Imbalances of Power

8th February 2023 flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello all,

Below is a brilliant essay submitted by Sophie Russell on imbalances of power in the ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Little Stranger.’ Improvements have been added in bold.

In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Little Stranger’, Wilde and Waters use imbalances of power to represent social concerns and constructs of the time. Both authors show the power that the supernatural has over the characters. The supernatural has been manifested as a result of anxieties around change- the fin de siècle in ‘Dorian Gray’ and changes of class in a post-war society in ‘The Little Stranger’. These social concerns and constructs result in power imbalances between the characters, particularly because of class and gender.

In both texts, the supernatural has a powerful and destructive effect on the characters. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Wilde mainly presents the effect of the supernatural on Dorian Gray via the portrait. The portrait becomes a split self of Dorian because he wishes the retain his youth and beauty forever- ‘If it were I who was to be always young, and picture that was to grow old. For that I could give everything’. Dorian does ‘give everything’, as he trades his soul in order to retain his youth and beauty. The portrait becomes a part of him, a split-self. The ~~split self~~ double is a common Gothic trope, used to show the power that the supernatural can have, especially during times of social change because of the threats that change can bring, as supernatural threats can hide behind a façade. Wilde uses the split-self trope to show the effect that the portrait has over Dorian. In ‘The Little Stranger’, Waters also uses the Gothic trope of the split-self for a similar purpose. Dr Faraday is suspected to be the ‘little stranger’ and what is tormenting the Ayres throughout the novel, allowing Faraday to become a part of the Ayres life without them knowing that he is a threat. Faraday is unaware that he may be a threat or have a double self, unlike Dorian, although at the end of the novel, he says the ‘little stranger’ may be ‘spawned from the troubled unconscious of someone connected with the house itself’, unknowingly aligning with the theory that Waters suggests at throughout the novel. In the first chapter, Faraday narrates that he ‘wanted to possess a piece of it’ and steals a ‘plaster acorn’ from Hundreds Hall. This may have been when Faraday becomes ‘connected with the house’, meaning that he unconsciously is tormenting the Ayres for the entire novel. Waters uses the irony of Faraday stating this but being unaware of it to show that the supernatural can have a powerful effect in the novel, even if they are unaware of it. This differs in ‘Dorian Gray’ as other characters are unaware of Dorian’s deception. While Faraday is unaware if the supernatural’s effect, other characters in the novel are. Roderick is the first in the novel to be tormented by the ‘little stranger’, such as the fires in his room where it ‘seemed to leap’. The fact that the fire ‘leaped’ instead of spreading like a normal fire would shows that it is a product of the supernatural. Roderick is aware of this, saying ‘it’s smarter than I thought’. He says to Faraday that he has to ‘keep the source of the infection away from my mother and sister’, showing that he bears the burdens of the supernatural because as ‘man of the house’, he has a duty to protect his female family members. However, the power of the supernatural escalates throughout the novel, resulting in both Mrs Ayres’ and Caroline’s demise.

