Author: alezeditor

Simple

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Alex here. Just popping back in from beyond the veil. The rumours are true: I was halved by a deliveroo driver (carrying a cabbage?) on my way to lectures one morning. Oh well. I couldn’t escape consequence forever – but I don’t have long, so I better send you this now…

Attached is an essay comparing ‘The Sick Rose’ by Blake (he didn’t make it, by the way) and ‘She Dwelt…’ by Wordsworth. Whilst the poem by Wordsworth may well be unfamiliar, widening your knowledge of Romanticism as you read up on ‘The Sick Rose’ (which I do so hope is familiar) can do no harm.

Apparently there are some ‘tantalising’ moments here, though I was beneficially critiqued for often breaking the argument’s flow to force in those oh so golden Romantic buzzwords whom have proven themselves fake-friends since the end of Year 13. Hopefully such a vice has been eradicated. Well. That’s my time. Try your hardest to forget me.

‘Consider the uses to which ideas of ‘the simple’ have been put in these two poems.’

Throughout both The Sick Rose by Blake and ‘She dwelt among th’untrodden ways…’ by Wordsworth, the poets mask the hidden complexities of their work through the simple (meaning in tandem ‘unsophisticated’, ‘lacking ornamentation’, ‘commonplace’ and ‘modest’[1])  in order to reflect the delicately intricate mundanity of life. Harnessing preindustrial images, the Romantic poets capture both an atavism whilst satirising contemporary sexual immorality and materialistic gain. Ultimately, Wordsworth and Blake use ideas of ‘the simple’ to make stark how far from what they deem as the natural state of being mankind has fallen.

Firstly, both The Sick Rose and Dwelt are short, spanning respectively two and three stanzas with relatively short lines, and discuss topics bound by natural surroundings. Roughly trimetric, Blake’s poem looks ostensibly simple: end rhymes every second line, often freely arhythmic, occasionally iambic, occasionally trochaic. Every structural aspect points to a liberally penned text, emancipated from the iambic strictures that push Wordsworth into the contraction ‘th’untrodden’ in his poem’s first stanza. Both Blake’s freedom and Wordsworth’s contemporarily unremarkable meter, however, suggest the discussion of simple subjects, particularly in the ordinary sense for Dwelt. Hence, their structure certainly puts the content of each poem ‘into the simple’. The natural setting of the poems is seemingly mundane, just like the character of Lucy, compared to ‘a violet […] half-hidden from the eye’. The compound adjective ‘half-hidden’ begins to reveal that something other than eremitism is at play, shrouded by the ‘mossy stone’ (perhaps her gravestone), suggesting that something of her remains after death. This is enforced by the folkloric sense allotted to the poem by Wordsworth’s choice not to name her until the final stanza – she remains nebulous and universal. This remnant appears to be outside of even the poet’s understanding, being ‘unknown’ to him. Not only does he view this remnant as ‘unknown’, but the narrator too is shown to be completely accepting of this conceptual boundary in the final line (‘the difference to me’), perhaps an acknowledgement that he stood no chance at ever fully comprehending her simplicity. Therefore, the quiet simplicity of Lucy’s life, synecdochic of a return to preindustrial life as shown by her synonymity with ‘a violet’, representative of modesty, is too complex for her biographer to quite fathom. Of these Wordsworth is clearly cognisant, fascinated and content with the boundary of his human knowledge, as shown by the consistent reference to the mysterious (‘the unknown’ and ‘the untrodden’). Compressed by the poet into particulate details like ‘a violet’ and ‘a star’, Lucy’s abstract and now intangible existence is likened to nature’s cycle, marking the mystery with which Wordsworth is invested as living alongside preindustrial wonders. More so is the poem captured by the rhythm of nature than the spawling cityscapes of the new world. Bound both by unsophisticated, primitive environments and unornamented structures, Dwelt is lost for words in its effort to grasp ‘the simple’.

Just as Wordsworth emblemises Lucy through a flower, so too does Blake use a ‘Rose’ to act in the place of the feminine. Moving beyond the literal invasion of a rose by the insipid ‘invisible worm’, the severe tone enriched by Blake’s use of the otherwise hyperbolic description of ‘dark secret love’, as well as the introduction of the masculine pronoun ‘his’ in the second stanza, suggests that the diseased ‘Rose’ and the phallic ‘worm’ are allegories for an unequal and sexual relationship between a woman and a man. Thus, unlike the employment of the natural world as a setting in which Wordsworth can depict a reversion to preindustrial life, Blake acquires commonplace nature as an agent of his social critique, educating his readership on how ordinary the spread of sexually transmitted infections had become, unbeknownst to the wives whose husbands brought them back from the brothel.  Blake elevates the ostensibly simple, therefore, to reflect the socially widespread through prosopopoeia. It is also interesting to note that both poets’ reduction of the female in their poems to flowers, symbols of delicacy and beauty, reflects too the movement of the complex into ‘the simple’. In this light, the poets’ multifaceted abstraction and concretion as ‘Lucy’ and the women possibly symbolised by the ‘Rose’ are torn between allegorical embodiments of atavism or the victims of infidelity and forceless, fragile plants. In Dwelt, this seasonal fragility, coupled with the image of the ‘mossy stone’, evokes more the easing wilt of mankind from birth to eternal sleep, but also the return of such beauty on the advent of Spring. Just like the ‘violet’, humankind is subjugated by the turning of nature from life to death. Consequently, Wordsworth draws on the ordinary to hastening a revival of the simple past spent alongside nature, knowing that the complexity of new industrialism will one day wither too, speaking to the transience of humans who ‘cease to be’ and the permanent natural world that remains ‘fair as a star’, striking and unchanging.  

In The Sick Rose, the concretion of the feminine into a delicate flower, unlike with the ‘violet’, renders Blake’s diagnosis far starker. This ‘Rose’ seems not to be merely withering, but, as implied by the Romantic’s decision to begin the poem with his bleak judgement, unrecoverably ‘sick’ before the male presence is even established. From this angle, the ‘Rose’ is no longer representative of the victimised female alone, but seems also act as an insignia of England, the national flower of the country. This in turn broadens the consequence of sexual immorality to one endangering the whole of society, rather than the young wives of deceitful adulterers, particularly once the ‘invisible worm’ is considered to be an allusion to the snake of Genesis’ third chapter in this Edenic garden setting. Not only is The Sick Rose allegorical, but also typological. Just as Wordsworth prophesises the eventual end of the Industrial Revolution through means of his purely natural poem, Blake alludes to the Fall of Man to call in an end to equally deceitful infidelity within marriage and what man has made of England. Reflecting on the depictions of worms in Acts 12:23-24[2] and the apocalyptic third and fourth line of his poem, the ‘worm’ becomes a possible agent of divine will, bringing judgement upon a fallen nation, typified by the ‘sick Rose’, beset with abject poverty and swelling pollution. Aligning with Wordsworth’s understanding that death makes way for new life, Blake’s analogue of the New Testament and decision to frame his satire in a garden clarifies his belief that God will find a way to restore His order on earth by way of uprooting the impure and morally ‘sick’. Therefore, Blake shifts his didactic message of restoration onto the simplistic archetypes of the ‘worm’ and the ‘Rose’ in order to define starkly his understanding of the complexities of divine will.  

