Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Kamila Štítkovcová

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE OF AND “THE PERSON IN QUESTION” Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Dr. Michael M. Kaylor, M.A., Ph.D.

2015

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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………… Author’s signature

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Michael M. Kaylor, M.A., Ph.D. for his valuable advice and patience.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ………………….…………………………………………..….1

ALLUSIONS TO ’S LIFE ……………………………………………...3

ALLUSIONS TO THE RELATIONSHIP …………………………………………….10 BETWEEN JOHN GRAY AND

COMPARISON OF DEPICTIONS OF JOHN GRAY IN ………………………………17 THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY AND “THE PERSON IN QUESTION”

CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………..31

WORKS CITED .…………………………………………………………………33

ENGLISH ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………….35

CZECH ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………36

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INTRODUCTION

THIS THESIS aims to analyze Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and the short story by John Gray “The Person in Question”. Both works deal with certain kind of

‘double life’ of the main characters. The poet John Gray is depicted in both literary works – by Wilde and by himself. The thesis compares the works and reveals connections and differences between these two depictions, as they have central themes in common – duality of main characters’ personalities, uncertainty of living the life in the ‘right’ way and homosexuality, which is, with regard neither to the character of Dorian Gray nor the narrator of the story, directly spoken of but it plays role in the understanding of both of them.

“The Person in Question” is a short story written by John Gray himself. It was almost certainly inspired by Wilde’s novel, as it discusses a dilemma of choosing the way of life.

The author deals with his feelings, emotions and state of mind at the time which was not easy for him. He could not decide in which way he should have lived and wanted to live.

Gray’s story is autobiographical therefore the thesis provides brief insight into the life of this minor poet to show the background and to point out which aspects of his life the story includes.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the main character Dorian also struggles with his life and has to come to a decision in what way he wants to live and behave. He is practically on the border of good and evil. John Gray – being for certain time the lover of Oscar Wilde and also the inspiration for the main character – is imprinted in it to a certain extent. The picture of Dorian Gray has biographical features therefore the thesis offers insight into the relationship between these two writers to show why it is even worthy of comparing these

1 works by two different authors and to demonstrate how their relationship in real life influenced the depiction of John Gray in the novel.

The thesis analyzes these two depictions of John Gray’s personality and personal struggles and tries to find connections and differences between them, as they both concern moments in John Gray’s life. In real life John Gray rather decided to become a priest which was not rare for the men who were then uncertain of their sexuality. He is depicted as a man who was afraid of his homosexuality which by then Victorian society was illegal. His fear was reasonable, as Oscar Wilde was later judged for acting immorally and giving a bad example to society by publishing his novel.

The balancing between two ‘lives’ – right and wrong – is to be found in both works from different points of view. The thesis compares these two points of view on this problematic and tries to prove that John Gray is in both works depicted as a person who is afraid of his future and therefore incapable of endeavoring to change.

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ALLUSIONS TO JOHN GRAY’S LIFE

JOHN HENRY GRAY was born in Bethnal Green, a working-class suburb, as a son of

John Gray senior, Scot, who worked as journeyman wheelwright and carpenter but later he became Inspector of Stores at Woolwich Arsenal. There he had better wages, so the family could move to a richer district – Plumstead. Grays were Methodists therefore John attended private Methodist School in Plumstead. At his twelve, he won a scholarship to the Roan

School but he stayed there only for one year and had to leave the school in 1879. His father was of the opinion that his eldest son should have started to work as soon as possible so as to be able to earn money for the family, because the parents had five more children.

However, John Henry seemed not to have very good relationship with his father and did not like having to leave school, especially due to the fact that he was considered to be a brilliant student. (Sewell 1)

John’s brother remembered him to be keen on studying and tempting for information.

No sooner than in Rome he got higher education, which he had always hoped for. During his studies he also worked in Woolwich Arsenal as a metal-turner. He had lots of talents and interests including studying foreign languages in his free-time, playing musical instruments, drawing and painting. Despite his promotion, he got low wages and could not keep very much for himself. His dream was to stop being part of the working-class and to achieve something bigger. (3) Eventually, he was successful and started to work in the

Foreign Office in 1888. It was quite rare for such a young man from working-class to accede this office, as he was only twenty-two. However, he had difficulties with adaptation there because of his cockney accent, for which he felt embarrassed. That was probably one

3 of the reasons of his depressions at that time. Another reason was the lack of money.

