finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_17_part_0.txt
The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapters 19-20
chapters 19-20
{"name": "Chapters 19-20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219150422/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/summary-and-analysis/chapters-1920", "summary": "Approximately six months have passed. As Chapter 19 opens, Dorian and Lord Henry apparently have just dined at the older man's home. Despite recently having gone through a divorce, Lord Henry is his usual witty self. Dorian seems more pensive, even grave. They are discussing Dorian's vow to change his behavior. Lord Henry says that Dorian is perfectly fine as he is. Dorian, however, says that he has done \"too many dreadful things\" in his life. He wants to reform. In fact, he began the previous day. He was staying alone at a small inn in the country and was seeing a young girl named Hetty Merton. She reminded him of Sibyl Vane in her beauty and innocence. A simple village girl, Dorian is fairly sure that he loved her. They were to run off together that morning at dawn, but he spared the child by leaving her \"as flowerlike as I had found her.\" Lord Henry brings up the disappearance of Basil; he also mentions his own divorce and Alan Campbell's suicide. Lord Henry allows that only death and vulgarity cannot be explained. He asks Dorian to play the piano. Dorian plays for a while but stops and asks Lord Henry if he ever thought that Basil might have been murdered. Lord Henry dismisses the idea with a quip. When Dorian asks what Lord Henry would say if Dorian claimed to be the murderer, Lord Henry states that the crime does not suit Dorian; it is too vulgar. Lord Henry then asks about Basil's portrait of Dorian. Dorian confirms that it was lost or stolen, but he never cared much for it anyway. Lord Henry tells of walking through the park the previous Sunday and observing a group of people listening to a preacher who asked, \"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?\" Lord Henry found this \"uncouth Christian\" to be \"curious\" and \"hysterical.\" Dorian, however, is not amused. Lord Henry has no interest in a serious discussion and indirectly asks Dorian to reveal the secret of his youth. To retrieve his youth, says the older man, \"I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.\" He wishes he could change places with Dorian, and he is pleased that the younger man has never actually \"done anything.\" Dorian's life has been his art. For once, Dorian is in no mood for flattery and says he wishes to retire early. The subject of the \"yellow book\" occurs to Dorian, and he asks Lord Henry never to lend the destructive volume to anyone else. They agree to meet the next morning. Back home, Dorian wonders if he will ever really change. He reflects on Basil's death and Alan Campbell's suicide, but what really bothers him is the death of his own soul. He rationalizes that Basil painted the damaging portrait and said \"unbearable\" things to Dorian. Alan Campbell's suicide was the man's own doing, not Dorian's. They are nothing to him. His own life is his only concern. Wondering if the portrait has changed since his virtuous behavior toward Hetty Merton, he creeps upstairs to see. In the attic room, Dorian lifts the cloth off the portrait. If anything, the picture looks even more evil. Around the eyes there is \"a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite.\" Blood has spread over the fingers, onto the feet, even to the other hand. Dorian shudders. He wonders if he should confess Basil's murder but dismisses the idea. The portrait itself is the only evidence against him. He no longer enjoys its record of his debauchery. He worries that it will be discovered and decides to destroy it. The knife he used to murder Basil is still in the room. Using it to \"kill the past,\" he grabs the knife and stabs the portrait. The servants are awakened by a horrible scream and a crash. Two passersby outside are so alarmed that they summon a policeman. No one inside Dorian's house responds when the officer rings at the door. After fifteen minutes or so, Francis ascends the staircase with two other servants. No one answers their knock on the attic door, and they cannot force it open. They climb to the roof, drop to the balcony, open a window, and go into the attic. There, they find an old and ugly man lying in front of their master's portrait. In the portrait, Dorian appears as beautiful and young as he had the day before.", "analysis": "In the Faust legend, the main character ultimately confronts the loss of his soul but is incapable of seeking redemption through confession and absolution. He despairs and feels that he is beneath pardon or that there is no God or power strong enough to save him. In this sense, the Faust protagonist still suffers the sin of pride in that he sees his own case as so special that it is beyond God's help. Despair is the one unpardonable sin because the sinner is incapable of asking to be pardoned. Traditionally, despair is symbolized by suicide. In the closing chapters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's behavior and attitude are consistent with this Faust tradition. Dorian has matured from the naive, vain youth in Basil's studio. He has grown into a man who was at first despicable but in the end is almost likable. Perhaps he is more pitiable than likable. However, he cannot find salvation because he is incapable of setting aside his pride, confessing, and asking for absolution. In Chapter 19, as the after-dinner scene opens at Lord Henry's, Dorian is bursting with pride because of a recent act of decency. He has returned Hetty Merton to her country life after winning her devotion. Unfortunately, instead of seeing this act as only one small step, Dorian expects instant reward. When he checks the portrait for some sign of his newfound virtue, he finds only a look of cunning about the eyes and a wrinkle of hypocrisy in the mouth. There seems to be fresh blood on the hands. Instead of redeeming his soul, his act of supposed redemption has tarnished his soul even more because the act was motivated by selfishness. Dorian cannot redeem his soul because he is still primarily interested in himself. He dismisses the deaths of Basil and Alan Campbell. The first, he decides, was inevitable; the second made his own choice. In neither case does Dorian accept his own responsibility. Still, he is torn because he realizes that the \"soul is a terrible reality.\" He thinks that a person should pray for punishment, but he fails to understand that the only way of absolving immoral responsibility is to pray for forgiveness. In the novel's powerful final paragraphs, Dorian, in effect, commits suicide. He despises the figure in the portrait, but that is who he has become. When he slashes at the painting with the knife, appropriately the same knife that killed Basil, Dorian kills himself. The horrible cry, which awakens the servants and startles the men on the street, carries with it the agony of eighteen years of horror. Glossary idyll a scene or event of rural simplicity. Perdita and Florizel lovers in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Ophelia a leading character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet; she dies by drowning, although Shakespeare leaves unclear if her drowning is a suicide or an accident. Scotland Yard headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police, housed at New Scotland Yard on the Thames embankment. Burgundy a wine, usually red, produced in the Burgundy  region of southeastern France. vinaigrette French, from Old French vinaigre, \"vinegar\"; a small, often decorated container used for aromatic restoratives, such as smelling salts or vinegar solutions. Chopin Frederic Francois Chopin , Polish pianist and composer of works for piano and orchestra; resident of France from 1829 until his death. Velasquez Diego Rodriquez de Silva y Velasquez , Spanish painter. Seine the river that runs through Paris. Like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7, 108-09. Jav an island of Indonesia. scurf scaly or shredded dry skin. nocturne a musical composition intended to evoke thoughts or feelings of night. Majorca largest of Spain's Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea, about 120 miles southeast of Barcelona. Apollo in Greek mythology, the god of the sun, music, and poetry; a young man of great physical beauty. Marsyas in Greek mythology, he lost a music contest and his life to Apollo. palate the roof of the mouth. lilas blanc French, meaning \"white lilac.\" iniquities sins. idolatrous excessively adoring. visage facial expression; appearance."}