Wordsworth and Blake, in framing their educative verdicts within simplistic settings and poetic structures, uncover dually the complexity of nature and the brevity of human life once placed alongside nature. Placing their complex social critiques concerning sexual and industrial deviance from the world both poets grew up in, with Blake himself experiencing a population growth of one to six million in his time, ‘into the simple’, the poets make stark the fallen nature of humankind whilst keeping in mind their desire for reversion.

[1] “simple, adj., n., adv., and int.”. OED Online. September 2022. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/179955?rskey=ifpM0V&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed November 07, 2022).

[2] ‘Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him [Herod] down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. But the word of God increased and multiplied.’

I hope this helped – if even a little bit :).

Corruption

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Beneath is an essay comparing the theme of corruption in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde and ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison. The essay was noted for its ‘seamless movement’ between texts and its integration of minor characters, whilst it lacked a discussion of the settings’ relationships to corruption. It was given 36/40, being Level 5 in both brackets of the markscheme. I hope that it comes in useful 🙂

In both ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde and ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison, the writers use the theme of corruption to reveal how corrosive Victorian hypocrisy and generational slave trauma can become. Ultimately, both writers explore corruption through the frame of influence in order to present it as inevitable in a society enveloped by insurmountable trauma.

Firstly, Wilde and Morrison present corruption as being caused by influence. In Chapter 19 of Wilde’s only novel, Dorian Gray condemns Lord Henry (whom he often calls ‘Harry’) for having ‘poisoned me with a book once’. Whilst the verb ‘poisoned’ introduces the concept of corruption, Dorian’s passivity in the phrase could be mimicking that he takes no blame for his actions, but rather holds Lord Henry completely accountable. The allusions to the devil and Dr Faustus produced by the mirroring nickname ‘Harry’ (‘Old Harry’), as well as the involvement of ‘the yellow book’’s activity in Dorian’s condemnation, might imply that literature can have a corrupting influence over its reader. This notion was later rebuked by Wilde himself, writing ‘there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book’ in his Preface to the novel. Here, Wilde seems to be arguing that Dorian’s plea to go unblamed for being ‘poisoned’ is cowardice and that he could have escaped Lord Henry’s corrosive influence if he merely refused it, which he is never capable of, continuing to perpetuate Henry’s rhetoric of his ‘rose-white boyhood’ to the very final chapter. In Morrison’s ‘Beloved’, the writer uses the character of Beloved in a parallel way to Lord Henry, having a controlling influence over the escaped slave ‘Sethe’, her mother. Named the ‘devil-child’ by the community that watches her resurgence, Beloved is arguably the manifestation of Sethe’s guilt after having killed her in a warped attempt of maternal protection. Aligning with the Edenic allusion to Eve’s corruption traced in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, it is clear that Beloved has an engulfing control over Sethe by Chapter 23, in which the voices of the three women convene in repeating ‘You are mine.’. Morrison’s use of heteroglossia in this chorus might be implying that Sethe has lost her individuality due to an unfaced guilt so corruptive that it has physicalised. The supernatural element of their conglomeration also draws parallels to the verb ‘poisoned’, through which ‘the yellow book’ is personified, giving literature itself a supernatural aspect. Perhaps Wilde is lending literature a hyperbolic supernatural facet to educate his readers on the dangers of finding meaning in art, in line with the contemporary notion of ‘Aestheticism’ (‘art for art’s sake’), again referenced in the final lines of his Preface (‘All art is quite useless’).

Similarly, the intermingling of the supernatural with reality through heteroglossia in ‘Beloved’ might be enacting Morrison’s desire to highlight the generational trauma sewn by slavery. In this way, Sethe’s reduction due to Beloved’s consuming influence becomes a cautionary story against the danger of hiding trauma associated with slavery. Arguably, Beloved’s corrupting influence is used by Morrison to educate her readers on the importance of waking up from a period of traumatic dysfunction, which she called ‘national amnesia’. Both texts use influence, embedded with the Gothic trope of the supernatural, to enrich their readership with an understanding of ways to take responsibility and ownership for their actions or the horrors of slavery, whose persisting trauma many in America were born into, as a way to escape corruption.

Secondly, Morrison and Wilde explore corruption as inevitable for those restricted by tragedies of the past. After the killing of Beloved, ‘Denver took her mother’s milk right along with the blood of her sister’. The active and demanding verb ‘took’ introduces a sense of irony, as the baby is unaware of what she is drinking along with Sethe’s milk. This irony underpins a sense of tragic inevitability and reframes the image of maternal love to one perhaps metaphorical of the passing on of trauma and corruption, embodied by the grotesque imagery in ‘the blood of her sister’. Morrison’s attempt to prove the insurmountable nature of corruption might be being enforced by Wilde in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, ‘whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, [Lord Kelso] had always hated and desired to keep at a distance.’, keeping his grandson locked in the Gothic prison of the ‘attic’. The introduction of the uncanny through the adjective ‘strange’ perhaps might also be implying homosexuality, deemed as a ‘sin’, especially after its illegalisation in 1885. Through this understanding, it might be argued that Dorian was always destined to be susceptible to corruption due to his ostracisation from a young age. His uncanny ‘likeness’ to his mother might, in addition, suggest that Dorian Gray, much like Beloved to Sethe, acts as the physicalisation of Lord Kelso’s corruption, who ordered the murder of Dorian’s father, leading to the death of his ‘poor mother’ (Chapter 1). This warped understanding of love is passed down to the susceptible orphan, Dorian, a concept epitomised after Sibyl Vane’s suicide, whose role as an actress allows Dorian to agree that she ‘never really lived, and so she has never really died’ (Chapter 8). This inevitable corruption of love is mirrored by Morrison’s character Paul B, who condemns Sethe’s ‘love with a handsaw’. The juxtaposition between ‘love’ and ‘handsaw’ in Morrison’s chosen oxymoron speaks to the omnipotence of corruption over a love unhinged by the trauma of slavery. In both texts, corruption is presented as inevitable due to the constrictions of an isolating and segregated society.            

In conclusion, both Wilde and Morrison ultimately present corruption as only being escapable if humanity accepts its own responsibility for influence, in spite of ever-constrictive and inevitable corruption embedded by Victorian ideals around homosexuality and contemporary silence concerning the heritage of slavery

To My Nine-Year-Old Self

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Beneath is some close analysis on ‘To My Nine-Year-Old Self’ by Helen Dunmore. I hope that it comes in useful.

