English Literature books summary

enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own

hearth."

Lord Henry is visiting him to find out what he knows about Dorian

Gray’s parents. He doesn’t belong to the Bluebooks (the lists of English

nobles), but he is Kelso’s grandson and his mother was Lady Margaret

Devereux, an extraordinary beauty of her day. She married a penniless man

and upset everyone in the process. Her husband died soon afterwards, killed

in a duel set up by her father. She was pregnant. In childbirth, she died,

leaving Dorian to grow up with his ruthless grandfather.

Lord Henry leaves from his uncle’s and goes to his aunt’s house for

lunch. He becomes engrossed in his thoughts about Dorian Gray’s background.

He decides he will dominate Dorian just as Dorian dominates Basil Hallward.

When he gets to his aunt’s he is happy to see Dorian is at the table. He

begins to regale his aunt’s guests with his hedonistic philosophy of life.

He scorns the motives of philanthropy, which his aunt and most of her

guests espouse, and carries on about the joys of the pursuit of pleasure

for its own sake. He is pleased to see that Dorian is fascinated by his

speech. All of his aunt’s guests are, in fact, and he receives several

invitations.

When lunch is over, he says he will go to the park for a stroll.

Dorian asks to come along and begs him to keep talking. Lord Henry says he

is finished talking and now he just wants to be and enjoy. Dorian wants to

come anyway. Lord Henry reminds him he has an appointment with Basil

Hallward. Dorian doesn’t mind breaking it.

CHAPTER 4

One month later, Dorian Gray is waiting at Lord Henry’s for him to

come home. He is impatient since he’s been waiting for a while. Lord

Henry’s wife comes in and they chat for a while about music. She notices

that he parrots her husband’s views, as many people in her social circle

do. Lord Henry arrives and his wife leaves. After Henry advises him not to

marry, Dorian says he is too much in love to consider marriage. He is in

love with an actress. He thinks of her as a genius. Lord Henry explains

that women can’t be geniuses because they are made only for decoration. He

adds that there are only two kinds of women, the plain and the colored.

Plain women are useful for respectability and colored women are useful for

charming men. Dorian claims to be terrified by Lord Henry’s views. Lord

Henry pushes him to tell more about the actress.

Dorian says that for days after he met Lord Henry, he felt alive with

excitement and wanted to explore the world intensely. He walked the streets

staring into the faces of people to see into their lives. He decided one

night to go out and have an adventure. He was walking along the street and

was hailed to come into a second rate theater. Despite his repulsion for

the caller, he went in and bought a box seat. The play was Romeo and

Juliet. He hated all of it until Juliet came on stage and then he was

entranced. Since that night he has gone every night to the theater. He met

her on the third night and found her exquisitely innocent, knowing nothing

at all of life but art.

He wants Lord Henry and Basil Hallward to come to see her the next

evening. His plan is to pay her manager off and set her up in a good

theater. Lord Henry invites him to dinner that evening, but he refuses,

saying he has to see her perform Imogen. He leaves.

Lord Henry thinks about what he’s learned. He thinks of Dorian Gray as

a good study. He likes to study people like a scientist studies the results

of an experiment. He thinks of Dorian as being his own creation. He had

introduced his ideas to Dorian and made him a self-conscious man.

Literature often did that to people, but a strong personality like his

could do it as well. As he thinks over his thoughts, he’s interrupted by

his servant reminding him it’s time to dress for dinner. As he arrives home

that night, he finds a telegram on the hall table announcing that Dorian

Gray was to marry Sibyl Vane.

CHAPTER 5

Sibyl Vane is exclaiming to her mother about how much in love she is

with her Prince Charming, as she calls Dorian Gray, not knowing yet what

his name is. Her mother warns her that she must keep her focus on acting

since they owe Mr. Isaacs fifty pounds. Sibyl is impatient with her mother

and tries to get her mother to remember when she was young and in love with

Sibyl’s father. Her mother looks pained and Sibyl apologizes for bringing

up a painful subject.

Her brother Jim comes in. It’s his last night on shore. He is booked

as a sailor on a ship headed for Australia. When Sibyl leaves the room, he

asks his mother about the gentleman he has heard has been coming to the

theater to see Sibyl every night. His mother tells him the man is wealthy

and it might be a good thing for Sibyl. Jim is not convinced.

When Sibyl comes back, she and Jim go for a walk in the park together.

While there, Jim questions her about the man who has been calling on her.

She only says how much she is in love with the man and how she is sure he’s

trustworthy. Jim says that if he comes back and finds that the man has hurt

her, he’ll kill the man. They walk on and return home after a while.

