The Picture in Dorian Gray: Object Agency and Oscar Wilde’s Decadent Ideas in The Picture of Dorian Gray and its Screen Adaptations

Abstract

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray has been studied with reference to the themes of morality, homosexuality, art and aesthetics since the day it was published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. Considered as a manifesto of Wilde’s ideas in relation to the Decadent movement and aestheticism, critical attention on the novel has been mostly engaged in showing how the hypocritical values of the age are countered through the implicit approval and justification of the ‘sinful’ actions of the main character, Dorian Gray. Nevertheless, one striking aspect of the novel as the reflection of Wilde’s ideas on art and aesthetics is that it is full of references and descriptions of objects of art. Among these objects, ostensibly, the Picture of Dorian is the most powerful one and it has the most definitive effect on the narrative. Even though the title of the novel attributes ontological priority to the Picture rather than to the human Dorian, such prioritisation of the Picture has been reduced in the existing analyses of this novel. It can be observed that Wilde ascribes power and autonomy to the Picture of Dorian by creating it not as a mere portrait but as a criminal partner for the human character. Therefore, the aim of this study is to highlight the “embodiment” between the Picture and the human character by focusing on how it is reflected not just in the novel but also in the screen adaptations of the novel. Accordingly, in the introduction chapter, mainstream comments on the novel, Wilde’s unique personality, the development of object-oriented ontologies, Bill Brown’s thing theory and finally the recent findings in neuroaesthetics along with Vittorio Gallese’s “embodied simulation” theory are given. In Chapter I, how an embodiment of the Picture and Dorian is created by the author is explained with specific examples from the novel within the framework of thing theory and “embodied simulation” theory. In Chapter II, different modes of reflections of this embodiment to the screen, namely literal mode (The Picture of Dorian Gray 1945), traditional mode (Dorian Gray 2009) and radical mode (Penny Dreadful 2014-16), are highlighted with a clear emphasis on both Brown’s and Gallese’s theories and the emergent views in adaptation studies. Additionally, as a contribution to these emergent views in adaptation studies, it is argued in this chapter that Dorian and the Picture are adaptations which continuously simulate each other in the narrative of the novel. In the conclusion part, it is asserted that emergent critical approaches to the objects of art such as Brown’s thing theory and recent findings in neuroaesthetics pave the way for a new possible perspective to analyse the objects of art in literary texts. The things which are empowered by thing theory go beyond their symbolic meanings and the representational codes by forming “embodied simulations” with humans. Hence, within the critical venue provided by these two approaches, it can be observed that the Picture and the human in Wilde’s novel come together to create a new protagonist for the novel who is neither human nor nonhuman. It will be argued in this thesis that the protagonist of this novel is not just the human or just the Picture but the embodiment they create together. Because of their “embodied simulation” the Picture and the human Dorian constitute what is famously called “Dorian Gray.”