“You must forgive me. Don’t look so surprised,

perplexed, and eager to be gone,

balancing on your hands or on the tightrope.

You would rather run than walk, rather climb than run

rather leap from a height than anything.”

Stanza 1

Dunmore opens her poem pleading forgiveness from her younger self. In this way, the imperative modal verb ‘must’ introduces the loss of childishness and innocence in the poem, acting as a plea to regain the vibrancy of youth. However, if the modal verb is read as being demanding, one could argue that the narrator is forcibly trying to reconcile with a past that she sees as ambiguously better than her present. This view is further evidenced by the implied comparison in the last two lines of the stanza, which also introduce a sense of jealously between the present narrator and their younger self.

The younger self’s lack of response both might be highlighting the child’s rebellion against or ignorance of societal boundaries and the inevitabilities of growing up and growing old, whilst also alluding to the irony of her inability to respond because she is merely a memory. This view is enriched once the juxtaposition between the static narrator and her active, younger self is considered. Perhaps Dunmore uses this unachievable response to mimic the unobtainable pursuit of youth and innocence to educate her reader to come to terms with the passage of time and let go of the need to recapture the dynamism of our youth, a dynamism for whom over we must all ultimately chose experience. Whether or not the trade of knowledge for innocence is fair is explored later in the poem.

This stanza begins with a more definite, confessional tone. The declarative ‘I have spoiled’ might contrastingly be suggesting that the narrator has accepted aging, despite the inclusive pronoun ‘we’, which could be illustrating a sense of unison between the two. Note also the definite article ‘the’ (‘the scars’), arguably alluding to the final stanza’s ‘a ripe scab’. This may be highlighting the divide between the ‘spoiled’ narrator and the fleeting injuries picked up in youth, going without lasting ramification. However, the dual images of the injured adult and child together might be hinting that the quasi-self-destructive nature critiqued by the older narrator emerged in youth, and that their childhood was perhaps not as idyllic as the memory heavily implies.

“I have spoiled this body we once shared.

Look at the scars, and watch the way I move,

careful of a bad back or a bruised foot.

Do you remember how, three minutes after waking

we’d jump straight out of the ground floor window

into the summer morning?”

Stanza 2

In this way, Dunmore might be shedding light on the dangers of looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses because of the threat that behaviour holds to self-esteem.

One could also argue that the enjambment connecting the last three lines of the stanza connects to the unpredictability and spontaneity of youth, giving the childhood a palpable sense of adventure, in comparison with the endstopping in many of the lines containing the recent experience of the narrator. Has the older narrator conformed to societal norms, norms yet unregistered by the child?

“That dream we had, no doubt it’s as fresh in your mind

as the white paper to write it on.

We made a start – but something else came up –

a baby vole, or a bag of sherbet lemons –

and besides, that summer of ambition

created an ice-lolly factory, a wasp trap

and a den by the cesspit.”

Stanza 3

The longest of the poem, this stanza acts as the crowning moment of the narrator’s youth. However, the disjointed feeling enacted by the fragmented sentence structure, as well as the asyndetic listing, might reveal that the memory has already begun to fade and that she has not only lost her youth, but is starting also loose the ability to reminisce with the fullness once accessible to her. This speaks to the frailty and inadequacy of memory, a memory now only captured by fleeting images of ‘sherbet lemons’ and an ‘ice-lolly factory’. On the other hand, it could be considered that the narrator only discusses tangible parts of her youth because any previous emotional attachment would be too painful to excavate.

The absence of parental figures might be hinting at a debatably more difficult loss as the narrator has grown older, that of family. Additionally, the loss of innocence is furthered by the opening line (‘That dream we had’). This line could imply that the narrator, at one point, gave up her ambition for conformism, and that the memory is almost split (due to the inclusive pronoun) between her actual experience of childhood and an experience tainted by reflection. Evidencing again that she gave up dreams of youth for experience, the syndetic listing in the final line draws in a feeling of eventual ceasing. Again, Dunmore picks up on the unstoppably wavering vibrancy and freedom of youth.

In the first line of stanza 4, the conditional tense introduces the concept that reason has inhibited the narrator from carrying out her wishes, as her child self seems to. Perhaps Dumore suggests that part of adulthood is letting go of following impulse for the good of logic, argubably a constraining factor for the narrator. This notion is enforced by the third line’s ‘I won’t keep you then.’ Could it be that the narrator is rejecting the memory because of her logical argument, or that she is letting go of her child-self in order to maintain some of the innocence left in it. Perhaps the poet argues that the innocence of youth is primarily menaced by looking back on it following experience. Memory is corruptible.

“I’d like to say that we could be friends

but the truth is we have nothing in common

beyond a few shared years. I won’t keep you then.

Time to pick rosehips for tuppence a pound,

time to hide down scared lanes

for men in cars after girl-children,”

Stanza 4

Yet, it is not only memory that seems to be corrupting innocence in the poem, but also the introduction of money and sexuality in the last three lines. The narrator might be revealing the end of her childhood through the sinister, male presence. Here, childhood and innocence are presented as not only things that she chose to give up due to the allure of experience, but also things that were stolen from her by a premature sexual experience.

“or lunge out over the water

on a rope that swings over that tree

long buried in housing –

but no, I shan’t cloud your morning. God knows

I have fears enough for us both -“

Stanza 5

The narrator quickly skips passed the memory of ‘men in cars after girl-children’ and we notice that she continues to avoid delving too deeply into some of her past, skipping over the ‘rope… long buried in housing -‘. Perhaps the narrator is unable to face some of the harshest moments of childhood as she looks back, implying that Dunmore wants to investigate the imperfections of childhood and how we often underplay them in reflection to keep hold of an unstained past.

She also makes a parallel decision to her choosing of experience over innocence when she chooses to leave the now imperfect memory of childhood and return to her present. There also seems to be evidence that she wishes to leave it in order to stay ignorant of the darker truths that have begun to embed themselves into a half-told history (such as the introduction of money and sexual undertones). Here, the narrator begins to seem unreliable. Whilst she starts her poem believing that she must apologise to her past, there comes a hidden realisation that her childhood was just as bound to fear as her adulthood (underlined by the transferred epithet ‘scared lanes’ in the previous stanza). In this light, the final sentence of the stanza is given a protective, almost maternal feel as the narrator decides to cover up the full truth of her childhood. Again, she seeks to uphold the vision of a childhood that she never truly had.

Leaving her reader with the slowly decelerating stanza lengths, the narrator finally lets go of the longing to return to innocence, decides to leave to keep the full realisation of the memory unachieved, or understands that she cannot change the past to change her present.

“I leave you in an ecstasy of concentration

slowly peeling a ripe scab from your knee

to taste it on your tongue.”

