Wilde's Downfall and Final Verdict

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Tonight, we feasted An offer you can feast on. seell your car today on Carmana Pick up these Mfly An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him There was something in his expression that filled him with disgust and loathing Good heavens It was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at. whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodn eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue The noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiseled nostrils and from plastic throat Yes, it was Dorian himself It was some foul parody, some infamous ignobble satire He had never done that Still it was his own picture. He knew it. And he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice Own picture. What did it mean Why had it altered He turned and looked at Dorian Grey with the eyes of a sick man His mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate What does this mean cried Hward at last His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears years ago When I was a boy You met me flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks One day, you introduced me to a friend of yours. Eplain to me the wonder of youth And she finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty in a mad moment that Even now, I don't know whether I regret or not I made a wish you would call it a prayer. Gosh. Hello everybody So those were the adulate tones of Dorian Greay. Welcome to the book Club because we are talking, of course about Oscar Wilde's One and only novel. The picture of Dorian Greay, and this is the moment in the book that many of you will recognize or have heard of. It's the moment when Dorian reveals the truth about his terrible secret. So Dorian is preserving his beauty and his youth, but at the same time his once perfect portrait painted by his friend Basil, Basil Horwward decaying and showing signs of the kind of moral uglness that's tainted Dorian's character. So why has this happened and what are the implications? We'll talk about this later in the show Just tabby a little bit of context for everybody. Dorian Gray was published in Lippingcott's Monthly magazine in eighteen ninety There was then a backlash, wasn't there, which we'll talk about Yeah. And a revised and expanded edition came out a year later It's seen as one of the great masterpieces of Victorian decadent and gothic literature It's lots of stuff about the darkness of the human soul, lots of stuff about vanity, about beauty and pleasure and hedonism, but it's also seen as a critique of Victorian hypocrisy and Victorian attitudes to morality and beauty and so on And here's the twist This book was used against Oscar Wilde When he was tried for gross indecency Five years later, this was seen as proof of his homosexuality and it played a key part in his fall and his eventual imprisonment which basically destroyed his reputation and indeed his life. So get on too all this because the story behind the book In this case I mean, as so often is just as good I think, as the book itself. But first of all You're a big fan of this book, aren't you? the picture adoring G gray? I am I am actually. I don't think I was always a master fan. I loved Oscar Wilde's plays because I thought they were so funny. But Story and Gray didn't sort of massively enchant me or anything. this time though, rereading it I did find it pretty hypnotic almost. I love the language and the writing. I didn't massively care for any of the characters though, but we will We'll talk more about that in due course. But I know you, Dominic, we're not a fan of this book at all. to the horror of our producer, Nicole, who loves this book. Well, the truth is I'd never read it before we did this podcast. So that's a shocking revelation. Philistine. Complete Philisteine. So on the restest is History, which we both work on Tabby, we did a series about Oscar Wilde And the trials of Oscarars and his fall from Grace U And so I'm really interested in wild and the period of the book the eighteen nineties. But I'd actually never read the novel to my great shame So I was really interested to read it. Yeah, I have I have mixed views about it and maybe I'll reveal in the second half Exactly what I think about the book. Maybe our discussion will win you over to the course. Maybe, Well, that has happened before, you know, I have actually raised my scores I know Be I'm very suggestible actually. Yeah. I don't like to disappear Yeah Exactly, exactly. So shall we give people a sense of the story before we talk about the context? So you've got this character who Tabby was playing so brilliantly that this handsome, rich young aristocrat, Dorian becomes the subject of a painting by his friend Basil Hallwood. and Basil is completely infatuated with Dorian. He thinks Dorian is absolutely wonderful, so beautiful. pure, innocent. And yes, he loves all the purity and innocence of Dorian. And write at the beginning of the book Basil's mate who is this very witty, cynical acerbic character called Lord Henry, who speaks entirely in witticisms and kind of and epigrams and stuff. He's a charming rake. Yeah. Lord Henry S Storium. also kind of falls for him is infatuated with him and basically says, Ohh, I'm going to take him under my wing and'm You know, I'm going to give him the love of pleasure and beauty that I have Anyway, in the course of this Dorian partly because he's already, you could say, become tainted by Lord Henry's kind of attentions He sees his painting And he says, Gosh, I wish I could stay young forever And the painting could age instead of me Later on He meets this beautiful actress and he falls in love with her. But then he treats her very badly And he casts her aside, we can talk about this a little bit more later And then he goes home after he's cast her aside and he finds that his painting has changed becausecause now the lips have this kind of cruel twist And basically he realizes that his wish has come true As he ages, The painting will grow old and ugly and as he behaves in a morally depraved way, the painting will show the the sort of physical tintt of his corruption But he himself will stay young and beautiful forever And he says, Ohh, well, in that case, I'll just you know do what I like And he gives his life over to hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure. and he collects beautiful things. He ruins people's lives, He takes up all these young men, he smokes opium, he does all these kinds of things. You know rumors start to spread The sort of respectable world of Victorian high society begins to turn its back on him Basil, his mate, who painted the portrait, but doesn't realize what's happening. starts to sort of worry about him And the book sort of hurtles towards its exciting climax. as Basil will end up confronting Dorian and seeing what's become of the painting. This is the scene that we began with And the question is You know, is Dorian doomed or will he get back the soul that he has kind of sold in order to stay young and beautiful forever. So we'll We'll get into all this story. and also there's a bloke hunting him for revenge, which you know is a little subplot which we'll get into But we'll talk about the book itself in more detail later. Let's set the scene and talk as we often do about the author. So Oscar Wilde, T Tabby, tell us about Oscar Wilde I mean, Oscar Wild, he's such a colourful character, isn't he? I mean feel that everyone has a version of Oscar Wild that they think they know. So it's really interesting to dig into his life a bit more So he's born Oscar Fingl Oflerty Willis Wills Wilde, and he was born in Dublin on the sixteenth of october, eighteen fifty four to his father, Sir William Wilde, who was a leading ear and eye surgeon and a very respected writer, and he would kind of write about folklore and mythology and stuff like that And then his mother, who was called Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, and he was devoted to her throughout his life and she to him And she was a successful poet and journalist. and she would write patriotic Irish verse under the pseudonym Spiranza, which I think is kind of interesting. So he's from, you know a fairly kind of artistic background. Yes. He then went on to attend Trinity in Dublin And then he went to Oxford where he studied classics. And I think that Dorian Gray is full of the influence of the classics, I think, particularly in terms of its kind of idealized version of kind of male relationships and the beauty of that. But we'll get this platonic ideal. Yeah. so common in late Victorian society. Totally, ye. they're revevering the classics again. But then it's while he's at Oxford that he starts getting into this kind of this aesthetic movement that was rising at the time. But even so, he's still considered a very respectable figure at this time. He was actually notoriously kind of proper and quite prim at this point. There was not a whiff of scandal shadowing him And then after he graduated, he moved to Chelsea, where he became a writer and wrote poetry and he'd write reviews, and he'd do lectures kind of across the world in the US and in Paris And then and this might surprise people who kind of know wild as principally kind of an icon, a gay icon. He married in eighteen eighty four a woman called Constance Lloyd and she was an Irish writer. I mean I don't think theirs would turn out to be a particularly happy marriage, but more on that later. And they had two sons, Cyril and Vivian And then we kind of come to the turning point in his life. This is when scandal, the things for which he's most notorious begin. So in eighteen eighty six, he meets a seventy year old boy called Robbie Ross, and Robby Ross is unusually for the time