"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried
Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled
with rose-water. "You are quite perfect.  Pray, don't change."

Dorian Gray shook his head.  "No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful
things in my life.  I am not going to do any more.  I began my good
actions yesterday."

"Where were you yesterday?"

"In the country, Harry.  I was staying at a little inn by myself."

"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the
country.  There are no temptations there.  That is the reason why
people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized.
Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to.  There are
only two ways by which man can reach it.  One is by being cultured, the
other by being corrupt.  Country people have no opportunity of being
either, so they stagnate."

"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian.  "I have known something of
both.  It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
together.  For I have a new ideal, Harry.  I am going to alter.  I
think I have altered."

"You have not yet told me what your good action was.  Or did you say
you had done more than one?" asked his companion as he spilled into his
plate a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and, through a
perforated, shell-shaped spoon, snowed white sugar upon them.

"I can tell you, Harry.  It is not a story I could tell to any one
else.  I spared somebody.  It sounds vain, but you understand what I
mean.  She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane.  I
think it was that which first attracted me to her.  You remember Sibyl,
don't you?  How long ago that seems!  Well, Hetty was not one of our
own class, of course.  She was simply a girl in a village.  But I
really loved her.  I am quite sure that I loved her.  All during this
wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her
two or three times a week.  Yesterday she met me in a little orchard.
The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was
laughing.  We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn.
Suddenly I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I had found her."