Stanza 6

The final image of the ‘scab’ might therefore be foreshadowing the future’s ‘scars’, acting to show the reader that the passing of time is inevitable. The narrator relinquishes hold over the memory, and reconciles with it in allowing her past self to grow up and grow old, figuring life out for herself.

Alexander Stephenson

Nature’s Power

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Below is an essay written on Nature’s Power. The essay scored in Level 5 of the mark scheme, given 26/30. Whilst the essay lacked a discussion of terza rima and the Peterloo Massacre, it was noted for its deftly embedded examples and discriminating analysis of literary features. Corrections have been added in emboldened italics.

Explore the ways in which nature’s power is portrayed in Ode to the West Wind by Percy Shelley and one other poem.

In both ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Shelley and ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake, the poets present nature’s power as divine and purifying for the corruption of mankind, ‘found everywhere in chains’ (Rousseau, ‘The Social Contract’). Drawing on Romantic notions of the sublime, as well as inducing revolution, the poets use nature’s power to symbolise the dawning of a new, liberated age, free from the frailty of humankind.

Firstly, in ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘The Tyger’, the poets present nature’s divine power as a terrifying, destructive force. From Blake’s collection, ‘The Songs of Experience’, the poem’s fourth stanza introduces nature’s potential to decimate mankind through the question ‘what dread grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?’. Whilst the repetition of the aggressive ‘d’ sound and the masculine rhyme scheme (caused by the catalectic trochaic tetrameter which ends on the stronger ‘tum’ syllable) evoke a sense of nature’s dominance, it is also interesting to note the poem’s lexical similarity to scriptural vernacular used in ‘The Book of Job’. This Old Testament text centres on a man who demands answers about the meaning of suffering from his creator. The parallel between Job and the narrator’s questioning in Blake’s fourth stanza might be involving the poem with Romantic notions of the visionary poet, though it could also suggest that the ‘Tyger’, synecdochic of nature, has usurped the position of God in the poem, giving its power divine authority. Replacing God with nature might also be an attempt to satirise human overstepping into the divine role through industrialism and imperialism, which Blake may be arguing has disturbed the natural order of existence, dictated by God, in order to convince his reader to return back to a more natural, primordial state of life in the midst of rapid expansion in London, where the population boomed from one million to six million over the course of the Industrial Revolution. Through this understanding, it could be argued that the Tyger’s ‘dread grasp’ and subsequent potential for destruction, enacting its sublime aspect, acts as a warning against the perversion of natural order. Thus, nature’s power is presented as guarding against the perversion of divine decree, linking with the Romantic notion of returning to Renaissance ideals. This concept is further evidenced by Percy Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’. In the ode’s third canto, the poet describes ‘Baiae’s bay’ being destroyed by the ‘Atlantic’s level powers’. ‘Baiae’, where classical, wealthy Greeks would cluster, might be emblematic of an old, outdated way of thinking. This notion is broadened by Blake, who also uses the elements (‘watered heaven with their tears’) to enact cleansing in the poem.  Through Baiae’s death, therefore, induced by the ‘West Wind’ lapping up sea tide, Shelley might be alluding to the dawning of a new age sparked by the American Revolution, to which the poem’s title might refer. This further supports nature’s power’s terrifying and decimating quality introduced by Blake, as well as adding to its divine role as the ‘level powers’ may enforce judgement over the capitalistic and imperialistic world views spawned by the classical Greeks and Romans but recurred by Industrialism.

Secondly, nature’s purifying power is presented as revealing the frailty of humankind. The exclamation ‘Oh hear!’ is repeated at the end of the first three cantos in ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and the exclamation ‘Tyger! Tyger!’ emerges in the first line of Blake’s poem, which is then echoed in the last stanza. Whilst these both evidence the deification of nature’s presence through their hymnal, evangelical tones, they might also reflect the poets’ longing for the purification of the world, provoked by the mass tampering of nature due to Industrialism. The sonnet form of the cantos in ‘Ode to the West Wind’ may be being used by Shelley to embellish and enlarge this notion into the sense that nature’s power has the ability to invoke worship away from the materialistic contemporary world view to itself. This is enforced by the use of terza rima, whose interlocking rhyme scheme throughout the cantos may enact a feeling of unification, introducing the idea of revolution as well as adding to nature’s divine aspect. Here, it could be argued that Shelley is almost repenting for the hedonistic approach that he once had, a change perhaps caused by the deaths of his wife and daughter which may have made him realise the instability of man and his unstable political systems (evidenced by the Haitian and French Revolutions) and the incorruptibility of nature’s power, as shown through the adjective ‘pumice’ (a ‘pumice isle in Baiae’s bay’). The concept of nature’s cleansing power and human weakness is expanded in ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake, where Blake describes the ‘Tyger’ as ‘burning bright’. The present participle verb ‘burning’ might elicit this sense of nature’s purity and stability as the verb is continuous. Perhaps, once the creature is considered symbolic of Blake’s gnostic faith, Blake uses the ‘Tyger’ as a tool to enact his desire to purify and find a higher truth in religion, a truth exempt from the rigours of the 18th century’s religious oligarchy. In this way, nature’s power is presented as cleansing and as a foil for mankind, having the ability to expose the insecurity of humankind through its own immortality, underpinned by the image of the ‘burning’ ‘Tyger’ in the first and last stanza, as a means of educating the Industrial readers on the fallibility and culpability of the modern age, an age whose imprisonment by the religious authority was typified in ‘The Social Contract’. This concept is further evidenced by Shelley, who ends his ode with the rhetorical question ‘Can Spring be far behind?’. The hopeful idea of ‘Spring’ and seasonal change involves a rejuvenating quality with nature’s power whilst perhaps alluding to the Peterloo massacre, signalling that Shelley is using seasonal change to propel his reader into radical thought processes to call into question existing power structures; thus, it might be that nature’s cleansing acts as forerunning to a coming era of revolution and liberation.

In conclusion, in ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Shelley and ‘The Tyger’ by Blake, the poets use nature’s power to symbolise the divine whilst lacing it with a cleansing and restorative capability. Ultimately, nature’s power is presented as enabling the induction of a liberated return to a simplistic way of life, leaving nature unperverted by the corruption of humanity.

I hope that this came in useful!

Alexander Stephenson

Reputation

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Here’s an essay written on the theme of Reputation in ‘Othello’, by William Shakespeare. The essay was marked as Level 5 and noted especially for its discussion of critics. However, the essay could have included an analysis of Iago’s reputation of being ‘honest’, a trait whose falseness is hidden to all but the audience through his 5 soliloquies – until the play’s end. The essay also lacked a discussion of the link between Cassio and Machiavelli due to their joint origin of Florence. This can be seen in italics in the second sub-argument.

Explore how Shakespeare presents the theme of reputation in ‘Othello’.