He's kind of overtly gay and he essentially seduces Wild and introduces him to this whole other side of his nature that I suppose he'd sort of kept locked up all this time and Wild actually he really enjoys it. He enjoys it physically He enjoys it emotionally, but he also enjoys kind of the danger associated with living two distinct lives. you know this nightlife of indulging his homosexuality and living more hedonistically. And he called this actually he called this feasting with Panthers. And then the other side of his personality, which is kind of the Victorian family man with his sons and his wife And you can see this massively in Dorian Greay, as we'll discuss, know this idea of a mercurial nature existing as a walking paradox having a kind of complex identity. And he also believes that this side of him This relationship with men and, you know, in this instance a man younger than himself, it kind of elevates him. It allows him to step into this classical world, you know of As I said earlier, this kind of platonic ideal of masculine relationships. Yeah,' trial in the mid eighteen nineties He gave a very, very celebrated speech, celebrated now, but seen as infamous at the time, in which he basically says You know, there's a great nobility and a grace and There's a sophistication and a nuance and a beauty about relationships between men. An older man and a younger man. It's the relationship that you see in the Greeks in the Iliad and all of these kinds of things. Yeah, it's pedderusty, which in ancient Greece, I mean this was institutionalized. It was part of society. It' how a young man became proper man really the help of an older man. But he also kind of saw it in Shakespeare he thought that you know, Shakespeare' sonnets had What's what? men more than between Shakespeare and women and sort you know a noble tradition, essentially, as you say. But even so he's still publishing, he's still writing. So in eighteen eighty eight he published the Happy Prince, which I believe was the title of the Rupert Everett movie. about him, which came up a couple of years ago. And he writes fairy tales and stuff like that for his two sons. And then he obviously publishes the picture of Dor in Gray in eighteen ninety one. And this is received with great outrage. L his wife Comstant said that onece Dor in Gray was published, P peopleople stopped talking to them and because it's kind of quite overt homerotic undertones But also the time. Yeah, exactly. and for the time in particular This is very controversial. Well, I suppose it's because we're in late Victorian, England. so eighteen ninety, eighteen ninety one. We talked about this a little bit in the womoman in White, didn't we? about the sort of? Exactly. ideda of respectability, the idealisation of the family The idea of social hierarchy, all of these kinds of things. There's huge anxiety. I think it's a very anxious time the late eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. 'entally the period of Jathather Ripper. It's the period that Dracula gets written a few years later. There's a lot of anxiety about national decline and degeneracy, ideas about eugenics are coming in A lot of anxiety about crime, about gender relations. So this is the age of what's called the newew woman, a kind of proto feminism. So challenging the idea that there are rigid boundaries between male roles and female roles and so on So there's all of this sort of swirling around. We don't need to massively go into it, but you know it's a ferial kind of intellectual and cultural environment And specifically when it comes to sexuality, there's been a change in the law So to cut a very long and complicated story short In eighteen eighty five, eighteen eighty six There was a sort of reform of the laws. It was designed to protect women and girls because there'd been a great upsurge of anxiety about what was called the white slave trade. So basically prostitution and young girls being sold into prostitution When they passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act, There was an amendment that also criminalized gross indecency between two men. So previously, insofar as homosexuality was punishable by law, it was basically sodomy that was punished But now The category is much more vague and undefined and it's gross indecency And so there's a sort of atmosphere of moral panic, I suppose, about homosexuality. You know The law has effectively being beefed up so you can catch more people. And just a few years after this law is passed There is a huge scandal and it's the perfect scandal already because it's a high society one, which means the newspapers love it called the Cleveland Street sccandal. So basically what happened was Messenger boys at a telegraph office were found they were banned usually from having money And they were found with one boy in particular was found with a lot of cash, basically, a lot of money. And people were worried that he was stealing. and he said, No, I'm not stealing. I basically earned it. And it turned out that he'd earned it in this brothel as a rent boy And it turned out that other Messenger boys had been making money as well The brothel was raided It was a big story And it turned out that it was being patronized by some very rich and very well connected people Most infamously the eckary to the Prince of Wales who was called Lord Arthur Somerset, who ended up fleeing to the continent to avoid cation So that's the sort of context. There's a lot about that in the newspapers and later on there's one of the early reviews of picture of Dorian Gray ment effectively mentions this scandal and says this is a book written for the kind of people who would go to this brothel or would work in it Andd Wilde himself, although he's not swept up in this scandal By the time this happens and by the time he writes Dory in Greay He is becoming increasingly reckless and open, isn't he? in his own sexual life. Yeah, I mean, he is. he's doing stuff like he's letting waiters and or butlers of see him in hotels when he's with young men. He is kissing people openly on the mouth and he's also you know's having more and more of these affairs really. So there's Edward Shelley, who's eighteen and they're having an affair in eighteen ninety two, for instance. But then In eighteen ninety one, he meets kind of the love of his life essentially, although it'll become a very, very toxic relationship. And this is Lord Alfred Douglas and he is the Marquess of Queensbury's son and there willll be more to be said about him in due course. And he's nicknamed Bosy and he's only twenty. And Jude law plays him extremely well in the movie Wilde in which Stephen Fry plays Oscar Wild And he's actually a mega fan of Dian Gray. So he seeks out a meeting with Wilde because you know, he wants to talk to about Dorian Gray and much he admires his work. And I actually thought when I was reading about him that in the descriptions of him, he's incredibly beautiful, he's kind of quite dangerous, he's quite eccentric Yeah, vain, very vain. He's very vain. I don't know, it reminded me of Dorian Grey, which is interesting. Definitely. Definitely. Like if you were casting a film of Dorian Greay, a young Jude Lw totally would be perfect. Ideal, But then I mean, he wasn't the inspiration of Dorian Grey because the book was already written But he's also unlike Wilde, or I suppose increasingly much more so than Wilde Rather. He's very experienced in terms of his kind of gay relationships. He's been having relationships with boys since school. he and Wilde then togetheret start on a particularly controversial stage of wild's life. and this is when they start sleeping with red boys from the eighteen nineties. so By and Wild together. Their public recklessness is mounting And the question is whether or not this is all quite exploitative from Wilde. You know he's richer He's more powerful. These boys are very young and they need money Anyway, word of this obviously reaches Bosti's father, the Marcus of Queensbury old fashioned, powerful, wealthy, and he is furious And he threatens to expose Wilde and cause a massive public scandal. Still, Wilde continues having sex and picking up very young boys, even by the stance of the day and This is, you know, inc increasingly, you know, there's a world of scandals surrounding him, but his but professionally, he's having immense success still at this time partarticularly with his plays Yeah, Lady Windamere is fan a woman of no importance, an ideal husband. Now which is the one you were in? And ideal husband, I've played Mrs. Chieveley. You should read the reviews, Brilliant. What's the character She's like the fem fataile. She's kind of the villain. So me down to a te. Yeah. And I had these amazing costumes. I actually found them online the other day assic vanity. You found you Googled yourself and found the costumes. No, I on my old school website. My life's been one downhill slope since that starring role. You should share these with people on social media Sabi. I think by all means come looking. I look sensational I mean, this is a book about vanity, I suppose. So it's great that we've got you talking about. It's so terrible. Let's get into the novel then. So we'll come back to Wld and his life and how the novel and his life intersect more in the eighteen nineties a bit later. Wild said of Doring Gry, didnn't he that there was much of me in it And there are some critics who sort of say, well, the three main characters, so there's the painter, Basil The dispenser of amusing witicisms, Lord Henry and beautiful, slightly sort of dandish Dorian that they're all aspects of Wilde's own character. But there are aspects of other people's characters, sort of friends of his and stuff aren't they Yeah, I think there were some kind of loose real life influences for Dorian and