Alone again with his mother, Jim asks her if she was married to his

father. She has been feeling like he has been on the verge of asking this

question for weeks. She is relieved to get it out in the open. She says she

was never married to the man. He was married, but loved her very much. He

would have provided for her and her family, but died. Jim tells her to keep

the gentleman away from Sibyl. She tells him that he need not worry because

Sibyl has a mother, but she herself didn’t. He is touched by her sincerity

and they embrace. Soon, though, he has to get ready to leave for his ship.

Mrs. Vane thinks about his threat to kill Sibyl’s Prince Charming, but

thinks nothing will ever come of it.

CHAPTER 6

Lord Henry greets Basil Hallward as he arrives at the Bristol for

dinner. He tells him the news about Dorian’s engagement to Sibyl Vane.

Basil is surprised and can’t believe it’s true. He can’t believe Dorian

would do something as foolish as to marry an actress in light of his

"birth, and position, and wealth." Lord Henry acts nonchalant about the

news and Basil is quite worried.

Finally Dorian arrives elated to tell the others of his news. Over

dinner he tells them that he proposed to Sibyl on the previous evening

after watching her as Rosalind. He kissed her and told her he loved her and

she told him she wasn’t good enough to be his wife. They are keeping their

engagement a secret from her mother.

Dorian tells Lord Henry that she will save him from Lord Henry’s

"wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories" about life, love, and

pleasure. Lord Henry says they aren’t his theories but Nature’s. Basil

Hallward begins to think the engagement will be a good thing for Dorian

after all.

As they leave, Lord Henry tells Hallward to take a separate conveyance

to the theater since his is large enough only for him and Dorian. As he

rides in the carriage behind Lord Henry’s, Basil Hallward feels a strong

sense of loss, as if Dorian Gray will never again be to him all that he had

been in the past. He realizes that life has come between them. He feels,

when he arrives at the theater, that he has grown years older.

CHAPTER 7

At the theater, Dorian is surprised to find it crowded with people. He

takes Lord Henry and Basil Hallward to his usual box and they discuss the

crowd below. He tells them that Sibyl’s art is so fine that she

spiritualizes the common people, transforming their ugliness into beauty.

Basil tells him he now agrees that the marriage will be a good thing for

him.

When Sibyl appears on the stage, both men are entranced by her beauty,

but when she starts to act, they are embarrassed for Dorian. Dorian doesn’t

speak, but he is horribly disappointed. Sibyl’s acting is horribly wooden.

The people below hiss and catcall to the stage making fun of her poor

acting. After the second act, Lord Henry and Basil Hallward leave. Dorian

tells them he will stay out the performance. He hides his face in anguish.

When the play is over, he goes to the green room to find Sibyl. She’s

waiting for him. She looks radiantly happy. She tells him she acted so

badly because she loves him. She says that before she loved him, the stage

was real and alive for her. she never noticed the tawdriness of the stage

set or the ugliness of her fellow actors. She had put everything into it

because it was all of her life. When she realized tonight that she was

acting horribly, she was struck by the realization that it was because she

had found a new reality.

When she finishes, Dorian tells her she disappointed him and

embarrassed him horribly. He says she killed his love. Sibyl is shocked and

horrified by his words. She begs him to take them back, but he goes on. he

tells her he loved her for her art and now she has nothing of her art and

so he doesn’t love her any more. Now she is nothing but "a third-rate

actress with a pretty face." Sibyl throws herself at his feet begging him

to be kind to her, but he walks away scornfully, thinking how ridiculous

she looks.

He walks through the poverty-stricken streets of London for a long

time. Then he gets back to his room, recently redecorated since he learned

to appreciate luxury from Lord Henry. He is undressing when he happens to

glance at the portrait. He is taken aback to notice a change in it. Lines

around the mouth have appeared. The face has a cruel expression. He turns

on the lights and looks at it more carefully, but nothing changes the look

of cruelty on the face. He remembers what he said in Basil’s studio the day

he saw it for the first time. He had wished to change places with it,

staying young forever while it aged with time and experience. He knows that

the sin he committed against Sibyl that evening had caused him to age. He

realizes that the portrait will always be an emblem of his conscience from

now on. He dresses quickly and hurries toward Sibyl’s house. As he hurries

to her, a faint feeling of his love for her returns to him.

CHAPTER 8

Dorian doesn’t wake up the next day until well past noon. He gets up

and looks through his mail, finding and laying aside a piece of mail hand

delivered from Lord Henry that morning. He gets up and eats a light

breakfast all the while feeling as if he has been part of some kind of

tragedy recently. As he sits at breakfast, he sees the screen that he

hurriedly put in front of his portrait the night before and realizes it was

not a dream but is true. He tells his servant that he is not accepting

callers and he goes to the portrait and removes the screen. He hesitates to

do so, but decides he must. When he looks at the portrait he sees that it

was not an illusion. The change remains. He looks at it with horror.