Throughout ‘Othello’, William Shakespeare tackles the theme of reputation by damning the tragic hero, Othello, and Cassio into a world of chaos, orchestrated by the villain, Iago. Underpinning the elusiveness of reputation through interrelational developments, Shakespeare ultimately presents the theme as being unachievable for outsiders, like Moors, though easily restorable for insiders.

Firstly, Othello’s relationship to reputation is presented as unnavigable in a world that cannot accept the colour of his skin. In Act 1 Scene 2, Othello’s nobility is explored when he says, ‘I fetch my life and being / from men of royal siege’. This suggests that Othello was born into a noble, yet “exotic”, household, and implies that his position in Venice is not above his birth rank. This would have been an interesting notion to comprehend for the Jacobean audience in a nation that had just begun participating in the sub-Saharan slave trade (1562). In her commentary of the play’s dealing with race, Ania Loomba stated that Othello is of both ‘slave past and noble lineage’. This contemporary understanding of blackamoors being slaves may have affiliated Othello with an inherent duplicity, with the Jacobean audience arguably resenting a character of African descent holding such rank in Venice. If it is considered that Venice is a foil for London in the play, Loomba’s musing on the confusion surrounding the character of Othello’s reputation is further proven through Queen Elizabeth I’s attempted deportation of people of “that kind” from her country. Perhaps Shakespeare, therefore, is presenting reputation as transient for the tragic hero. Through this, it might be that Shakespeare is playing with the classical Aristotelian tragic custom of the hero beginning the play with high rank and reputation, making it uncertain as to whether Othello does begin with any sense of creditable nobility. In saying this, it could be argued that Loomba’s insight loses some credibility as his ‘noble lineage’ seems to be made uncertain by his race. This is strengthened by Leavis’ mocking of Shakespeare’s tragic hero, writing that Othello has ‘histrionic intent’. This might be alluding to Othello’s essential duality in the play, as expressed through Iago’s racially charged insults in the play’s first scene, calling Othello a ‘black ram’ and a ‘barbary horse’ as well as Loomba’s commentary, that Othello cannot navigate being both of nobility and slavery. Leavis’ understanding of Othello seems to undo Loomba’s concept of ‘noble lineage’ as he suggests that the hero merely plays a role and is of a reputation only accessible through his unstable rank amongst the Venetians, and not any familial lineage. Therefore, despite Othello being from ‘royal siege’, the distrust and barbaric nature associated with his race, being reduced to a ‘ram’ or a ‘horse’, predestines him to seek a reputation that is ultimately elusive and unachievable, evidenced by his epiphany in Act 5 Scene 2, where he pleads to the Venetian authorities: ‘I pray you… speak of me as I am’. Despite having killed Desdemona, Othello still ultimately seeks the preservation of his reputation above all, adding to the viability of Leavis’ idea that he is simply playing a role. This involves Othello with the selfish and masculine desire to seek reputation above all else, introduced by the character of Cassio.

Secondly, reputation is presented as only being stable if one is born into the “correct” race and family. Just like Othello, Cassio is an outsider, hailing from Florence. Yet, Cassio is still depicted as being white. After being a leading member of a brawl instigated by Iago in Act 2 Scene 3, Cassio refers to reputation by saying ‘I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial’. Unlike the character of Othello, Cassio understands reputation as being enduring, as shown through the adjective ‘immortal’. However, much like the presentations of Othello, Cassio too sees that, without his reputation, he would be viewed, and even view himself, as subhuman, as presented through the adjective ‘bestial’. It is arguable, contrastingly, that Othello begins his life without reputation, and can only gain unstable nobility through becoming the ‘valiant’ general in Venice because of his race, yet Cassio, who ‘never set squadron in the field’, begins life with original reputation, and can only lose it. Shakespeare may be furthering this notion through the character’s relationship to women. With Desdemona, Othello begins his romance with an unreputable elopement, having ‘betrayed her father’ and scandalising Venice. However, Cassio’s relationship with Bianca, a prostitute, is clearly not condemned in the same way, as ‘Cassio rules in Cyprus’ after Othello’s suicide, suggesting that Cassio has regained ‘lost’ reputation. Cassio’s Florentine origins might also allude to Niccolò Machiavelli, a political figure seen as condemnable by the Jacobean audience for his radically egotistical politics. Through this, Shakespeare might be shedding light on the injustice of blackness’ regrettably intrinsic culpability superseding the culpability of Cassio’s Machiavellian intent in selfishly seeking the restoration of his reputation. Could Shakespeare again be using the idea of whiteness’ justifying quality (‘Bianca’ means ‘white’) to pose his audience the question as to whether Cassio’s race is enough to justify his promiscuity, despite the fact that Othello’s race condemns his actions further? Therefore, stable reputation is presented as only being accessible by Cassio, due to his whiteness, in a world that too actively and unjustly uses race as the compass of morality.

To conclude, reputation is displayed in the play through the juxtaposing of Othello and his dramatic foil, Cassio. Ultimately, true reputation is presented as only being won through harsh military gain for true outsiders, yet easily accessible and restorable for insiders.

Hopefully this comes in useful – if even a little bit.

Alexander Stephenson

The Tyger

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Some close analysis on ‘The Tyger’, by William Blake.

“Its tail sways like a cedar;

the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.

Its bones are tubes of bronze,

its limbs like rods of iron.

…

Who dares open the doors of its mouth,

ringed about with its fearsome teeth?”

Job 40:17-18, 41:14

Arguably mimicking the descriptions of Leviathan, presented by God, in the Old Testament, Blake offers his reader a glimpse into the metaphysical embodiment of human over-stepping into the authority of God through the ‘Tyger’. Perhaps Blake usurps the divine creative role in this poem to enact his argument against British Imperialism and Industrialism, both concerning to him for their destructive intent and denial of a sense of natural order, dictated by God, caused by a perpetual desire for knowledge. In other words, Blake could be blaming human expansion for disturbing the will of the Creator.

However, the composition could equally be read as a glorification of human imagination and creativity when Blake defames the traditional Protestant god in questioning ‘What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’. This view is further evidenced by the poem’s contrary in ‘The Songs of Innocence’, ‘The Lamb’, which could be an ignorant foil of the boundless knowledge searched for in ‘The Tyger’. The first stanza, therefore, leaves the reader perplexed as to whether Blake is satirising the Industrial motive of human expansion or denying the omnipotence of the rigourously tyrannical god exhibited by the era’s religious oligarchy.

This ambiguity is expanded once we consider how the poem subverts the passage from the book of Job. Unlike Job’s constant questioning of God, the narrator constantly questions the ‘Tyger’ in the poem.

‘What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?’