himself. So there's a man called John Greay and he was a young poet He was in Wild's friendriendship group. He was famously pretty. He's called lovely a lovely boyish youth. And he would and he with friends and apparently they had quite a flirty relationship And he would actually sign some of his letters T wild as Dorian then there was this is definitely I think probably a little bit left field. But people say that the book as a whole was inspired by Benjamin Disraely. so he was Excellent British Prime Mister, his debut novel Vivian Gry because it has the same kind of gothic themes, Dandyism It's very witty and the tragic heroines of that book and Dorian Gry are very alike. And then there's a story that it was inspired by the fact that Wilde himself sat for a portrait by a Canadian artist called Francis Richards, and he wrote of this experience In december eighteen eighty seven, I gave a sitting to a Canadian artist who was staying with some friends of hers and mine in South Kensington. When the sitting was over and I had looked at the portrait, I said in Jest, What a tragic thing it is. This portrait will never grow older and I shall. If it was only the other way, the moment I had said this, it occurred to me what a capital plot idea this would make for a story. The result is Dorian Gray. So he said that Yeah outright that that inspired it. I feel like I feel like there's quite a lot more going on in terms of the influeners than that. but I suppose the basic premise. That's aice that's a nice origin story, I think. And actually there's another nice origin story.t doesn't negate that one. they can both work that basically, I mean, this is an amazing dinner party. Oh yeah, love this. The editor of Lippingcot's Monthly magazine, where it was first published. is an eighteen eighty nine JM Stud arrt he's got three of his favorite people around for dinner. and one of them is a politician called TB Gill, whose everyone's forgotten about, so we don'ret need to talk about him One of them is Oscar Wilde and the other is Arthur Conan Doyle. Where would that Where would that sit like your dream literary dinner parties? Beuse I don't think you'd enjoy sitting next to Oscar Wilde because I think you'd be intimidated by his relentless witicisms. But I think you'd absolutely love synex to Arthicon and Doyle. I'd love to Arthiconan D do, but I don't think I'd be intimidated by Sc. Do you think you' ever known him tiome. I probably might find him tyson, but I think There's a seriousness to Wilde sometimes which is forgotten. Wild beneath all the sort of flowery epigrams and the sort of witty You know, I have nothingare to declare but my genius or whatever, all that kind of stuff he's a very smart and can be quite a serious person. And his views and opinions outside of kind of asesctheticism and art. Yes Yeah For example, he I think he was pro home rule for Ireland, for example. we could talk about politics But I mean, story in Greay itself is a testament to the seriousness of wild. I mean, it has a real heart and soul to it. Yeah. wouldould you go to suchuch Dinner party Tabby?, I'd love to go to such Dinner party. I mean, I think we can probably throw What's his MP politician guy out there Yeah Erid. But the other on one's definitely. That'll be great. Okay. So here's the amazing thing about his dinner party Stodart, the editor of the magazine, says, The reason I'm invited you is I'd like to commission stories from you all I can't I don't even know what happens to TB Gild's story or whether he ever wrote it. But cururrent oil and Wilde said, great, we'll do you a story. and Wilde does the picture Dorian Greay Conan dought is the sign of the fall Great shelloc. I know amazing So the fact that they're both published by this magazine as a result of this dinner, I think is a lovely thing. Anyway. Yeah agreed. So Wilde is already moving towards the themes of this book because he's done another story called the Portrait of Mr. W H which is It's something it's about Shakespeare, the search for a character in Shakespeare' sonnets, isn't it? It's nothing to do with this. He loves Shakespeare a wild, doesn't he? But it's the idea of kind of the particular theme that I think is the homererotic theme which is becoming increasingly explicit in Wilde's work. mirroring the increasing recklessness of his own life. Anyway, he does that in eighteen eighty nine. thenen in eighteen ninety he finally delivers the story that he'd promised this bloke stodar for his magazine And this is the first version of the picture of Dorian Gray and studartts G'esss the story. which is a lot shorter than the novel that we have now And Stodart thought, God, this is quite racey And he took out, I think, about five hundred words or so or maybe more. Yeah, withithout tellelling Wild actually before publishing. Without telling Wild or to all the homeo erotic staff All Dorians Female lovers or references to that because he thought it would shock female readers And even so The story comes out And there's a great outcry. like a lot of the reviews say it's morbid, it's unhealthy, it's dangerous. So the Daily Chronicle, it's a poisonous tale spawned by the leprous literature of the French deceadence, heavy with the odourors of moral and spiritual putrefaction Hosh You don't want that to be a review of one of your books. I mean, I've never had a review like that. That's what they said about our first podcast. Yeah Heavy with the odus of spiritual putiffaction God we would' have done another thing for review like that, wouldn't we T?, would have killed for it. The review that's very famous. so I mentioned the Cleveland Street scandal involving these telegph boys In the Scots Observer, the reviewer says This is the kind of book that is written for outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys. In other words, it doesn't say so explicitly, but it's obvious to everybody who reads it the bloke is saying it's a gay book written for gay people and therefore it is bad. And this is the context for what you mentioned before, which is Constant saying, oh, no one talks to us now because of Dorian Gay and it's, you know, Oscar has blotted his copy book and all this stuff. Yeah. so because of this outrage because of these reactions. In april eighteen ninety one, Oscar Wilde published a revised and expanded edition. H hone down the existing chapters even more in the kind of home eroticism He divided the final chapter into two chapters and then he wrote six entirely new chapters. So for instance, the character Sybil that we mentioned when we were going through the plot, he expanded that kind of mini storyline of it more. He introduces the character of James Vane, Sybil's brother in order to kind of hold a mirror up to Dorian's immorality so that it's inside it, you're not kind of reveveling in his immorality with him. Yeah, you have a critic as it were. You have a critic and to kind of introduce a class element to the book, i. e it's not a book just about homeerotism. it's also a book about far more things that are going on Anyway, despite all this, was despite his toning this down, expanding, etcetera, it was still considered pretty controversial. It's interesting. so a few of the great books that we do on this show Now considered to be great books. are well received in their own time. I'm consistently kind of struck by that. Is it not that that push the boundaries. They're books that run counter to respectability of them. That's what gives them their edge, it gives them the kind of grit and makes them interesting and they are challenging preconceptions. There are always a lot of people who are quite conservative and don't like them And they're often you know part of some kind of what we would retrospectively call like some sort of a movement, whether that's modernism or realism, or whatever it may be. This too fits into a sort of a certain category a genre, isn't it? or a literary movement anyway. we mentioned this earlier. These are the decadents, aren't they? Yes, exactly. So the Daily Chronicle when it said it was spawned by the leprouist literature of French decadence or as it puts it, deccadon. So basically late nineteenth century France, it's very introspective It's very hedonistic, it's very self obsessed There's a massive fixation on art for art's sake, which we'll come back to and on a pleasure, There's a sort of atmosphere that's very heady and a little bit perhaps unhealthy and morbid and all of this kind of thing And actually the book that is the becomes the sort of the totem of the decadent movement features in ory in Greay and it's a book by a French writle Jacques Carl Huismments. The book is called Abor, or it's translated in English is againainst Nature And it was published in eighteen eighty four And in Dorian Grey, this is the book that Lord Henry gives to Dorian to corrupt him. The yellow book. The yellow book And they refer to it as a poisonous French novel. and to quote You know, when Dorian is reading it, Weld says, onene hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner It was a poisonous book The heavy odor of incense seem to cling about its pages and trouble the brain. By Marquee disard that somehow, you know B Marquis disard. but here's the thing. If people listen to this think, o, I must seek out this dangerous and poisonous b. I have a word of warning. It's actually quite boring becausecause it's basically nothing happens and it's the story of this bloke who just sits in his apartment all day in Paris smoking Reading lots of old books, thinking about beauty and arts it's the sort of, again, it's the sort of the introspection of it, the obsession with beauty, the obsession with the past. and the sort of, you know, the sort of shunning of reality and the humrum world. this is the spirit of the decadent movement. It's