He realizes how unjust and cruel he had been to Sibyl the night

before. He thinks the portrait will serve him as a conscience throughout

life. He remains looking at the portrait for hours more. Finally, he gets

paper and begins to write a passionate letter to Sibyl apologizing for what

he had said to her and vowing eternal love. He reproaches himself in the

letter so voluptuously that he feels absolved, like a person who has been

to confession. He lays the letter to the side and then he hears Lord Henry

calling to him through the door.

Lord Henry begs to be let in and Dorian decides he will let him. Lord

Henry apologizes for all that has happened. Dorian tells him he was brutal

with Sibyl the night before after the performance, but now he feels good

and is not even sorry that it happened. Lord Henry says he had worried that

Dorian would be tearing his hair in remorse. Dorian says he is quite happy

now that he knows what conscience is. He asks Henry not to sneer at it, and

says that he wants to be good. He adds that he can’t stand the idea "of

[his] soul being hideous." Lord Henry exclaims about this "charming

artistic basis for ethics." Dorian says he will marry Sibyl. It is then

when Lord Henry realizes Dorian didn’t read his letter. In it, he had told

Dorian that Sibyl committed suicide the night before by swallowing some

kind of poison.

Lord Henry begins advising Dorian about how to avoid the scandal that

such a story would attach to his name. He asks if anyone but Sibyl knew his

name and if anyone saw him go behind stage to speak to her after her

performance. Lord Henry urges Dorian not to let the episode get on his

nerves. He invites him out to dinner and to the opera with his sister and

some smart women. Dorian exclaims that he has murdered Sibyl Vane. He

marvels that life is still as beautiful with birds singing and roses

blooming. He adds that if he had read it in a book, he would have thought

it movingly tragic. He recounts the exchange between he and Sibyl the night

before, telling Henry of how cruel he was in casting her aside. He ends by

condemning her as selfish for killing herself.

Lord Henry tells him that a woman can only reform a man by boring him

so completely that he loses all interest in life. He adds that if Dorian

would have married Sibyl, he would have been miserable because he wouldn’t

have loved her. Dorian concedes that it probably would have been. He is

amazed that he doesn’t feel the tragedy more than he does. He wonders if

he’s heartless. He thinks of it as a wonderful ending to a wonderful play,

a "tragedy in which [he] took a great part, but by which [he] has not been

wounded." Lord Henry likes to play on Dorian’s unconscious egotism, so he

exclaims over the interest of Dorian’s sense of it.

Dorian thinks he will now have to go into mourning, but Lord Henry

tells him it is unnecessary since there is already enough mourning in life.

He adds that Sibyl must have been different from all other women who are so

trivial and predictable. When Dorian expresses remorse at having been cruel

to her, Lord Henry assures him that women appreciate cruelty more than

anything else. They are primitive. Men have emancipated them, but they have

remained slaves and they love being dominated. He reminds Dorian that Sibyl

was a great actress and that he can think of her suicide as an ending to a

Jacobean tragedy.

Dorian finally thanks Lord Henry for explaining himself to him. He

revels in what a marvelous experience it has all been for him. He wonders

if life will give him anything more marvelous and Henry assures him that it

will. He wonders what will happen when he gets old and ugly. Henry tells

him that then he will have to fight for his victories. Dorian decides he

will join Lord Henry at the opera after all. Lord Henry departs.

When he is alone, Dorian looks again at the portrait. He sees that it

hasn’t changed since he last saw it. He thinks of poor Sibyl and revels in

the romance of it all. He decides that he will embrace life and the

portrait will bear the burden of his shame. He is sad to think of how the

beautiful portrait will be marred. He thinks for a minute about praying

that the strange sympathy that exists between him and the picture would

disappear, but he realizes that no one would give up the chance at being

forever young. Then he decides that he will get pleasure out of watching

the changes. The portrait would be a magic mirror for him, revealing his

soul to him. He pushes the screen back in front of it and dresses for the

opera.

CHAPTER 9

The next morning after the opera, Dorian is visited by Basil Hallward.

Basil assumes that he really didn’t go to the opera the night before and is

shocked to find out that he did so after all. He can’t believe that Dorian

is so unfeeling when Sibyl isn’t even buried yet. Dorian tells him he

doesn’t want to hear about it because it’s in the past. He thinks if he is

a strong man, he should be able to dominate his feelings and end them when

he wants to end them. Basil blames Dorian’s lack of feeling on Lord Henry.