"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill
of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry.  "But I can finish
your idyll for you.  You gave her good advice and broke her heart.
That was the beginning of your reformation."

"Harry, you are horrible!  You mustn't say these dreadful things.
Hetty's heart is not broken.  Of course, she cried and all that.  But
there is no disgrace upon her.  She can live, like Perdita, in her
garden of mint and marigold."

"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he
leaned back in his chair.  "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
boyish moods.  Do you think this girl will ever be really content now
with any one of her own rank?  I suppose she will be married some day
to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman.  Well, the fact of having
met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she
will be wretched.  From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I
think much of your great renunciation.  Even as a beginning, it is
poor.  Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the
present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies
round her, like Ophelia?"

"I can't bear this, Harry!  You mock at everything, and then suggest
the most serious tragedies.  I am sorry I told you now.  I don't care
what you say to me.  I know I was right in acting as I did.  Poor
Hetty!  As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at
the window, like a spray of jasmine.  Don't let us talk about it any
more, and don't try to persuade me that the first good action I have
done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever
known, is really a sort of sin.  I want to be better.  I am going to be
better.  Tell me something about yourself.  What is going on in town?
I have not been to the club for days."

"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance."

"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said
Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly.

"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and
the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having
more than one topic every three months.  They have been very fortunate
lately, however.  They have had my own divorce-case and Alan Campbell's
suicide.  Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.
Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left
for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor
Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris
at all.  I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has
been seen in San Francisco.  It is an odd thing, but every one who
disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.  It must be a
delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."

"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his
Burgundy against the light and wondering how it was that he could
discuss the matter so calmly.

"I have not the slightest idea.  If Basil chooses to hide himself, it
is no business of mine.  If he is dead, I don't want to think about
him.  Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me.  I hate it."

"Why?" said the younger man wearily.

"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything
nowadays except that.  Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in
the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.  Let us have our
coffee in the music-room, Dorian.  You must play Chopin to me.  The man
with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely.  Poor Victoria!
I was very fond of her.  The house is rather lonely without her.  Of
course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit.  But then one
regrets the loss even of one's worst habits.  Perhaps one regrets them
the most.  They are such an essential part of one's personality."

Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next
room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white
and black ivory of the keys.  After the coffee had been brought in, he
stopped, and looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever
occur to you that Basil was murdered?"

Lord Henry yawned.  "Basil was very popular, and always wore a
Waterbury watch.  Why should he have been murdered?  He was not clever
enough to have enemies.  Of course, he had a wonderful genius for
painting.  But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as
possible.  Basil was really rather dull.  He only interested me once,
and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration
for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art."

"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his
voice.  "But don't people say that he was murdered?"

"Oh, some of the papers do.  It does not seem to me to be at all
probable.  I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not
the sort of man to have gone to them.  He had no curiosity.  It was his
chief defect."

"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"
said the younger man.  He watched him intently after he had spoken.

"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
doesn't suit you.  All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder.  I am sorry if I hurt
your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true.  Crime belongs
exclusively to the lower orders.  I don't blame them in the smallest
degree.  I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us,
simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."

"A method of procuring sensations?  Do you think, then, that a man who
has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?
Don't tell me that."

"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord
Henry, laughing.  "That is one of the most important secrets of life.
I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake.  One should
never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.  But let us
pass from poor Basil.  I wish I could believe that he had come to such
a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I dare say he fell
into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the
scandal.  Yes:  I should fancy that was his end.  I see him lying now
on his back under those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges
floating over him and long weeds catching in his hair.  Do you know, I
don't think he would have done much more good work.  During the last
ten years his painting had gone off very much."

Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began
to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged
bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo
perch.  As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf
of crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards
and forwards.

"Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out of
his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off.  It seemed to me to have
lost something.  It had lost an ideal.  When you and he ceased to be
great friends, he ceased to be a great artist.  What was it separated
you?  I suppose he bored you.  If so, he never forgave you.  It's a
habit bores have.  By the way, what has become of that wonderful
portrait he did of you?  I don't think I have ever seen it since he
finished it.  Oh!  I remember your telling me years ago that you had
sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the
way.  You never got it back?  What a pity! it was really a
masterpiece.  I remember I wanted to buy it.  I wish I had now.  It
belonged to Basil's best period.  Since then, his work was that curious
mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man
to be called a representative British artist.  Did you advertise for
it?  You should."