a rejection of bourgeois respectability and conformity and realism and all of this stuff. I kind of like it I quite like that premise though. I mean, that's kind of what it's an extreme version of what books are there for. you know sayaying goodbye to the world and diving into something totally different and grandiose and yeah, it's escapism It's artistic escapism, yeah, carries the ultimate extreme, which is actually a nice link to this other idea, which is the idea of art for art's sake, which features a lot in Dorian Grey, doesn't it? It does. It's a massive massive thing. I mean, I mentioned how Oscar Wilde had made all these changes to the final edition of Dorian Gray that was published in eighteen ninety one big part of this is that he wrote a preface and the preface is essentially a defense of the aesthetic movement and thereby the book, the idea that it should be art for art's sake i. e. there is no such thing as morality when it comes to art, books. you know painting, whatever it may be it ought to speak for itself So artists and writers ought to create art not for fame or fortune for good reviews or because they have a moral message, but for the sake of the beauty of their product alone. And critics shouldn't read books or look at art you know and seek to interpret them or analyze them or Ironically, given what we're doing on this show or read meaning into them, you know, they should let the beauty of whatever they are witnessing speak for itself. and thereby, Dorian Gray cannot be an immoral book because if there is no such thing as morality and immorality in the context of art It's just a beautiful object basically. Well that's what The preface says, doesnn't it? There is no such thing as a moral or im moral book books are well written or badly written That is all. And that is I mean, that might seem to a lot of listeners to that, Well, that's just common sense. That's what I think But that was a very novel and shocking idea in the late nineteenth century. It's an idea that again, has come largely from France. The writers like Teofil Gautier who are saying, you know arguing that there's no mean you know don't try to imbue art with a kind of moral purpose It's actually more moral than that because Art is beauty and you know you should just appreciate it for what it is. And I think part of this is, you know, obviously a lot of the people that are doing this are quite wealthy and well connected And they are separating themselves from what they see as the sort of commercial C drum vulgar tastes of the middle classes who think that art should have meaning and purpose. They're saying, o it doesn't need to have a purpose. It can just be itself. And Oscar Wild's work, like the plays as well are full of characters that are kind of mockeries of very earnest people. but also very bourgeois people Yeah's got exactly characters have always got strong views on that. But it's not just a decadent book. it's also very obviously gothic book and indeed it's considered one of the last works of classic gotic horror fiction and we spoke about in the mini series that we didn did' the rest is history we spoke about Dracula. This is around the same time and very similar in that they're both kind of dealing with The anxieties of the period, so rising social degeneracy, urban decay, you know the heart of respectable Victorian society kind of being polluted and corrupted, this idea of some kind of dark external invasion coming in and poisoning everything. And worries about masculinity and stuff, right? And massive worries about you spoke about the new woman, for instance, that's a big part of that the kind of fears surrounding homosexuality. And the other interesting thing is that a lot of gothic novels feature this concept of the portrait. So in sort of probably one of the most famous Ghic novels of all time, the Castle of Tranto The kind of villain in that Alfonso steps down from a portrait Dito, portraits feature in Edgar Allan P' novel the Oval portrait And also likewise this idea of obsession. And that also plays into this idea of doubling. Doubling is a big thing in Dorian Grey by virtue of the fact that Dorian is reflected in his portrait. He's kind of his doppel ganger, his dark doppel ganger. rather like Jonathan Harker and Draculular are double gangs each Exactly like that as we'll go to Jackle and hide a bit more later, very like that too. And I think in a way this reflects another thing that was kind of prominent in this period, which is the Victorian external sphere of kind of respectability versus the private sphere of wicked desires and forbidden pleasures. Yeah. Dorian Gray is full of all this. and London is a massive feature of all of these gothic novels as well. You know, you have the gas lamps. This is around the time of J the Ripper, that's kind of in the air. the prostitutes outside Dorian's house, the degeneracy of these kind of dens that he disappears to at night the opium You know these opium dens and I don't know, this could be sort of a commentary on the decline of empire in the way that it actually was in Dracula as well. Well the emmpireres at its hyper but people are so anxious about what that means, what that means for the soul, where there are You know, and whether our sort of outward respectability is hiding this sort of inward corruption. The idea of corruption is such an eighteen nineties idea, I was Yeah. Anyway, that's the setting. We're coming towards the break. so let's get stuck into the book itself. And actually just starting the beginning I mean, there are a few books where the tone is set more perfectly by the opening lines. So this is how the book begins. The studio was filled with a rich odor of roses. I love that. And when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn You know, that's sort of heady Perfumed scented atmosphere, which is very, very Oscar Wild, very eighteen nineties literature I love it. I love that aesthetic. It's so heady. So in this atmosphere, in this camp atmosphere we meet two characters. Lord Henry Watton who's lounging on this divan, he's so tabby. He's lounging on his sofa and smoking constantly and just delivering what he considers to be immensely intelligent That's where r because he's drunk observations Arts and beauty and stuff. Yeah. And there's another blake called Basil who's working on his painting. We're stuck with Basil. Unfortunately Basil everyone thinks Basil is terribly boring, don't they? Well, they do. I don't. I like Basil as a character. He's the only good man in the whole book. He's the only decent character in the book. agree completely, completely. so he's the guy who paints storians portraits And he basically, he loves Ding, doesn't he? He's infatuated with him. He's completely obsessed. I think it's telling that in the eighteen ninety one edition, one of the things that they did to try and make it more socially acceptable is they hugely toned down the descriptions of Basil's love for Dorian and they made it less about You know romantic love and they made it more about an artist infatuated with his subject to try and make it more acceptable. But you are right. he's totally in love with Dorian. Perhaps, you know in the sort of adoring way that Oscar Wilde might have been in love with Bosie. Yeah, I think he idealizes Dorian and he sort of says to him, I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with You have a wonderful influence, let it be for good, not evil If someone said that to you, Tabby what would you?'s what people said to me for a joint door hanger. And then you ended up on this show with Lord Henry Wilson. Yeah So Basil You're saying about the cuts. So in the first draft of the novel Basil says explicitly, I have never loved a woman And then he says, I worship Dorian with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. It's quite moving really. Well, it is moving, but you can see why those first reviewers thought, comeome on, we know what's going on here. You know, you're not really even bothering to disguise it, whichich is fair enough. I mean there reason why to us why he should disguise it It's interesting. Because his is the purest form of love, really. Everyone else pulls enough Dorian for his looks and they kind of you know look the other way when it comes to his wickedness. But Basil really believes that Dorian is a good man too.'s a pure angel. And there's something to do there with, I think the interesting relationship between the artist and his ot what he makes. it's as though Basil can't believe The subject of this beautiful portrait, his great masterpiece, could be anything other than good And there's quite a gratifying moment, I think, in the book Aually I mean it leads to the sort of the climax of the book when Basil has a come to God moment with Dorian and tells him what everyone is saying of him and what he has become. And I find that quite satisfying. And they both believed, didn't they? I mean, Basil certainly believes that Good and evil are written physically on your face. Yeah. So he cannot believe that Dorian could be evil. because he thinks the door in is so beautiful You know, obviously Basil doesn't realize the terrible secret that lies at the heart of the book. And as for the other character, Lord Henry I mean, he's very Bie Douglas. He's very Jude law. Totally. He's sitting around smoking and just coming out with stuff, but he's He is a massive cynic, isn't he? He wants to corrupt Dorian, and Basil says at the beginning, please don't corrupt Dorian, Henry And Hom he says, Oh, but you know he says some witicism and then promptly does corrpt him doesn't he And And you're a big fan of Lord Henry, right? Look. I am a big fan of his because I think he's genuinely witty and he'd be great ompanied a lunch party or something and I like his kind of aesthetic, I like