Dorian tells Basil that it was he who taught him to be vain. Basil is

shocked to find out that Sibyl killed herself. Dorian tells him it is

fitting that she did, more artistic. "Her death has all the pathetic

uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty." He tells Basil that he

has suffered, that he was suffering terribly yesterday around five or six

o’clock. He says he no longer has these emotions and it would be nothing

but empty sentimentality to try to repeat the feelings that have passed. He

asks Basil to help him see the art in it rather than to try to make him

feel guilt over it. He begs Basil not to leave him but to stop quarreling

with him.

Basil is moved by Dorian’s speech and decides Dorian might be passing

through a momentary lapse of feeling and should be berated for it. He

agrees not to speak to Dorian again of Sibyl. Dorian asks him, however, to

draw him a picture of Sibyl. Basil agrees to do so and urges Dorian to come

sit for him again, saying he can’t get on with his painting without Dorian.

Dorian starts and says he will never be able to sit for Basil again. Basil

is shocked and then looks around to see if he can see the portrait he gave

Dorian. He is annoyed to find that it is hidden behind a screen and goes

toward it. Dorian jumps up and stands between him and the screen keeping

him away from it. He makes Basil promise never to look at it again and not

to ever ask why. Basil is surprised but agrees to do so, saying that

Dorian’s friendship is more important to him than anything. He tells Dorian

he plans to show the portrait in an exhibit. Dorian remembers the afternoon

in Basil’s studio when Basil said he would never show it. He remembers Lord

Henry telling him to ask Basil one day about why. He does so now.

Basil explains to him reluctantly that he was fascinated with him and

dominated by his personality from the first moment he saw him. He painted

every kind of portrait of him, putting him in ancient Greek garb and in

Renaissance garb. One day he decided to paint Dorian as he was, and as he

painted each stroke, he became fascinated with the idea that the portrait

was revealing his idolatry of Dorian. He swore then hat he would never

exhibit it. However, after he gave the portrait to Dorian, the feeling

passed away from him. He realized that "art conceals the artist far more

completely than if ever reveals him." That was when he decided to exhibit

the portrait as a centerpiece.

Dorian takes a breath. He realizes he is safe for the present since

Basil clearly doesn’t know the truth about the painting. Basil thinks

Dorian sees what he saw in the portrait, his idolatry of Dorian. He tries

to get Dorian to let him see the portrait, but Dorian still refuses. Basil

leaves and Dorian thinks over what he had said to him. He calls his

servant, realizing that the portrait has to be put away where he won’t run

the risk of guests trying to see it.

CHAPTER 10

Dorian is in his drawing room when his manservant Victor enters. She

scrutinizes Victor to see if Victor has looked behind the curtain at the

portrait. He watches Victor in the mirror to see if he can see anything but

can see nothing but "a placid mask of servility." He sends for the

housekeeper. When she arrives, he asks her to give him the key to the old

schoolroom. She wants to clean it up before he goes up to it, but he

insists he doesn’t need it cleaned. She mentions that it hasn’t bee used

for five years, since his grandfather died. Dorian winces at the mention of

his grandfather, who was always mean to him.

When she leaves, he takes the cover off the couch and throws it over

the portrait. he thinks of Basil and wonders if he shouldn’t have appealed

to Basil to help him resist Lord Henry’s influence. He knows Basil loves

him with more than just a physical love. However, he gives up on the

thought of asking Basil for help, deciding that the future is inevitable

and the past can always be annihilated.

He receives the men from the framemaker’s shop. The framemaker

himself, Mr. Hubbard, has come. He asks the two men to help him carry the

portrait upstairs. He sends Victor away to Lord Henry’s so as to get him

out of the way in order to hide the operation from him. They get the

portrait upstairs with some trouble and he has them lean it against the

wall and leave it. He hates the idea of leaving it in the dreaded room

where he was always sent to be away from his grandfather who didn’t like to

see him, but it’s the only room not in use in the house. He wonders what

the picture will look like over time. He thinks with repulsion of how its

image will show the signs of old age.

When he gets back downstairs to the library, Victor has returned from

Lord Henry’s. Lord Henry had sent him a book and the paper. The paper is

marked with a red pen on a passage about the inquest into Sibyl Vane’s

death. He throws it away annoyed at Lord Henry for sending it and fearing

that Victor saw the red mark. Then he picks up the book Lord Henry sent

him. It is a fascinating book from the first page. It is a plot-less novel,

a psychological study of a young Parisian who spends all his life trying to

realize all the passions and modes of thought of previous ages. It is

written in the style of the French Symbolistes. He finds it to be a

poisonous book. He can’t put it down. It makes him late to dinner with Lord

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