"I forget," said Dorian.  "I suppose I did.  But I never really liked
it.  I am sorry I sat for it.  The memory of the thing is hateful to
me.  Why do you talk of it?  It used to remind me of those curious
lines in some play--Hamlet, I think--how do they run?--

    "Like the painting of a sorrow,
     A face without a heart."

Yes:  that is what it was like."

Lord Henry laughed.  "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is
his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.

Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano.
"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a
heart.'"

The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes.  "By
the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if
he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?--his own
soul'?"

The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend.
"Why do you ask me that, Harry?"

"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,
"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.
That is all.  I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by
the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people
listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the
man yelling out that question to his audience.  It struck me as being
rather dramatic.  London is very rich in curious effects of that kind.
A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly
white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful
phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very
good in its way, quite a suggestion.  I thought of telling the prophet
that art had a soul, but that man had not.  I am afraid, however, he
would not have understood me."

"Don't, Harry.  The soul is a terrible reality.  It can be bought, and
sold, and bartered away.  It can be poisoned, or made perfect.  There
is a soul in each one of us.  I know it."

"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"

"Quite sure."

"Ah! then it must be an illusion.  The things one feels absolutely
certain about are never true.  That is the fatality of faith, and the
lesson of romance.  How grave you are!  Don't be so serious.  What have
you or I to do with the superstitions of our age?  No:  we have given
up our belief in the soul.  Play me something.  Play me a nocturne,
Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept
your youth.  You must have some secret.  I am only ten years older than
you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow.  You are really
wonderful, Dorian.  You have never looked more charming than you do
to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first.  You were rather
cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary.  You have changed, of
course, but not in appearance.  I wish you would tell me your secret.
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take
exercise, get up early, or be respectable.  Youth!  There is nothing
like it.  It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.  The only
people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much
younger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has revealed to
them her latest wonder.  As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.
I do it on principle.  If you ask them their opinion on something that
happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in
1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew
absolutely nothing.  How lovely that thing you are playing is!  I
wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the
villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes?  It is marvellously
romantic.  What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that
is not imitative!  Don't stop.  I want music to-night. It seems to me
that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you.
I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of.  The
tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.  I am
amazed sometimes at my own sincerity.  Ah, Dorian, how happy you are!
What an exquisite life you have had!  You have drunk deeply of
everything.  You have crushed the grapes against your palate.  Nothing
has been hidden from you.  And it has all been to you no more than the
sound of music.  It has not marred you.  You are still the same."

"I am not the same, Harry."

"Yes, you are the same.  I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
Don't spoil it by renunciations.  At present you are a perfect type.
Don't make yourself incomplete.  You are quite flawless now.  You need
not shake your head:  you know you are.  Besides, Dorian, don't deceive
yourself.  Life is not governed by will or intention.  Life is a
question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which
thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.  You may fancy
yourself safe and think yourself strong.  But a chance tone of colour
in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once
loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten
poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music
that you had ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things
like these that our lives depend.  Browning writes about that
somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us.  There are
moments when the odour of _lilas blanc_ passes suddenly across me, and I
have to live the strangest month of my life over again.  I wish I could
change places with you, Dorian.  The world has cried out against us
both, but it has always worshipped you.  It always will worship you.
You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is
afraid it has found.  I am so glad that you have never done anything,
never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything
outside of yourself!  Life has been your art.  You have set yourself to
music.  Your days are your sonnets."

Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair.
"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to
have the same life, Harry.  And you must not say these extravagant
things to me.  You don't know everything about me.  I think that if you
did, even you would turn from me.  You laugh.  Don't laugh."

"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian?  Go back and give me the
nocturne over again.  Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that
hangs in the dusky air.  She is waiting for you to charm her, and if
you play she will come closer to the earth.  You won't?  Let us go to
the club, then.  It has been a charming evening, and we must end it
charmingly.  There is some one at White's who wants immensely to know
you--young Lord Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son.  He has already copied
your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you.  He is quite
delightful and rather reminds me of you."