The tension in ~~the novel~~ both novels escalate throughout as the supernatural gains more power, showing the effect that it has on the characters. In ‘The Little Stranger’, Caroline ends up ‘plunging down in the moonlight’ towards the end of the novel, only shortly after Mrs Ayres’ death, showing the high escalation in the power of the supernatural. The close time scale between Mrs Ayres’ and Caroline’s deaths shows the high escalation in tension. This happens after Faraday gains more power and control over the family, going from being unexpected- ‘neither Mrs Ayres nor Caroline was expecting me’ to being relied on as he arranges Mrs Ayres funeral- ‘began to make a list of all the things that must be done’. Thus, as Faraday gains more power within the Ayres family, the supernatural threat increases. Wilde follows a similar rising tension in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, as Dorian becomes more consumed by the portrait. It has a power over Dorian, with him saying through his free indirect speech that his sins would ‘defile it, and make it shameful. Yet the thing would still live on’. The use of FIS allows us to see Dorian’s inner thoughts and feelings, therefore showing his distress over the portrait. Dorian is concerned of the portrait being found as it would be ‘shameful’ because of Victorian Hypocrisy and strict morals of the time that would not allow for the amount of sin that Dorian commits, especially as an upper-class gentleman. Wilde uses Dorian’s concerns over the portrait to show his own views on Victorian morals and Aestheticism. While Aestheticism states that art should be beautiful and Wilde says in his preface ‘All art is meaningless’, Victorian morality attempted to place meaning and morality into art. Dorian’s concerns over the portrait being found show Victorian hypocrisy, as he isn’t concerned about committing the sins, but is about being caught. Wilde makes a criticism on Victorian society through this and his presentation of the supernatural. Dorian ends up meeting his downfall because of the painting as it worsens and grows more ‘grotesque’. He says that he must ‘kill this monstrous soul-life…he would be at peace’. He believes that with his sins gone, peace will come as the painting has grown so ‘grotesque’ and powerful. However, he ends up meeting his demise, as the Ayres also do after the increase in supernatural power.

The writers also show power imbalances through relationships between characters, particularly men and women. In ‘The Little Stranger’, Caroline and Faraday’s relationship can show this as Faraday aims to gain control over Caroline, in order to own Hundreds Hall. Caroline recognises this, saying ‘I think it’s the house you want’. Faraday wants the house because he seeks social mobility, and the Ayres are vulnerable to him due to class changes that have made him lose power. As a doctor, the Ayres trust him and his logic, allowing him to gain power over them, particularly Mrs Ayres and Caroline after Roderick’s departure as, in a patriarchal society, they would have to rely on men for survival, as the women also would in ‘Dorian Gray’, especially in their declining position. These factors of power that Faraday has allows him to gaslight Caroline in their relationship to thinking that he doesn’t want the house, saying ‘My darling, I think you’re tired’, after Mrs Ayres’ death when Caroline doesn’t want to get married. However, Caroline is aware of his manipulation, saying ‘sometimes I think you want to keep me tired’. Waters aims to show a woman in a changing post-war society where women have more power than before and don’t need to be as reliant on men. This differs in ‘Dorian Gray’, as Sibyl Vane, Dorian’s fiancée early on in the novel, has to rely on Dorian and men once she is married. This relates to separate spheres- women not being able to be married and work. Dorian has power over Sibyl, as Faraday also does over Caroline, because he is a higher-class man, and she is a higher-class woman. Sibyl says ‘Prince Charming rules life now’. The fact that she calls him ‘Prince Charming’ shows his higher station over her as he is a ‘prince’. Sibyl would no longer be able to act once she marries Dorian, so he would ‘rule’ her life. However, Dorian has fallen in love with Sibyl because of the roles she plays, not because of her, so when she acts badly, Dorian is no longer in love with her, saying that she is ‘ruined’. Sibyl cannot recover from this rejection and ends up committing suicide. Throughout this novel, Wilde uses flower imagery to present Sibyl’s character. However, when Dorian rejects her, she is described as a ‘trampled flower’, as her image has been ruined and she cannot recover due to the reliance that women had on men. While Caroline can recover from the imbalance of power between her and Faraday as she is in a post-war and changing society, Sibyl can’t survive without Dorian because of the imbalance between genders.

To conclude, the authors show the imbalance of power between the characters and the supernatural, as well as men over women. This is because of social concerns and constructs seen in the times of the novels.

Menace in Little Stranger and The Picture of Dorian Gray

30th January 2023 flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello all,

Below is an exemplary essay contributed by Sophie Russell of the English blog team from our recent mocks. It was originally awarded an A with green pen additions in bold.