Stanza 4

Again, the god of the Old Testament is overthrown. Yet, through this interpretation, He is overthrown by the ‘Tyger’, perhaps synecdochic of Nature. This acts as another seminal Romantic linking of Nature with the divine role, found also in the works of Wordsworth and Shelley, particularly in ‘Ode to the West Wind’.

The pantheistic insight of the fourth stanza further enriches Blake’s distrust of Industrialism and the consequence of Nature’s destruction. Yet, the allusions to the Greek god of smithery, Hephaestus, in connection with the divine ‘Tyger’, enlarge the scope of its symbolism to arguably itself be evoking Nature’s decimation. This allusion through the lexical field of industry (‘hammer’, ‘chain’, ‘furnace’, ‘anvil’), in tandem with the alliteration of the aggressive ‘d’ sound (‘dare its deadly’) and the masculine rhyme scheme (ending the lines with the longer ‘tum’ syllables), builds the perception of the creature’s potential wrath and violence.

Most interestingly, the industrial noun ‘furnace’ might elicit an inverted means to creation, one that is not found in the natural world. Mirroring the womb, the ‘furnace’ might induce the presence of an alternative Creator in the poem. Linking with the line ‘Did he who made the lamb make thee?’, Blake could be drawing on Gnostic Mysticism, the denomination from which the notion that the Old and New Testament God are two separate entities derives. This confession recurred in Blake’s era through Swedenborgianism, to which he momentarily subscribed in 1789.

The complexity of this poem not only enacts Blake’s own struggles of faith but renders it also difficult to attempt in an essay. It could, however, provide some truly rewarding developments on other Romantic poets’ understanding of religion and humankind’s relationship to nature.

Alex Stephenson

Othello – Critical Quotes

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Here lies the unofficial (essential) bank of Critical Quotes for ‘Othello’, by William Shakespeare.

“Both of slave past and noble lineage.”

Loomba

The critic underpins Othello’s fundamental duality – that he holds high-status in Venice, yet is a complete outsider. Punctuated by Iago’s brutal exploitation of stereotypes, Othello’s downfall might have been seen as inevitable by the London audience, for whom Venice acts as a placeholder, due to this state of unnavigable dualism. The contemporary audience could have even seen this condition as duplicitous, holding the mindset that a ‘Moor’ should not control such a position in society.

Loomba’s approach also explores Aristotelian tragic customs, arguing that the play centers around a man of ‘noble lineage’. Could it be that Shakespeare is, in fact, playing with this norm as Othello was not cultivated by nobility, but rather humble beginnings? Perhaps the trajectory of Othello returning to his original low status by the end of the play is almost a form of sick comedy, as his heightened position may have been deemed as near delusional by the Jacobean audience.

“The motive-hunting of motiveless malignity.’

Coleridge

Iago’s lies concerning Cassio and Emilia imply that the villain has no true motive, despite Othello’s promotion above him. Is it simply his greed and lust for power that propels him to rupture the world around him? Ultimately, there is no justification for his behaviour towards Desdemona, arguably the most virtuous character in all the play, adding a more sinister, more abstract, sense to his motive, if there is any at all.

“The audience becomes complicit in Iago’s intention…’

McEvoy

“[the audience] comes close to sympathising with a villain.”

Honigmann

Through his 5 revealing soliloquies, the audience becomes Iago’s closest confidant. The dramatic irony provokes a sense of desperation in the audience, and infuses a feeling of helplessness. However, McEvoy looses credibility when compared with Coleridge. If Iago’s soliloquies are full of only lies, the audience would not be drawn into complicity. On the other hand, perhaps Iago’s false motives manipulate the audience into collusion, only for them to feel betrayed after he targets Desdemona, turning ‘virtue into pitch’.

This, in turn, may have the effect of making the audience empathise with Othello, Emilia, Cassio and Desdemona more than they would have otherwise. For this reason, Honigmann’s commentary seems more appropriate, with the audience only ‘coming close’ to conspiracy.

“[Desdemona] is self-denying in the extreme when she dies.”

Marilyn French

The play opens in the aftermath of Desdemona’s and Othello’s elopement. With this decision, Desdemona rebels against patriarchal Venice and betrays the will of her father, Brabantio. In her commentary, French argues that, by her death, Desdemona has lost sight of this rebellion. Submitting to her husbands will and making no attempt to escape her fate, French muses that Desdemona has sacrificed her independence for the will of her husband, a stark contrast from her initial decision to elope.

On the other hand, it is arguable that Desdemona’s character has not changed, and that she was never autonomous in the first place. Could it be that Desdemona’s sole loyalty to her husband drove both the elopement and her sacrificial death? With this in mind, French’s notion of her ‘self-denying’ quality seems less in contrast to her initial state and there would perhaps be more evidence for the argument that Desdemona had never even found a sense of rebellion, even during the elopement.

“[tragedy is] concerned with one person”

Bradley

“Love and death coexist in every great tragedy.”

McRae

“…the causes of suffering lie in human weakness, divine retribution, or arbitrary fate.”

Kastan

The three critics build on preexisting notions of Aristotelian tragedy, and outline how Othello differs and redefines tragic norms. These three might come in useful for how you discuss form in your essay

I hope that this comes in useful.

Alexander Stephenson

Presentations of Women

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Here is an essay that I wrote on the presentation of women in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘Beloved’. The essay was scored 34/40, but has since been revised with some corrections (shown in italics). I hope that you find it useful.

Throughout both ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde and ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison, the authors use women to mirror and act as foils for the masculine-dominated Victorian and post-Civil War societies in which the characters find themselves. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Wilde exhibits the female experience as being thought of as inferior by the Victorians during ‘La Fin de Siècle’, whilst Morrison propels female emancipation into being a force to heal the horrors of humanity as she reflects on slavery. Ultimately, women are presented as a marginalised group in society who must live with the consequences of brutal class strictures enforced upon them by dominant patriarchal understanding.