"I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes.  "But I am tired
to-night, Harry.  I shan't go to the club.  It is nearly eleven, and I
want to go to bed early."

"Do stay.  You have never played so well as to-night. There was
something in your touch that was wonderful.  It had more expression
than I had ever heard from it before."

"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling.  "I am a
little changed already."

"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry.  "You and I will
always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once.  I should not forgive that.
Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one.  It
does harm."

"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize.  You will soon be
going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people
against all the sins of which you have grown tired.  You are much too
delightful to do that.  Besides, it is no use.  You and I are what we
are, and will be what we will be.  As for being poisoned by a book,
there is no such thing as that.  Art has no influence upon action.  It
annihilates the desire to act.  It is superbly sterile.  The books that
the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
That is all.  But we won't discuss literature.  Come round to-morrow. I
am going to ride at eleven.  We might go together, and I will take you
to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome.  She is a charming woman, and
wants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying.
Mind you come.  Or shall we lunch with our little duchess?  She says
she never sees you now.  Perhaps you are tired of Gladys?  I thought
you would be.  Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves.  Well, in any
case, be here at eleven."

"Must I really come, Harry?"

"Certainly.  The park is quite lovely now.  I don't think there have
been such lilacs since the year I met you."

"Very well.  I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian.  "Good night,
Harry."  As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he
had something more to say.  Then he sighed and went out.



It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and
did not even put his silk scarf round his throat.  As he strolled home,
smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him.  He
heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He
remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared
at, or talked about.  He was tired of hearing his own name now.  Half
the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was
that no one knew who he was.  He had often told the girl whom he had
lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him.  He had
told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and
answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly.  What a
laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing.  And how pretty she had
been in her cotton dresses and her large hats!  She knew nothing, but
she had everything that he had lost.

When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.  He sent
him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and
began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.

Was it really true that one could never change?  He felt a wild longing
for the unstained purity of his boyhood--his rose-white boyhood, as
Lord Henry had once called it.  He knew that he had tarnished himself,
filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he
had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible
joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own, it had
been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to
shame.  But was it all irretrievable?  Was there no hope for him?

Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that
the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the
unsullied splendour of eternal youth!  All his failure had been due to
that.  Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure
swift penalty along with it.  There was purification in punishment.
Not "Forgive us our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be
the prayer of man to a most just God.

The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many
years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids
laughed round it as of old.  He took it up, as he had done on that
night of horror when he had first noted the change in the fatal
picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished
shield.  Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a
mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed
because you are made of ivory and gold.  The curves of your lips
rewrite history."  The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated
them over and over to himself.  Then he loathed his own beauty, and
flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters
beneath his heel.  It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty
and the youth that he had prayed for.  But for those two things, his
life might have been free from stain.  His beauty had been to him but a
mask, his youth but a mockery.  What was youth at best?  A green, an
unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.  Why had he
worn its livery?  Youth had spoiled him.

It was better not to think of the past.  Nothing could alter that.  It
was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think.  James
Vane was hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard.  Alan Campbell
had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the
secret that he had been forced to know.  The excitement, such as it
was, over Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away.  It was
already waning.  He was perfectly safe there.  Nor, indeed, was it the
death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind.  It was the
living death of his own soul that troubled him.  Basil had painted the
portrait that had marred his life.  He could not forgive him that.  It
was the portrait that had done everything.  Basil had said things to
him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience.  The
murder had been simply the madness of a moment.  As for Alan Campbell,
his suicide had been his own act.  He had chosen to do it.  It was
nothing to him.

A new life!  That was what he wanted.  That was what he was waiting
for.  Surely he had begun it already.  He had spared one innocent
thing, at any rate.  He would never again tempt innocence.  He would be
good.

As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in
the locked room had changed.  Surely it was not still so horrible as it
had been?  Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel
every sign of evil passion from the face.  Perhaps the signs of evil
had already gone away.  He would go and look.

He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs.  As he unbarred the
door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face
and lingered for a moment about his lips.  Yes, he would be good, and
the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror
to him.  He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.