Compare the ways in which the writers present menace in ‘The Little Stranger’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’

In ‘The Little Stranger’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Waters and Wilde use menace to show social concerns of the time. In ‘Dorian Gray’, these concerns are mainly around the fin de siècle- they fear change such as social change and the loss of class hierarchies, but Victorian hypocrisy allows them to hide. In ‘The Little Stranger’, they also fear change around class. These menaces are mainly manifested in the supernatural. They can be hidden but eventually, they are something that will destroy. As these menaces are revealed, tension and destruction in both novels escalate.

In both novels, menaces can be contained and shielded from society because of social structures of the time. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Wilde uses menaces to show Victorian Hypocrisy of the time. Dorian’s evil and Hedonistic ways can be hidden away, as the portrait can bear his sins while he never changes. Thus, no one believes that Dorian can be a menace, as ‘sin is a thing that writes itself upon a man’s face. It cannot be concealed’. This is ironic to the reader as we know that this is false. Dorian lives a Hedonistic lifestyle, saying that because of the portrait, he can ‘follow his mind into secret places’- he can hide all of his sins. This Hedonism is prompted by Lord Henry, who influences Dorian by saying things like ‘The only way to get rid of sin is to wield it’. Lord Henry can hide his threatening nature to Dorian beside his social class, as he is very high class and therefore powerful- Dorian succumbs easily to Dorian’s temptation- ‘He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences where at work within him’. Henry’s manipulation is the first rising of tension in the novel, as it is the first threat. However, as Dorian is so easily influences by Henry, it can be argued that he has always had this menace within him as Basil says in the first chapter ‘he seems to take a real delight in giving me pain’- right from the beginning, Dorian shows signs of being wicked, so this menace could’ve been hidden all along but repressed. This is similar with Dr Faraday in ‘The Little Stranger’, shown through his narrative. Faraday appears to be a kind, well-respected doctor, but through his narration, we can see his inner thoughts, such as ‘I felt the faintest stirrings of a dark dislike’- here we can see a threat that Faraday may pose to the Ayres family as ‘dark dislike’ suggests something evil. It is suggested throughout the novel that Faraday may be the ‘little stranger’ that is ’haunting’ the Ayres. At the end of the novel, it says that the ‘little stranger’ may be ‘spawned from the troubled unconscious of someone connected with the house itself’. The reader sees that Faraday does have a connection to the house, as it says in the first chapter that he ‘wanted to possess a piece of it’. Faraday poses a threat to the Ayres family if he is ‘the little stranger’ as they are already deteriorating because of social and class change. Faraday is working class and grew up that way, but seeks to dominate the house. Waters does this to show class concerns of a post-war society, as the gentry families like the Ayres were dying out. Waters suggests that Faraday has a split-self, a typical Gothic trope. This makes him a threat to the Ayres as they don’t know his true self and that he may be a menace towards them. The Gothic genre itself was created because of uncertainties around change, seen in both texts. Dorian Gray also has a split-self, with one half being the painting. However, Dorian is aware of this, and Faraday is not. Dorian wants to hide the portrait, and locks it in the attic, his old schoolroom. ‘Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own’- The attic acts as a Gothic Prison, a place of secrecy of hiding, particularly as ‘it hasn’t been opened in nearly five years’. The portrait is another menace, ‘a corruption’, which Dorian hides away. ‘Corruption’ is synonymous with destruction, so here Dorian directly says through his free indirect speech that the portrait is destructive. It is because of this that Dorian can perform his sins, so both Dorian and the portrait act as a menace. While Dorian consciously hides the portrait away and his sins, Faraday’s is subconscious. He seeks for a higher social standing, and so acts as one would, criticising the Ayres for their loss of class- ‘almost as if speaking to someone of her own class’. However, he is rejecting of a supernatural presence for most of the novel, and instead uses logic- ‘It is clearly due to strain’. So if the hauntings are due to his ‘tormented subconscious’, he is unaware of it and doesn’t actively hide it, whereas Dorian does.