Firstly, Morrison and Wilde present women as being unnoticed and marginalised by the world that surrounds them. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, after Dorian Gray degrades and threatens her with the breaking of their engagement, Sibyl Vane commits suicide. Whilst consoling Dorian, Lord Henry tells him that ‘the girl never really lived, and so she has never really died’. The adverb ‘really’ might be exposing Lord Henry’s derogatory intent, as well as underpinning his idea that because she was an actress, Sibyl never had autonomy over her own identity. This is intertwined with the systemic belittling of women across the breadth of the 19th century, especially during the time of the later Gothic writers, as seen in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, where women are almost entirely absent. Could it be that Oscar Wilde is musing off this absence by the use of the metaphor surrounding Sibyl’s whole life being an act, drawing on the Gothic trope of doubling and the division between dual versions of the self (as seen in Stevenson’s work)? The repetition of ‘never really’ emphasises this satire. Similarly, in ‘Beloved’, after the exorcism of Beloved, Morrison writes that ‘they forgot her like a bad dream’. If one was to interpret the supernatural character of Beloved (‘skin, lineless and smooth’) as being a metaphor for the wider female slave experience, could it be that Morrison is attempting to educate her reader on how the African American women’s strife during slavery has been forgotten about? Through the ambiguous plural pronoun ‘they’, Morrison could also be pointing the blame for this forgetting to a universal crowd of people who are ignorant of or wish to ignore the plight of African American women, and how slave trauma continues to influence life today. The attempted erasing of women and their experience through Lord Henry’s stealing of Sibyl’s identity and the community’s forgetting of Beloved links to Toni Morrison’s theory of ‘national amnesia’, through which she posed her interviewer the question on why female history is being dismantled and disremembered. Talking of Sibyl Vane’s and Lord Henry’s influential voices over him, Dorian says that he does not ‘know which to follow’. Here, it could be argued that because Sibyl has some power over Dorian’s actions, Dorian esteems her to be more than just an actress. However, after Dorian’s acceptance of Lord Henry’s concept of Sibyl not truly being human (‘we will not talk of what has happened’ (chapter 8)), Dorian now involves himself in the covering-up of Sibyl’s life and death. Wilde might be using women, here, to present the egotistical lifestyle of members of the upper classes as Dorian chooses the sanctity of his reputation over the continuation of Sibyl’s memory. Additionally, because Lord Henry reduces Sibyl to her role as an actress, and therefore art though the preposition of time ‘never’, might Wilde be involving the notion of Aestheticism, mentioned in the Preface as ‘All art is quite useless’? Through the Aesthetic lens, Sibyl merely becomes art, a thing of beauty, and is stripped of her completeness as a woman, perhaps introducing the idea that male ego inhibits female significance, much like with the character of Beloved, who is disremembered. The third-person omniscient narrative of Morrison’s final chapter may, just like the disconnected plural pronoun ‘they’, be being used to distance the reader from the forgetting of female slave trauma, a forgetting that threatened healing by removing half of the story. Morrison might, here, be mimicking the removal of women from the slave narrative, just as Lord Henry and Dorian removed Sibyl, pretending that she never ‘really’ lived, for the hedonistic good of their reputations. However, the final word in the novel is ‘Beloved’. Could this suggest that Morrison believes that society can one day heal the wounds sewn by the removal of the female voice, or might the proper noun be acting itself as a tribute to histories that the world will never bring itself to hear? In both novels, the unrecognition of the female voice may be being exposed as symptomatic of a society dominated by male-centric history, though Wilde may arguably be perpetuating this through his novel’s lack of a commanding female voice.

Secondly, women are presented as being controlled by the societies that they live in. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Wilde focuses on the Vane family in chapter 5 of the novel. Mrs Vane, Sibyl’s mother, is described as having ‘bismuth-whitened hands’. Whilst the centring on the cosmetic description of women might again be reducing them to a two-dimensional role, it might also be that the allusions created by the compound adjective ‘bismuth-whitened’ refer to the inevitability of women becoming actresses in the Vane family and by extension the societal disempowering of women into a role classified by their beauty and lack of identity. This ownership is also developed by Morrison in chapter 23, where the chorus of Denver, Sethe and Beloved chant ‘You are mine’ in repetition to end the chapter. By use of heteroglossia, Morrison could be presenting women as being drained of their identity because no one outside of 124 can comprehend the events of Sethe’s life. This lack of identity is highlighted by the confusion surrounding the repetition, as who is saying it is ambiguous. However, Morrison might be implying that the women find identity through one another and can access the idea of ownership (‘you are mine’) and a sense of autonomy through their togetherness. The second-person pronoun ‘you’ also involves the readers within the chorus, so might Morrison here be more didactically educating her readers on the power found if women unite, again drawing to the idea that generational slave trauma can only be healed once that female voice is reincluded. However, the women in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ are never even allowed their own free indirect speech, as most of the men are. Could this suggest that Wilde does not offer the same hope of female unity and liberation as Morrison does, despite the dysfunctional consequences of the women’s bond?

In conclusion, Morrison and Wilde present women as being ostracised from society, having to play their parts for survival. Despite their best efforts, both writers argue that women have been reduced to second-class citizens and offer little hope in their empowerment if society forgets their stories.

Alexander Stephenson

Menace

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Beneath is an essay donated by a truly brilliant Year 13 student. Tackling the presentation of menace in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘Beloved’, the work scored 31/40.

In ‘Beloved’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, the writers present menace through supernatural disruptions of ordinary life that symbolise the threatening presence of the past and past sins. Menace is presented therefore as haunting, although the characters in both texts are largely unperturbed by this at the beginning, not noticing or caring about its effect on their mental stability or morality and so they leave its warning for cleansing unheeded.

The main sources of menace in the texts – the portrait and Beloved – are implied as menacing very soon after we are introduced to them, and yet the ‘victims’ of this menace remain largely unbothered. The first sign of menace in the portrait appears after Dorian’s first sin, his cruelty to Sibyl Vane, and is described as “the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror”. Here the signs of menace stem from Dorian’s actions as the “mouth” reflects his cruel language towards Sibyl, such as calling her a “third-rate actress with a pretty face”, and so Wilde is perhaps suggesting that the menace which disrupts our lives and causes decay is in direct response to our actions, which is also true of Beloved as Sethe’s “blood-soaked child” returned as a symbol of her traumatic past. Also, the simile of “as if he had been looking into a mirror” displays the Gothic trope of mirrors and doubles, demonstrating that the menace derives from within, an idea which dominated Victorian Gothic Literature and comments on the hypocrisy of a class so obsessed with appearance that menace was necessary in order for the moral order to be restored. This trope is also used by Morrison as Beloved says of Sethe “your face is mine”, indicating not only an ominous doppelganger effect but also a supernatural dominance that breaks down Sethe’s mentality and family unit, leading them to “cut Denver out of their games.” Beloved’s first appearance is lined with menace as “her voice was so low and rough each one looked at the other two”. Here Morrison presents the instinctual fear and unease in the face of menace as being the same among each character at first, but, as the novel progresses, Sethe and Denver are desensitised to the menace due to their need to correct the past, missing the implied message that they must come to terms with their past actions and let them go in order to be healed rather than trying to change them, something which Dorian also toys with when he decides to be rid of the menace by “marrying Sibyl Vane”. Thus, Morrison presents menace as being necessarily recognised in order for slaves to come to terms with their own horrific experiences and be free of them, rather than clinging on to the trauma in order to have a sense of identity.