his bad boyess. but increasingly dawned on me that he's a massive hypocrite because He never actually does any of the things that he coaxes Dorian into doing. He'll kind of taunt him into doing terrible things by saying, well, of course you know, you'll never be as bad as I am, but he never actually does anything bad. So it's not really that he's sort of the devil Tempting Dorian down the path of depravity. He's more like the devil's accomplice. ' he's more of like a cynical observer. But I think I would find him quite entertaining at first, but I think after a while when I was sort of trying to get a straight answer out of him. It would get a bit annoying, partarticularly if via text or email or whatever. if you were kind of asking him Yeah what time do you want to book your flight tomorrow? Aa Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one can explain away. Yeah, al right. Get to the point, man. spepeaking direct sentences. But actually that actually reminded me a little bit because that's what people sort of startedly thought about Oscar Wilde during his trial. He had these extraordinarily witty answers to everything. Yeah, de'ad right. He was flippant to the end and the flippancy cost him Exactly didn't it didn't help him at all Exactly, exactly right All right, we've probably gone on too long, so we should take a break Tubby. And when we come back, let's talk about Dorian Grey himself, so the man that Basil and Henry are discussing in this first scene in the book. So we're talkking about a secret. We'll talk about what it owes to the legend of Faust. So this lies behind the story and we'll talk about how this book ended up contributing to Oscar Wilde's spectacular and disastrous fall. So all of that is coming after the break How sad it is I shall grow old and horrid and dreadful picture remain always young It will never be older than this particular day in June. If it was only the other way, it was only I who were to be always young and the picture that were to grow old For this, for this I would give everything Yes There is nothing in the whole world I would not give. Welcome back everybody. What a moving performance that was. So that was Tabby giving us her Dorian Grey. And the amazing thing there is that Tabby said beforehand that she was going to put on. comeome on. A posh accent. I in stark contrast to her usual sort of the earth voice. That will never Think of you being in the same light again, Tabby, now I've heard you do that voice. Transformative. Totally transformative. Well Speaking of. So speaking of whichit, very good, way more done. Yeah. So Dorian Greay, I have to say I find him an extremely unlikable character. Yeah. So he's rich, he's young, he's incredibly good looking He was orphaned as a boy. He was raised by his grandfather who was nasty to him But we are told Very sweet, very lovely, very innocent, very pure. We never see any evidence of this actually. We sort of told it because Basil and Henry idealize him. The story of his trajectory in the book is he goes from being this supposedly innocent, lovely, beautiful boy to a still beautiful, but very vain and selfish and entitled and cruel. Man, doesn't he And I mean, I suppose to say There's a hint of his sexuality interesting in his name because Dorian is a very unusual name in the nineteenth century And there are some critics who think You know, Wilde chose it deliberately because there are Greek Gordorians and it's a reference to the Greeks and therefore a coded reference to the love between you man and man to homosexuality, which people associated with the Greeks and so on Um You're probably a little bit more pro dooring than I am, aren't you? because I just find him loathsome I'm pro him in the sense that I don't think I'd like him to be my close friend or kind of my boyfriend or anything thatough I probably would have had a crush on him at university. I think initially before he really goes on this downward spiral of Pravity. He would have been great fun in the beginning, I think. you know, he's very hedonistic. He kind of loves to go out But as it gets darker and darker and he gets more and more unhappy And his self love and his hedonism is mixed up with self loathing. And this kind of makes him a dark character, not this sunny flamboyant revelry worsier, he becomes mean and cruel. and there is a character to whom he is so cruel that I just can't forgive him for it. And this is his first love. This is an actress called Syl Vane and Dorian falls head over heels in love with her but it is not her that he is actually in love with He falls in love with the parts that she plays. so she plays Shakespeare's great heroines. So he says Tonight she is Imogen, and tomorrowight she will be Juliette And then Lord Henry wittily says When is she Syilvain? and this is the point. Dorian doesn't want her to be a real flesh and blood woman He wants her to be an artistic icon, essentially. But isn't that's what all the characters think about other characters, isn't it that they all That's what Basil did with Dorian at the beginning. Basil wanted Dorian to be perfect and pure and innocent. Henry wants him to be corrupted and hedonistic and whatnot. And I think part of the reason that Dorian is so corrupted and hedonistic and is so obsessed with beautiful things and fine art and wonderful books is because he's constantly seeking Meaning because he can't find it in people. so he's looking for kind of a higher purpose, a higher vision of life and existence. But then upon seeing Syvilvane act so badly one night, she does it intentionally. He casts her aside brutally and says to her, You have killed my love. What are you now? A third rate actress with a pretty face And it is this cruelty that results in her Well, it's implied killing herself. If he'd have seen you as Mrs. Chieley Do you think he would have said the same to you No? No, no, no, headad over hes he would have stuck I just would have I just would have kept up the mrses Chievley accent in my private life. But have you not done that? People can't hear the difference, Taby, let's be honest. They can They can. Anyway, she ends up taking her in life, doesn't she? Yeah, and this is what sparks Dorian's realization that he has made a deal with the devil essentially, because he goes home that night after having been so cruel to Syl and looks at his painting and finds that it is changed that it is now wearing kind of a horrible sneer on its face. And this is when we realize that every time Dorian does something cruel or dreadful or depraved It will show on his painting, like a mirror of his soul. It'll show the wrong doingoing, while he will remain forever young. Yeah, so this is an interesting thing because I think in the popular imagination, people always think totally that the picture grows old. Dorian stays young and that's the bargain. But actually there is an extra dimension to it, which is As Dorian behaves badly, so the picture looks more cruel and corrupted. So there is actually Funny enough for all the talk of art for art' sake There is a deep moral sense in this book There is a sort of you the book would be incomprehensible without the moral dimension. There's definitely a sense of right and wrong. Dorian behaves in a bad way and the picture therefore looks corrupted. But it's kind of ironic because you know we spoke about the aesthetic movement and art for art's sake and how art shouldn't have a a moral message Yeah But this painting is literally moralizing, you know? Yes, exactly. It is the moral message in paint. Yeah. His sins are writt large on its face. But the other thing is I think, I think everyone who hasn't read Dorian Gray comes to it expecting the idea of a deal with the devil to be a bigger part of it. I think I think I remember that. I think I imagineed sort of a shadowy room with a young boy you know, selling his soul some dark power. That's not really. it's never It's never that explicit in the book. He says it almost incidentally. Yes, he does a throwaway remark So it's in chapter two. They're talking about his portrait, he's seen his portrait, he says How sad it is, I should grow old and horrible and dreadful, but this picture will remain always young. If only it were the other way If it were I who was to be always young in the picture that was to grow old And then he just says to his friends, for that, for that I would give everything. Yes, there is nothing in the whole world that I would not give. I would give my soul for that That's the deal with the devil as where there is no devil there. and I mean, Lord Henry Wh's sort of as I think you're dead right, Tabby, he's kind of pretending to be the devil and playing at it. But he's not Mephistopheles. He's holding up the sign, but he's not jumping in himself. Right, exactly. He's encourag others to behave badly, but he never really behaves that badly himself But Obviously, the idea that lies behind this is the idea that you get from the legend of Faust, the Faustian bargain, somebody who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge or power or whatever it might be. This originates with the legend of doctor Faustus and he's a German scholar who sells his soul to the devil for infinite knowledge and worldly pleasures. That element is also endoran Grey because over time he accumulates beautiful treasures from around the world in his house. And the legend is obviously very, very loosely based on a real person. This is a guy called Johann Georg Faust who lived between fourteen eighty and fifteen forty, and he was a German itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and sort of inverted commas, I suppose, or they would have believed him to be a magician And during his own life, he was often denounced as something of a con man and a blasphemer or someone who was a practitioner of