Waters and Wilde also show menaces as a force of destruction and terror. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, destruction is seen mainly through imagery. The portrait deteriorates into a ‘hideous face’ and described by Basil through his free indirect speech as filling him with ‘disgust and loathing’. Previously, Basil sees Dorian as ‘He is all my art to me now’, as Dorian is so beautiful. This relates to Aestheticism, which is the belief that art should be beautiful. The contrast between the descriptions of Dorian at the start as ‘scarlet-lipped’ and ‘golden haired’ compared to the grotesque imagery of the portrait nearer the end as ‘hideous’ and a ‘horror’ shows the destruction of Dorian’s self, as the portrait ‘wields his sins’. Lord Henry claims that the world ‘needs a new Hedonism’, but when Dorian fulfils this, he causes a lot of destruction. Basil asks Dorian ‘Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?’ as many of Dorian’s old friends have been caught in scandals because of him. Dorian can hide his sins behind Victorian hypocrisy, and this ends up as corruptive, showing Wilde’s own criticisms of Victorian hypocrisy as destructive. However, in ‘The Little Stranger’, the Ayres are deteriorating because of class changes, which is negative for them as it makes them vulnerable, but positive for the majority of society as it strives for more class equality. While Wilde criticises Victorian hypocrisy, Waters shows social change as a positive thing for the majority of society, such as Faraday as he can social climb, but not for the Ayres. All the Ayres end up with unfortunate endings: Mrs Ayres and Caroline dead, Roderick in a mental hospital. Roderick is tormented by a supernatural force that manifests itself in the house, such as the fire in his room and the mirror ‘shuffling towards him’. He is so stressed about the house because he fears that they will lose it because of all the class changes. So, the house manifests as a threat towards him to represent his problems around social change. The menace towards Roderick shows his concerns and ends up causing his demise. For Caroline, what causes her downfall may be Dr Faraday, as he has different intentions in his marriage with Caroline, wanting the house itself. Caroline recognises this, saying ‘Sometimes I think it’s the house you really want’. However, Faraday manipulates Caroline, shown though his differing narration and how he presents himself, such as ‘you look lovely’ compared to ‘not quite becoming’. Ultimately, Caroline recognises Faraday’s manipulation- ‘sometimes I think you want to keep me tired’. Although Caroline manages to confront her menace, she still ends up harmed, representing the inevitability of their destruction as the Ayres can’t ‘keep up with a rapidly changing world’. The house itself, Hundreds Hall, ends up deteriorating. At the end of the novel, Faraday still visits Hundreds and says that it is ‘hopelessly overgrown’ and a ‘wounded, blighted beast’. This personification of the house shows that it has been ‘wounded’ by the events, but also that it is a ‘beast’, showing that it is also a threat, as it was to Roderick. Faraday says that Hundreds was ‘destroyed by its own failure to keep up with a rapidly changing world’, showing that social change had been a threat to the house too, as now it is abandoned and a ‘wounded, blighted beast’. The many threats towards the Ayres and Hundreds have caused its downfall, as has the portrait for Dorian, and Dorian for the portrait.

To conclude, menaces are presented as something that can be hidden, but end up destructing everything because of social change, such as the fin de siècle and changes in social class, which links back to the creation of the Gothic genre as a whole. These menaces escalate in threat towards the characters throughout both novels as they are revealed, correlating with the destruction that the menace have caused.

Corruption

20th May 202219th May 2022 alezeditorLeave a comment

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

Presentations of Women

18th February 202217th February 2022 alezeditorLeave a comment

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 19^th 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

14th February 202217th February 2022 alezeditorLeave a comment

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

29th November 202128th November 2021 alezeditorLeave a comment

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

The Painting

8th November 202110th November 2021 alezeditor1 Comment

Extending from the trope of Gothic monsters, the novel’s titular picture exudes the supernatural. The transposed form of Dorian Gray’s soul, the painting’s decadent beauty echoes the dissipation of the young man’s morality as the novel progresses.