroom, Dorian sees a wet red mark on one painted hand of the portrait that looks to him as though the canvas has sweated blood. He covers the portrait and leaves Campbell alone. Hours later Campbell returns downstairs, says he has done what Dorian demanded, and insists that they never meet again. When Dorian goes upstairs, Basil's body is gone and the room smells strongly of nitric acid.

That evening Dorian attends Lady Narborough's dinner party. Although he maintains an easy social manner and briefly takes pleasure in the contrast between his appearance and what he has done, he cannot eat and drinks champagne eagerly. Lady Narborough and Lord Henry sustain the dinner conversation with talk about marriage, society, and mutual acquaintances, while Lord Henry notices that Dorian seems distracted.

After dinner Lord Henry casually asks what Dorian did after leaving him before eleven the previous night. Dorian first says he went to the club, immediately retracts that answer, and then says he wandered about and returned home around half-past two, when his servant had to admit him because he had left his latch-key behind. The questioning unsettles him, and he leaves early.

At home Dorian decides that dangerous evidence must be destroyed. He burns Basil's coat and bag in the library fire. He then opens a hidden compartment in a cabinet and takes out a small Chinese box containing a heavy-smelling green paste. After hesitating, he replaces the box, dresses plainly, wraps a muffler around his throat, and leaves at midnight. He hires a cab and pays the driver extra to take him quickly toward the river to an address the chapter does not yet identify.

Dorian travels toward the river in search of an opium den, repeating Lord Henry's maxim about curing the soul through the senses. He wants forgetfulness after Basil's murder and believes opium and new sins may suppress the memory of old ones. At the first den he encounters Adrian Singleton, who says his former companions no longer speak to him and that his brother has paid a bill for him. Dorian is disturbed by Adrian's presence and decides to go to another place where he expects not to be recognized.

As Dorian leaves, a woman at the bar calls after him using the name "Prince Charming." A sailor follows and ambushes Dorian in an archway. The man identifies himself as James Vane and says he has spent years searching for the person he blames for Sibyl's death. Dorian saves himself by asking how long ago Sibyl died and then making James look at his youthful face under a lamp. James concludes that someone who looks about twenty cannot be the man he has sought for eighteen years and releases him.

After Dorian leaves, the woman from the den tells James that Dorian really is Prince Charming and swears that she first knew him nearly eighteen years earlier even though he has hardly changed. James runs after him, but Dorian has disappeared. Earlier in the chapter Dorian briefly wonders whether Adrian's ruin is his responsibility, as Basil had claimed, then rejects the idea that he should bear another person's errors.

A week later Dorian is at Selby Royal with a house party that includes the Duchess of Monmouth, her husband, Lord Henry, and Lady Narborough. During tea in the conservatory, Dorian, the Duchess, and Lord Henry trade remarks about names, beauty, love, pleasure, and society. When Lord Henry recalls that Dorian was once called Prince Charming, Dorian asks him not to remind him of it.

Dorian tells the Duchess that he has sought pleasure rather than happiness and found it "often" and "too often." He then goes to fetch orchids for her. A stifled groan and a fall are heard from the far end of the conservatory, and Lord Henry finds Dorian unconscious on the tiled floor.

After Dorian revives, he asks whether he is safe and says he does not want to be alone. He insists on joining dinner despite his fear. The chapter then identifies what terrified him: before fainting, Dorian saw James Vane's face pressed against the conservatory window.

The day after seeing James Vane at the conservatory window, Dorian stays inside in terror, repeatedly imagining that he is being hunted. Lord Henry finds him crying that evening. Dorian remains indoors until the third day, when he convinces himself that the figure at the window may have been an invention of his frightened imagination and joins the shooting party at Selby Royal.

During the shoot, Dorian asks Sir Geoffrey Clouston not to fire at a hare, but Geoffrey shoots and accidentally kills a man hidden in the thicket. Dorian treats the death as a bad omen and tells Lord Henry that he is terrified not of death itself but of its approach. He also says that he wants to escape from himself and considers leaving on his yacht. The accident leaves him so distressed that he decides to return to London that night.

Before Dorian leaves, the head-keeper Thornton reports that the dead man was not one of the estate's beaters but an unidentified sailor carrying a revolver. Dorian immediately goes to the Home Farm to inspect the body. When a farm servant uncovers the dead man's face, Dorian recognizes James Vane. He rides back to the house in tears of relief because he now believes he is safe from James.

Dorian tells Lord Henry that he has decided to become good and describes what he calls his first good action in years. He had planned to leave with a village girl named Hetty, who reminded him of Sibyl Vane, but instead decided to leave her as he had found her. Lord Henry questions whether the decision has actually helped Hetty, while Dorian insists that sparing her from disgrace was an act of self-sacrifice and says he intends to change his life.

Lord Henry then says that London has been discussing Basil's disappearance for six weeks, along with Lord Henry's divorce and Alan Campbell's suicide. Scotland Yard believes Basil left for Paris on the night of November 9, while the French police say he never arrived. Dorian asks whether Basil might have been murdered and then asks what Lord Henry would say if Dorian claimed to have killed him. Lord Henry treats the suggestion as implausible and does not suspect Dorian.

Their conversation turns to Basil's portrait, which Lord Henry believes was lost or stolen, and then to the soul. A biblical phrase about gaining the world and losing one's soul startles Dorian, who insists that the soul is real and can be bought, sold, poisoned, or perfected. Lord Henry continues to marvel at Dorian's unchanged youth. Dorian says that he is no longer the same, asks Lord Henry never to lend anyone the yellow book that he says poisoned him, and repeats that he intends to be good. Lord Henry rejects the idea that a book can influence action. Dorian declines to go to the club and leaves after agreeing to meet Lord Henry the next morning.

Walking home, Dorian hears strangers identify him by name and realizes that he is tired of his notoriety. He thinks about Hetty, whom he had deceived about his wealth and past, and longs for the innocence he believes he has lost. At home he asks himself whether he can really change. He condemns the wish that separated his youthful appearance from the consequences recorded by the portrait and smashes the mirror Lord Henry gave him, blaming his beauty and preserved youth for much of his life.

Dorian knows that James Vane is dead, that Alan Campbell died by suicide without revealing Dorian's secret, and that public interest in Basil's disappearance is fading. He still minimizes his responsibility for Basil's murder and Alan's death, but he is troubled by what he calls the living death of his own soul. Believing his treatment of Hetty may have marked the beginning of a new life, he goes upstairs to see whether the portrait has improved.

Instead, Dorian finds the portrait more loathsome. Its face now shows cunning and hypocrisy, and the blood-like stains have spread across its hands and feet. He questions whether his supposed good deed came from vanity, curiosity, and hypocrisy rather than selflessness. He considers confessing Basil's murder and recognizes public confession as a duty, but rejects it. Deciding that the portrait is the last evidence against him and has functioned as his conscience, he takes the same knife he used to kill Basil and stabs the canvas.

A terrible cry and crash wake the servants. After they enter the locked room from the balcony, they find Basil's portrait hanging on the wall restored to Dorian's youthful beauty. On the floor lies a dead, withered, wrinkled man with a knife in his heart. The servants identify the body as Dorian only by examining his rings.