black magic. This is you know, remember, a very superstitious time. And then his exploits were first fictionalized in the Faustbuch in fifteen eighty seven. and this was an anonymous German book that depicted him as this tragic figure who signs a twenty four year contract with the demon Mephistopheles This is another word basically for the devil. And then Christopher Marlow kindind of the famous Elizabethan playwright. picks up this idea and then he writes it into his legendary play, Dr. Faustus where the protagonist, a bit more like Dorian Greay here, realizes the cost of his deal too late And he is literally damned and dragged to hell And then you get Geta And then Gethe for the Romantics in Germany in the eighteenth century does a sort of more philosophical version of the bargain, again, which popularizes it for new audiences. So by the time you get to the late nineteenth century, the idea of Faust or Faustus be familiar Really to anybody, I would say, who's reading this book, you know to a very educated public, they will be very aware of this idea of the bargain with the devil and so on and Dorian does the bargain. It's interesting. the difference between him Faustus or Faust is Faustus wants knowledge and he's greedy for knowledge, for treasures, for power, for all of these kinds of things Dorian is not greedy for those things. What he's doing the bargain out of is really conceit. It's vanity, isn't it? He's in love with himself And he's in particular in love with his own beauty and he wants to preserve that. So as you say Beauty is a big theme And so is kind of decadence, beauty and decadence. These are kind of the motors of the novel. because Dorian's realization in chapter two that he is incredibly beautiful and thanks to Lord Henry's instruction, it will get him far in life and it will, you know, give him almost power but also that it is fleeting you know, he will age and grow old. This is what turns him into this monster. and There's this moment where Lord Henry says to him, People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial, but at least it is not so superficial as to me Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. That such a Henry thing. S such a Henryism. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible So he's basically saying, This kind of old wife's tale about, you know, beauty only being skinn deep and it's about what's in the heart and stuff that really matters neverever mind all that. Beauty it really is what matters in this world. It really is what gets you places But Henry then goes on to say Yes, Mr. Grey, the gods have been good to you, but what the gods give, they quickly take away, you have only a few years in which really to live. So the idea of it being transitory and impermanent. Yeah Y know youth and beauty are fleeting and all of this. So seize them now That's what Dory wants to do. It is, but even once he has achieved this, he will stay forever young and beautiful. He still feels like there's an emptiness to his life and I think that is why He searches for fulfillment through art, plays, books, music and beautiful things and there's this moment when he talks about trying to find sort of in life the heroes that he reads about in books that I actually think is pretty insightful. I kind of get it. You know, as a child, you read because it's so much more exciting than life. And then as a teenager, I know I would obsessively listen to music because it was kind of closer. maybe to what I felt than kind of the H drum world beyond. Do you ever get that sometimes now where you go to the theater or you go to the cinema and you come out and it takes you like a while to readjust I kind of get what he means there, even though it's such a fantastical way of saying it. Of course, you yeah, completely you do. I mean, that's the joy I mean, reading a book, surely is a good example of that. you know, when we did What was it? Northern Lights, The Philip Pullman. And you said, when you finished the trilogy You were you know, you cried because you wouldn't be able to read it again and you didn't want to come back out of that world. So lame That doesn't slame at all, though. I think you're being hard on yourself. I think that's what a lot of people feel about great works of art. Horian is monstrous, but this is relatable, right Yeah, this side of him, the fact that he wants to escape into another world, there's a yearning for something in Dorian, I think, but there's also a sort of slightly cold bloodedia Yeah, and the collecting mania, for example. Yeah. The writing is so luscious here It's just so opulent, not just the things it describes the writing. And so that's why like he talks about collecting all these beautiful things and it's a little bit like a drug or something. like he talks about how For a couple of days or so he's infatuated by it and obsessed by it, and then it fades away and he kind of has to find the next thing, which is why he eventually goes on to smoking opium And that's another feature of the book is hedonism. Hedonism is a big thing Yeah, well again, Lord Henry. I mean, Nicole E producer absolutely this bloke. and she's like, please mention more of his immensely penetrating witicisms. And Henry's always saying to Dorian, live, live the wonderful life that is in you. nothing be lost, but always be searching for new sensations, be afraid of nothing and all this kind of thing. So Dorian's viceices, they tend to be nocturnal, he goes out at night. obviously You know, he's drinking, he's smoking, he's taking lots of drugs. he's you know, corrupting loads of young people and all this kind of thing Again, Tabby, I see in the notes, you've got loads more of these of this lovely writing that you like. Yeah. I do think this is lovely writing, he says Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them And we watch the daorwn remaking the world in its antique pattern. You like that? I do. Yeah, fair enough Fair enough. And then Henry again A Dorian, how happy you It's so hard on Nro. It's an exquisite life you have had. You have drunk deeply of everything. You've crushed the grapes against your palate. If someone said to me, You've definitely crushed the grapes against your palate. How's the podcast going? You've really crushed the grapes against your palate, haven't you? Well, that would be mad. lookook at us to st But that's but what what Lord Henry is saying there, what that little passage is saying is essentially that Lord Henry, looking from the outside having never partaken himself, is like, look at you. You're beautiful, you've got beautiful things, you can have whatever you like, you've lived so well. But actually it turns out that all this vanity and all this having and all this greed is pretty meaningless, which kind of makes me think that in some ways kind of the central sort of message of Dorine Gray, You know Be careful what you wish for, mind your vanity. It's almost slightly a book ahead of its time kind of given the time that we live in now, the concept of self worth and putting yourself first has never been more revered Um the idea that a very of a clear distinction between your public profile and your private profile U you know, the idea of having a perfect exterior, beauty products, influences, things like that. The Instagam Instagram world, right? whereere you manicure your image, you are forever young. Yeah. We all have our portrait of life theseays And so it's kind of a book ahead of its time in that sense, I think. Yeah. You know who Dor reminds me of Tabby. Wh's that? Are we familiar the work of Clavicular? Are you? What? Bren Braden Peters? You think I don't know about Braden P. You've been doing your homework ' Nicole said that you didn't know who he was. Unbelievable. All right, tell me about Braden Peters. Oh, Braden Peters, you know, he's big looks maxing, He injects himself with steroids. He's a very controversial figure actually at the moment because he's been in trouble with the law He literally his pursuit of beauty is such that he literally breaks the bones in his face in order to create a more beautiful you know, perfect image and he does stuff like takes meth allegedly because it makes them thinner. Beauty above anything, beauty at the cost of morality and ethics and being good. And that is so central to Dorian Greay. He and I have a lot in common. Anyway, now to deeper subjects, let's talk about the soul. Let's talk about the soul. come on. Dorian has sold his soul I mean, again, this is the side of the book. Do you know what? I probably am going up my mark as a result of this conversation. This is the power that you have. ammazing. I'm like Lord Henry To my Dorian, to my image of beauty. Yeah Brilliant. That's the comparison everybody wanted. Keep up that skincare and you too could be on forever So it is a moral book in this sense Wild believes that you have a soul and you shouldn't sell it Yeah. and Dorian has sold it. and actually interestingly reflects a very late Victorian idea, which is that you know, there is such a thing as immorality And if you commit it, it is, you know, it is written not merely on your soul but on your exterior that the two things are kind of linked that your soul and your body partart of one hole And if you behave in a corrupt way, the corruption of your soul will be expressed physically in your face. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, it absolutely it definitely is. I mean, and is this is literal, I mean in Dorian's face. So obviously at this time, There's kind of a rising trend in psychoanalysis. I think we spoke about this in both Aam the Basyvills and the womomen and White. Yeah, we did. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. the idea that you can betray things from the outside It's kind of a strange new form of dualism. It's kind of Freuded. There are things going on underneath the surface that you know betray themselves externally and therefore, you know you can have two identities and whatever it may be. but this is very literal in Dorian's case. I mean, his soul is literally a physical Oject And then what this called to mind is. So in the nineteen forty five movie of Dorian Gray. It's so brilliant this actually. They have the original portrait of Dorian Gray. And then they have picture that he becomes and you can kind of see them side by side. And there's this artist called Ivan Albright who did the second painting, who did the painting as it would look after Dorian has lived this life of hedonism and cruelty, because it is so creepy and so grotesque and this is the literal embodiment of Dorian's soul. You know, it brings to mind another theme which is conscience because Dorian is increasingly dogged by his his kind of the destruction of his soul and feels a strange sense of remorse and he wants his soul to be squeaky clean once more. But it's actually not pure conscience. it's actually not Per remorse because a lot of his remorse is bound up in the fact that he mourns the hideousness of his portrait. Again, it's kind of still linked to his vanity. It's all his narcissism. it's all about himself. Yeah, he doesn't feel bad for Syl or for the various people that he's corrupted. He cannot contemplate his own ugliness Yes And actually, I'm so glad you mentioned that picture because I remember when we went to the Art Institute of Chicago which is an absolutely brilliant. brilliant gallery J just how shocking it is. It's kind of really, really Viscer, isn't it? It is ugliness of the picture. it's not at all realist, which the original painting is, you know, it's quite literable. And then the second one it's Oh, it's creepy.s quite sort of Tim Burtony I can see why you'd say that But actually what the pictures do is they capture well, the two the I did the two pictures in the film, but also The idea of the picture and then the reality of Dor in takes back to what's probably Wilde's, you know, the idea that he's best known for apart from the witticisms. Well it's the idea of the double life, isn't it? The idea of the respectability in the day and the corruption at night the idea, as he puts it, the terrible pleasure of a double life. And actually, even in his more innocuous works importance of being earnest. Love the importance of being earnest. It's you're leading two lives. And obviously this appeals to Oscar Wilde because he is leading two lives. He has his life with Constance and he has his family life, but also he has his life where he's interfering with seventeen year old waiters or whatever and You know, this is an idea absolutely fascinates the late Victorians because they are becoming aware, you know, we're only a few years away from Freud. we are becoming aware of this idea of the subconscious of the human psyche of things that are buried deep down that are You know, you try to repress, but they are surfacing nonetheless. I mean that idea, we've already mentioned Dracula, it's there in Dracula. But it's obviously there in another book. that anticipates Dorian Gry in four years beforehand, and that is Dr. Jeyll and Mr. Hyde Yeah. And so that is by Robert Louis Stehvenson and it's kind of the gothic horror book of that period was written in eighteen eighty six, only four years before Dorian Gray. And it's the same concept, you know, the idea of duality and doubling, the sinful part of your nature going on these rampages and killing sprees and acting in an immoral fashion. And then the side that you present to society, the side that like walks around in the light of day. So that is literally so that is Hyde and Jekyll Ditod Dorian and his portrait Yes, exactly. One is the monster, one is the man. Exactly. You have the same sort of duality in the portrait of London, don't you? So' sort of people smoking on divans in kind of the west end or something and then at the other end in the east end opium dens and prostitutes and smoke and allys and all of that kind of thing. The idea of the duality is so important to the way that Victorians see themselves. I was also struck by how similar the endings are to Jekyll and Hyde and Dor and Greay. So big spoiler here Dorian Gray, eventually, he's so miserable, you know living in this kind of state of sin as he does. He goes upstairs and he stabs the painting, but what his servants discover later when they find him is a shriveveled old Dorian curled up on the ground with a knife in his chest and the painting young and perfect and similarly in Jekyll and Hyde, Hyde commits suicide and it is found dead on the floor wearing Jekyll's clothes. So there is the duality all over again And the other thing is that it introduces this slight element of kind of a class dichotomy, the idea that the side of Dorian that is going out and entering opium dens or whatever it may be is kind of debased, it's vulgar, it's of a different class to the aristocratic version of himself that he presents to society. Something of Oscar Wild in that may be. I think say Well, the big difference, I suppose, I mean, one big difference between Jekylln Hyde and Dorian Gray Checen Hyidee is not a camp book by any means, whereas Dorian Gray, I mean just by reading the first lines, the stuff about the center roses and the perfume and the headiness of it, there is mean to twenty first century eyes, there's something very camp about it and The obviously running right through this book is the wild sexuality and That was dialed down that element between eighteen nineteen and eighteen ninety one, That bit that we already mentioned where Basil makes it very obvious that he is in love with Dorian, that he's physically attracted to him There's also a moment that was taken out where I think Basil Lets his hand rest on Dorian's shoulder or he strokes his arm or something like that again taken out, but It's still there, isn't it? It's still very, very obvious in the book. Oh I think its it's yeah, I think it's so obvious. I think it's wonderfully camp the whole book Um you know the way that Basil and Dorian speak to each other in this very affectionate s a very tender way, even the way that Lord Henry and Dorian speak to each other the references to Dorian's dealings with young men and it's never it's never 's exactly stated what he's doing to them, but we find out that all these young men that have encountered the door end up being destroyed in some way and kind of leaving society And you know, even references like this, so it says one point Richard II had a coat valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with rubies. The favourites of James I wore earrings of emerald set and filigreine. Edward II gave to Pierers Gavinson a suit of red gold armor etceta, etcera, etera. I that that's a reference in a very kind of beautiful camp exaggerated way to three English kings famed for kind of showering beautiful gifts on their favorites And their're lovers. And their're lovers. and that's a similar relationship to Dorian and his relationships with Basil and Henry. Yeah. or the Parma violets doesn't u One of them was wearing a big buttonhole of palma violets and Palma violets were associated with Sappho, the Greek poet They kind of lesbian poets and whatnot. Yeah. So it became then what the carnation was, wasas it the Green carnation? Green Carnation. It was a way that gay men inort society at this time could identify each other. So Palma Violets were the same thing to lesbians And I mean, Oscar Wilde would be familiar with this reference because he's so familiar with the classics and someone like Saho, I think, in particular Yes. And I guess the idea, I mean, Wilde is obviously pouring himself into the book isn't he? Because The idea of leadving a double life, the idea of a moral struggle. you know there Wild is somebody who although he great he makes this tremendous defense of his sexuality when he's on trial effectively I think it would it's hard to imagine. There' somebody who'd grown up when and where he had, theres somebody who had lived who'd been so prim and proper as a young man. would not have had You know a degree of psychological struggle about his own life, I think. And I think that's that definitely is there in the book becausecause there is a morality there and a sort of moral core and an anxiety about sexuality and I think an anxiety about corruption and stuff that you can trace back not just to the contests of the time but to world's own personal dramas Yeah, I wonder if you could read Doran Gray in a totally different light if you interpreted you know what he calls his living death The way that he lives is kind of empty written life as kind of his struggle with homosexuality, . e. the sins that he commits being his homosexuality. I mean, it's become a great touchstone, hasn't it? Dorian Gray? I mean, our producer, Nicole loves it. There are lots of people who absolutely adore it. I have a friend who's always said that it's absolutely his favorite book he's ever read and he kind of puts on a massive pedestal. It later turned out it was the only book he'd ever read, but nevertheless. nevertheless People revere it. If you're going to read just one book, sureurely accord to Thorns and Roses. Is that your identity. Fury of the Vikings by Dominic Sandbok should A. Only to be read in red trousers. Unbelievable for you I don't wear red trousers. No. No my fans wear red trousers. This is the Tweed Clendy all over again The great controversy of our times. suucking from you Okay, so the writing, you obviously love the writing, don't you find it very funny and witty and you think that's one reason it's enjured? And it's lavish and beautiful. It's lush, I think, isn't it? It's lush. It's I mean I think you describbeed it