He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and
dragged the purple hanging from the portrait.  A cry of pain and
indignation broke from him.  He could see no change, save that in the
eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of
the hypocrite.  The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if
possible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed
brighter, and more like blood newly spilled.  Then he trembled.  Had it
been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed?  Or the
desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking
laugh?  Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things
finer than we are ourselves?  Or, perhaps, all these?  And why was the
red stain larger than it had been?  It seemed to have crept like a
horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers.  There was blood on the
painted feet, as though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand
that had not held the knife.  Confess?  Did it mean that he was to
confess?  To give himself up and be put to death?  He laughed.  He felt
that the idea was monstrous.  Besides, even if he did confess, who
would believe him?  There was no trace of the murdered man anywhere.
Everything belonging to him had been destroyed.  He himself had burned
what had been below-stairs. The world would simply say that he was mad.
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.

"Whose house is that, Constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.

"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.

They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered.  One of
them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.

Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics
were talking in low whispers to each other.  Old Mrs. Leaf was crying
and wringing her hands.  Francis was as pale as death.

After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the
footmen and crept upstairs.  They knocked, but there was no reply.
They called out.  Everything was still.  Finally, after vainly trying
to force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the
balcony.  The windows yielded easily--their bolts were old.

When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait
of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his
exquisite youth and beauty.  Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
evening dress, with a knife in his heart.  He was withered, wrinkled,
and loathsome of visage.  It was not till they had examined the rings
that they recognized who it was.