The writers further use menace as a tool to display the extremities to which the characters’ minds have declined and then the failure of menace alone in some healing processes or moral resolutions. In chapter 14 of Dorian Gray, “the events…crept with silent blood-stained feet into his brain” and so the menace is personified, as in Beloved, in an attempt to force the characters to confront reality and their inner evils. The ominous semantic field of silence is also used in Beloved as “she moved closer [to Paul D] with a footfall he didn’t hear”, and so the importance of the menace being visual displays the vividness of slave trauma in the minds of black Americans, and the ever-present mental instability that is worsened once their fears assume a physical form. Wilde finally displays the damning effect of the portrait on Dorian and his use of free indirect speech displays the failure of the menace at truly changing him as his perceived resolution is to “give himself up, and be put to death? He laughed”. His lack of remorse or repentance suggests that menace is not an adequate road to redemption, and so Wilde’s comment in the Preface that art is “for art’s sake” is indicated as art cannot save Dorian. The chorus of women in Beloved in chapter 23 displays Sethe’s decline in the face of menace as, rather than distancing herself and learning from it, she connects with it, as shown by “will we smile at me?” This uneasy shift of pronouns displays Sethe’s lack of understanding and identity and could suggest the belief that slaves had to be associated with their past in order to be of worth, and so Morrison may be sending a message opposing this as Paul D tells Sethe finally “you your best thing, Sethe”, suggesting the importance yet the simultaneous failure of menace in the role of healing.

Therefore, the writers display the significance of a menacing force in the decline and increased mental instability of the characters, yet its role in highlighting aspects of individual life that may contribute to a cleansing process or moral resolution. For Wilde, this menace aimed to critique Victorian hypocrisy and immorality, whilst for Morrison, it played a key role in slave healing.

We hope that you found this useful. Enjoy your week 🙂

Significant Places in The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Here’s an essay that we wrote in class. Without the corrections (in emboldened italics), the essay was marked as between Band 4 and 5 of the mark-scheme. Whilst we will never have to produce an essay solely evaluating The Picture of Dorian Gray for our exams, it is a useful exercise to explore our Prose Texts individually. I hope that you find it useful 🙂

Explore how Wilde makes use of significant places in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Throughout his only novel, Wilde uses significant places, such as the attic and the East End, to explore Victorian hypocrisy and critique and upper-class anchored on the withholding of secrets. Uncovering the paradox of sin, Wilde ultimately makes use of significant places to underpin the Gothic concept of the double life, excavating how the Gothic genre transitioned from external fears from far-flung lands (such as in ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764) by Horace Walpole) to internal paranoia in works such as ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ (1886), which began to define La Fin de Siècle movement. 

Firstly, Wilde introduces the juxtaposition between the East and West ends of London to engage with the concept of Victorian hypocrisy. After having killed Basil by ‘crushing the man’s head down on the table, and stabbing again and again’, Dorian Gray seeks relief by venturing to the East End, which the hansom-driver admits ‘is too far for me’. The horrifically violent present participle verb ‘crushing’ ignites the ideas that Dorian has explored too passionately into sin, so must seek relief in the East End. Because it is assumed that Dorian is searching for an opium den, one could argue that Dorian can no longer bare living with what he has done. This ties with the idea of the Victorian double life, as Dorian cannot find relief in a world surrounded by those who know him (the West End). This juxtaposes with ‘the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn’, introduced in the first chapter during the description of Basil’s studio. Whilst the adjective ‘delicate’ could be linking to the beauty longed for by the Decadence movement, might the scent’s fragility be an analogy for the decadent façade adorned by those of the West End? The class divide between Dorian Gray and the hansom-driver might be emphasising how far Dorian has fallen since being influenced into selling his soul, as he is now venturing to a place ‘too far’ for even the lower-classes to dare enter. It could be argued that Wilde is using the East End, and the pleasures that it offers, to satirically comment upon battalions of wealthy Victorians seeking refuge in ‘sin’ (such as drug dens or perhaps homosexuality) to escape from a life where anything less than purity was socially unforgivable. Because Chapter XV was added for the British publication of the novel, the concept of the double life might be mocking the supposed righteousness surrounding Wilde’s then up-coming court case, in which he was accused of ‘gross indecency’ (homosexuality). Perhaps Wilde chooses Dorian to engage furtively in acts regarded then as sin to educate his readership on how normal it was in upper-class Victorian society. Therefore, Wilde uses the East End to present the idea that respected members of society all took part in acts considered as morally wrong, and all would be societally rejected if they did not escape past where people knew their faces. 

Additionally, Wilde explores the Gothic trope of the attic to highlight the sense of the double self, revealed through Dorian Gray’s refuge in the East End. Attics become a popular motif in Gothic literature, being detached from the rest of the house. This mysterious setting, again linking in with harrowingly Gothic fears creeping to close to comfort during La Fin de Siècle, its furthered by the ‘elaborate bars’ of Dorian’s childhood attic, in which the protagonist decides to hide the ‘hideous face on the canvas grinning at him.’ (the picture produced by Basil Hallwood). The noun ‘bars’ introduces the idea that Dorian’s attic has become a prison for Wilde’s Gothic monster. Because the painting reflected Dorian’s sin-marred soul, one could argue that Dorian wants to shut away all his wrongdoing and appear publicly unblemished and perfect. Perhaps hiding the painting in the attic, out of sight, also implies that Dorian himself cannot face up to all his sin. In Gothic Literature, Gothic prisons are usually used to encage another human being. Wilde’s subversion of this trope (Dorian encaging the image of himself) might suggest that Dorian feels the truer sense of his debauched self cannot live in Victorian society. However, the present participle verb ‘grinning’ many well be implicating that the painting is animate. The prideful verb personifies the painting, which might imply that, since the selling of Dorian’s soul for beauty, the horrific image has taken on a powerful, supernatural reign over Dorian’s existence. The monster’s entrapment is not only provoked by the danger it poses to Dorian’s reputation, but it is also interesting to note that Wilde might be implying that looking upon the decrepit truth of the personal Victorian underworld (if we accept Dorian and his double, the painting, as an allegory for Victorian hypocrisy) causes physical harm. Everyone who looks upon the painting in its most horrifying form dies: Basil Hallwood is killed, Alan Campbell commits suicide, and Dorian is left ‘withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage’. The physical effect that the painting has on people might therefore be hyperbolic of the effect that the unveiling of Victorian sin would have on the astutely austere and highly religious contemporary society. Perhaps Wilde is attempting to educate his readers on how rigorous Victorian structures of morality have ended up splitting individuals into living as two, this damaging society as a whole. ‘Withered’, Dorian himself dies inside the Gothic prison of the attic, again enforcing the idea that Victorian society cannot accept or cite his immorality as redeemable. Because Dorian ends up appearing as the creature who he longed to conceal, Wilde therefore might be expressing that the attic is a microcosm of the Victorian Gothic trope of the double life. 

In conclusion, the significant places of the impoverished East End and concealing attic, the Gothic theme of the double life is ultimately used to present Victorian society as corrupt, despite its inhabitants’ attempts to withhold their ‘sins’ from the public eye.

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Alexander Stephenson