as luscious earlier on and there is a sort of There is a hediness to the writing You know, it feels like you're sort of in a bath of palma violets or whatever. And then it's also kind of the sexiness of this message, isn't it? It's the hedonism, it's the elegance, it's the parties, it's the meaningless flings. there's all of that But I mean, ironically I think it's kind of maybe slightly the deeper message too. that I mean it's basically it's the ultimate, be careful what you wish for, partarticularly a time when we've never had so much, We've possibly never been so vain. I think it's an interesting book. You know, you can see why it would do the rounds on something like booktop Because it's a book about the hollowness of the obsession with the image isn't it I mean, that's the moral cw of this that while it slightly hazard cake can eat it in the book because on the one hand you're invited to enjoy the hedonism and all of that kind of thing. But at the same time, clearly the book is telling you You know, there is more to life than public display then there is more to life than beauty actually. Lord Henry is wrong. his's plain wrong Because Dorian pursues beauty and vanity above all and is destroyed by it. He's unhappy. Yeah. But then I think the other massive reason for the book popularity is Oscar Wilde himself, you know, he's such a famous figure He's considered something kind of of a gay icon or martyr possibly. Yeah completely. Famboyance, his witicisms, his imprisonment. So there's only five years between the publication and the first version of enjoying Greay and Wilde's downfall Basically it was because of his relationship with Boseie They were being pursued by Bose's father, the Marcus of Qenssbury who u He wanted to disrupt the opening night of the importance of being earnest by throwing bouquet of rotten vegetables at Wilde Yeah when Wilde took his bow And u Queensbury wasn't able to do this. he wasn't allowed into the theatre, but he left a card at Wilde's club accusing him of being and I quote, opposing somdomite misspelling. misspelled it. brilliant. Yeah. And Wilde incredibly foolishly egged on by his former lover Ross and his current lover Boseie, decided to sue the Marquess of Queensbury for libel. and This was incredibly self destructive behaviour given how he had behaved. You, given that he had been so open and so flaggrrant with a succession of waiters, young boys, all of this kind of thing. He denied it all, didn't he? He denied it all, yes, exactly. And they literally brought them all up. They had so many witnesses. Queenensbury and his legal team, they did a mercilessly brilliant job, spearheaded by the future Unionist politicians Ereddward Carson who'd known Wilde at university, they'd been kind of acquaintances back in Dublin. Anyway They basically produced all of these young men. Wld's case collapsed, obviously. And the trouble was because they had to come out in open court now And also because he was quite close to people in the government or in the sort of in the Liberal partarty the government felt they had no alternative given they were so public than to have him charged with indecent behavior under this recent legislation. So then there are two trials, the first one, they don't produce a verdict And Wild was terrible in the witness boookx because he's doing his thing about s being flippant, he's performing, he's making jokes, all this kind of thing. and And basically, he ends up being convicted Bosey flees off to France. really I mean, Bosey's a terrible, terrible human. He is. He really, really is. And also he egged on Wilde enter into all of that and said he'd pays legal fees. I know. and then let him And then left him in the lurge. Yeah. and this is the mad thing, isn't it? that shocking. There's so many echoes of Dorian Greay. in what happened to Oscar Wilde. So both in Wilde himself and in Boseie. Wilde is sentenced to two years of hard labor, the maximum penalty. There's talk that he's an people are making an example of him I think they are making an example to some degree. Constance leaves him. She goes to Europe with her children. It's not allowed to see his boys. Anyway, Wilde had a terrible time in Reading Jail. his health collapsed. He has this sort of long dark night to the soul He's eventually released. He is a broken man. He's bankrupt He flees to France. He sees Boseie again. they have this incredibly toxic relationship and Constance says that she will only give him. kindind of his stipend or whatever. Yeah. if he doesn't see stays away from Bosi and he just can't resist Yeah, there's a line in I think it's Matthew Sturgis's book, Biography of Wilds and Talk about the Trials Wh says at the end of his life he was spending more money on rent boys than on rent basically tells you what happened to him And he endsed up dying probably meningitis in nineteen hundred in a cheap Paris hotel. It's tragic. And the thing with Wilde that's complicated. I mean, we did go into this moment did on the rest of history is he is simultaneously a victim and he's a victim in the mount on one hand, but on the other hand, you know, he's a morally ambiguous figure because he is associating with much poorer, much younger men So he there's always a power dynamic and it's Yeah, is it exploitative? Is it exploitative or not? I mean, I think listeners dig into it and make up their own minds about it. too be totally honest, this isn't something I often say. I really don't know what I think. I find it hard to make up my mind about him. Yeah. I know what you mean. I can't help but really really pity him for for what happened to him later in his life and He was well liked wherever he went and I think he behaved pretty well in terms of, you know, when he was in prison, he was Well I think he was very lovable I think he was really foolish The fact that I've spoken so much about Wild, and possibly not so much about the book perhaps tells its own story. So I think we're going to rank this in Shall we rank it? This is giving away my views, Tabby in exhaustingly persistent witticisms out of ten. Which you did suggest, to be fair. I did suggest that. Give your mark in witticism. not I'm not capable. I'm toob I' see Draab exactly. It is I can't rememberself an attempt to witness. It is a truth universally acknowledged. I know. I know. a witnesses' out of ten. Oh Godd, I'm boring myself. So okay, I think the story is fascinating, absolutely fascinating the story behind the book the story of wild. and actually I love the idea of the book I'm gonna to give it five I've I've gone really low. and the reason for that is actually when I was reading it So I read it madly after I read the Hunger Games. Oh my gosh. anything would pale by comparison. L I put down the hunger Games one minute picked up Dorian Gray And I found myself pining for the world of what is it called Panem What have in the hunk justust because I became very bored of Lord Henry going on about his witticisms I sort of thought, come on, the point's been made. I didn't enjoy it. I'm a bit sick of that kind of very lush headady prose Dare I say Can I say this? I felt like I've slightly grown out of it. Wow. And I don't have much patience with it. And I just thought, come on, it's no Sarah Jay Mass. I was gonna say, I think our time reading Romanticy has ruined you for everything else. It has done. has. So I'm gonna give it five and I know Nicole will never speak to me again. What about you? I'm gonna give it a seven point five. What was the point five' with you Hey Some people would say it's nuced. Other people would say it's evasive. Some say it's indecisive. An indecisive rating is never as indecisive as it may seem. Okay so I'm going do it seven point five because I like that opulence. I like that kind of flamboyant prose. And yet it's also quite straightforward and yet it's rich and it conveys a great deal. I find it actually very funny Even though after a while Lord Henry did slly get on my nerves I found Dorian's oscillations between kind of devilry and sort of self obsessed remorse, kind of fascinating and they clung in my head quite a lot I think that the kind of central message is quite convincing, I suppose Not that it has like an intentional message, but I like that kind of idea that everyone should try to fight their vanities and their egos a little bit. but I didn't like many of the characters very much whichich you need in a book, I think, I think you need to root for somebody. So yeah, seven point five for me Okay, so what do we got coming up? So We actually have a really funny book coming this week. One of my absolute top favourite. It's a book that I've loved ever since I've read it and that is PG Woodhouse's The Code of the Worcesters And I'm looking forward, given that we've heard Tabby's superb Dorian Greay, arere you going give us Bertie or Jeeves or a little bit of both? Well, I mean, people can find out when we release the epode we're going cast each other, aren't we We're going to spend the whole episode in character So we've got Co to the Worters then Louisa May Olcott's book Little Women, which I'm reading right now We have George R. R Martin Game of Thrones. We have The Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Graham We have The Leopard by Tomasi Dan producer The thirty nine Steps by John Bucken My brilliant friend by Elena Frante and Cersei by Madeeline Miller all to come. And some of those are the result of suggestions by you, the listeners. so please keep the suggestions coming Brilliant and I see on the chat, Nicole has written Dominix Let himself down which is which is sad So on that depressing note I'm about to go and inspect my portrait upstairs and Next week I'll be joined by a new presenter of the Book Cve. Exactly. What a way to crry. What a way to go Yeah Okay, bye bye everybody. Bye