Chapters 19-20
Approximately six months have passed. As Chapter 19 opens, Dorian and Lord Henry apparently have just dined at the older man's home. Despite recently having gone through a divorce, Lord Henry is his usual witty self. Dorian seems more pensive, even grave. They are discussing Dorian's vow to change his behavior. Lord Henry says that Dorian is perfectly fine as he is. Dorian, however, says that he has done "too many dreadful things" in his life. He wants to reform. In fact, he began the previous day. He was staying alone at a small inn in the country and was seeing a young girl named Hetty Merton. She reminded him of Sibyl Vane in her beauty and innocence. A simple village girl, Dorian is fairly sure that he loved her. They were to run off together that morning at dawn, but he spared the child by leaving her "as flowerlike as I had found her." Lord Henry brings up the disappearance of Basil; he also mentions his own divorce and Alan Campbell's suicide. Lord Henry allows that only death and vulgarity cannot be explained. He asks Dorian to play the piano. Dorian plays for a while but stops and asks Lord Henry if he ever thought that Basil might have been murdered. Lord Henry dismisses the idea with a quip. When Dorian asks what Lord Henry would say if Dorian claimed to be the murderer, Lord Henry states that the crime does not suit Dorian; it is too vulgar. Lord Henry then asks about Basil's portrait of Dorian. Dorian confirms that it was lost or stolen, but he never cared much for it anyway. Lord Henry tells of walking through the park the previous Sunday and observing a group of people listening to a preacher who asked, "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Lord Henry found this "uncouth Christian" to be "curious" and "hysterical." Dorian, however, is not amused. Lord Henry has no interest in a serious discussion and indirectly asks Dorian to reveal the secret of his youth. To retrieve his youth, says the older man, "I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable." He wishes he could change places with Dorian, and he is pleased that the younger man has never actually "done anything." Dorian's life has been his art. For once, Dorian is in no mood for flattery and says he wishes to retire early. The subject of the "yellow book" occurs to Dorian, and he asks Lord Henry never to lend the destructive volume to anyone else. They agree to meet the next morning. Back home, Dorian wonders if he will ever really change. He reflects on Basil's death and Alan Campbell's suicide, but what really bothers him is the death of his own soul. He rationalizes that Basil painted the damaging portrait and said "unbearable" things to Dorian. Alan Campbell's suicide was the man's own doing, not Dorian's. They are nothing to him. His own life is his only concern. Wondering if the portrait has changed since his virtuous behavior toward Hetty Merton, he creeps upstairs to see. In the attic room, Dorian lifts the cloth off the portrait. If anything, the picture looks even more evil. Around the eyes there is "a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite." Blood has spread over the fingers, onto the feet, even to the other hand. Dorian shudders. He wonders if he should confess Basil's murder but dismisses the idea. The portrait itself is the only evidence against him. He no longer enjoys its record of his debauchery. He worries that it will be discovered and decides to destroy it. The knife he used to murder Basil is still in the room. Using it to "kill the past," he grabs the knife and stabs the portrait. The servants are awakened by a horrible scream and a crash. Two passersby outside are so alarmed that they summon a policeman. No one inside Dorian's house responds when the officer rings at the door. After fifteen minutes or so, Francis ascends the staircase with two other servants. No one answers their knock on the attic door, and they cannot force it open. They climb to the roof, drop to the balcony, open a window, and go into the attic. There, they find an old and ugly man lying in front of their master's portrait. In the portrait, Dorian appears as beautiful and young as he had the day before.
In the Faust legend, the main character ultimately confronts the loss of his soul but is incapable of seeking redemption through confession and absolution. He despairs and feels that he is beneath pardon or that there is no God or power strong enough to save him. In this sense, the Faust protagonist still suffers the sin of pride in that he sees his own case as so special that it is beyond God's help. Despair is the one unpardonable sin because the sinner is incapable of asking to be pardoned. Traditionally, despair is symbolized by suicide. In the closing chapters of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's behavior and attitude are consistent with this Faust tradition. Dorian has matured from the naive, vain youth in Basil's studio. He has grown into a man who was at first despicable but in the end is almost likable. Perhaps he is more pitiable than likable. However, he cannot find salvation because he is incapable of setting aside his pride, confessing, and asking for absolution. In Chapter 19, as the after-dinner scene opens at Lord Henry's, Dorian is bursting with pride because of a recent act of decency. He has returned Hetty Merton to her country life after winning her devotion. Unfortunately, instead of seeing this act as only one small step, Dorian expects instant reward. When he checks the portrait for some sign of his newfound virtue, he finds only a look of cunning about the eyes and a wrinkle of hypocrisy in the mouth. There seems to be fresh blood on the hands. Instead of redeeming his soul, his act of supposed redemption has tarnished his soul even more because the act was motivated by selfishness. Dorian cannot redeem his soul because he is still primarily interested in himself. He dismisses the deaths of Basil and Alan Campbell. The first, he decides, was inevitable; the second made his own choice. In neither case does Dorian accept his own responsibility. Still, he is torn because he realizes that the "soul is a terrible reality." He thinks that a person should pray for punishment, but he fails to understand that the only way of absolving immoral responsibility is to pray for forgiveness. In the novel's powerful final paragraphs, Dorian, in effect, commits suicide. He despises the figure in the portrait, but that is who he has become. When he slashes at the painting with the knife, appropriately the same knife that killed Basil, Dorian kills himself. The horrible cry, which awakens the servants and startles the men on the street, carries with it the agony of eighteen years of horror. Glossary idyll a scene or event of rural simplicity. Perdita and Florizel lovers in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Ophelia a leading character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet; she dies by drowning, although Shakespeare leaves unclear if her drowning is a suicide or an accident. Scotland Yard headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police, housed at New Scotland Yard on the Thames embankment. Burgundy a wine, usually red, produced in the Burgundy  region of southeastern France. vinaigrette French, from Old French vinaigre, "vinegar"; a small, often decorated container used for aromatic restoratives, such as smelling salts or vinegar solutions. Chopin Frederic Francois Chopin , Polish pianist and composer of works for piano and orchestra; resident of France from 1829 until his death. Velasquez Diego Rodriquez de Silva y Velasquez , Spanish painter. Seine the river that runs through Paris. Like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7, 108-09. Jav an island of Indonesia. scurf scaly or shredded dry skin. nocturne a musical composition intended to evoke thoughts or feelings of night. Majorca largest of Spain's Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea, about 120 miles southeast of Barcelona. Apollo in Greek mythology, the god of the sun, music, and poetry; a young man of great physical beauty. Marsyas in Greek mythology, he lost a music contest and his life to Apollo. palate the roof of the mouth. lilas blanc French, meaning "white lilac." iniquities sins. idolatrous excessively adoring. visage facial expression; appearance.