Supposedly, there were also problems with alcohol in the family. (6-10)

In 1889, John Gray’s friend Marmaduke Langdale invited him to spend the summer at the Breton fishing-village of St Quay-Portrieux. Langdale’s family was catholic and religion was the most important value of their lives. It was then when John realized that he needed the order and seriousness in his life like they had and which resided in religion. (10)

Brocard Sewell describes this time period in his biography In the Dorian Mode:

Any sudden conversion, in the sense of a complete spiritual upheaval and reorientation, has usually been preparing, within its subject’s unconscious, for a considerable time. Coming among the Langdale family in his state of depression and discouragement, perhaps wondering if he had not lost his way in life through mistaken ambitions, John was ready for such an experience. All that was wanting was the occasion. He was now twenty-three; and it is perhaps significant that he had not formed any serious friendship or relationship with a member of opposite sex. (11)

But that summer, John met and was mainly influenced by Frances Langdale, Marmaduke’s daughter, who had strong faith. In her nephew’s opinion, she was indifferent to men as such. After John had left, they never saw each other again. Nevertheless, they stayed in touch and sent each other letters until John’s death. (12) This visit was probably the main impulse to decide to have himself baptized. It took place in England together with his confirmation. After the baptism in 1890 he still had trouble leading an innocent life, because with regard to the conversion it is not always easy to get used to a ‘new’ life. (13)

Gray always aspired to become a poet above all, as he had been writing poems since he was about sixteen. His dream came true, at least partially, after his first meeting with

Oscar Wilde in 1889. It did not take much time for them to become lovers. Thanks to

Wilde, he was introduced to the poet Arthur Symons what he probably appreciated, as he always wanted to meet all the poets, whose works he had admired and, of course, still

4 wanted to become one. That is the main reason, why he took part in the meetings of

Rhymers’ Club, although he never became a member. (8–9) At about the time of his acquaintance with Wilde, he wrote his short story “The Person in Question”, which was published after his death and dealt with the dilemma of a double life.

There is no doubt of his affection for men. Besides Oscar Wilde, Gray had always his patron or admirer. It was very easy for him to find someone who supported him, as he was extremely beautiful. His wages would have been hardly enough to be able to buy expensive clothes and books which he owned therefore it was very likely that he had always somebody, who took care of him. (McKenna 163) After an almost three-year relationship with Wilde, André Raffalovich took over this task.

Gray’s first article and a story were published in 1889 in an avant garde Ricketts’ and

Shannon‘s magazine The Dial. These two young artists edited and published it directly from their house in Fulham. John Gray wrote for the magazine on the regular basis. Later, he cooperated with them and even helped them with many publications. He was asked for an advice on Vale Press – their enterprise named after the house The Vale, in Chelsea.

(Sewell 15) In return, they criticized his works.

In 1892 he published three poems in the delayed second number of The Dial. In the same year he became known significantly thanks to his lecture “The Modern Actor” in

Playgoers’ Club. One of the participants of the lecture, , wrote next day to

Gray that his lecture was “altogether admirable and charming”. The press, however, did not share the same opinion and wrote about his lecture: “Mr John Gray has builded himself a world of strange feérie, wherein he dwells, anticipating the re-birth of the native drama

5 within its limits. His view is that of the artistic pagan, and is vaporously expressed.” (as quoted in Sewell 17)

John Gray was afraid of finding out about his homosexuality, since somebody from

Daily Telegraph wrote about his acquaintance with Wilde. Wilde had to write to them that he and Mr. Gray had known each other for a very short time and they had not been very close. As the worker of the Foreign Office, he would have most probably lost his job because for then strict Victorian society, homosexuality was unacceptable.

A gossip writer of the Star newspaper had said that “Mr John Gray, who writes the

‘too-too’ introduction to the latest dramatic novelty, Emilio Montanaro’s In the Garden of

Citrons, is said to be original Dorian of the same name.” (as quoted in Sewell 18) Gray sued him for libel and Montanaro had to write an apology and explain that he had not meant seriously what he had claimed in the first place.

John Gray’s dramatic efforts were not successful at this time period, with the exception of his interpretation of Theodore de Banville’s The Kiss, Gray’s translated version of Le Baiser, which was introduced in 1892 as ‘curtain raiser’ at the Royalty

Theater. (Fletcher 7) The audience was contented with the play, as The Times reported. The

Star praised the performance and Gray’s translation, as well. However, not just a few of other criticisms were bad. There were a lot of them who claimed that the production was not good enough and that John Gray’s rhymes were awkward, for instance. In The Player, an attack on him even appeared. The author attacked his ‘execrable English’ and named him as ‘this very silly youth’. Gray did not mind the criticisms. At least, he received a good review of his and de Mattos’s translation of Louis Couperus’s novel Ecstasy from the

Dutch. (Sewell 25)

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He was probably mentioned to the French writer Pierre Louÿs by Oscar Wilde during his visit to Paris in 1891, since he received his letter written in ‘Wildean’ prose-poem style in which he suggested that he wanted to meet him in London. They became friends and shortly afterwards, John Gray visited Louÿs in Paris, where he was introduced to some of the important writers. Thanks to this and following visits, he met poets like Mallarmé,

Verlaine, Rimbaud, Marcel Schwob, and other Symbolist poets, became friend with a critic

Félix Fénéon and a poet and a critic Vielé-Griffin.

After reading Fénéon’s letters to him, it was obvious that Gray became known and respected by the poets. It also came out that he had financial crisis. The letters with Louÿs are from 1892 – 1899 but those from the period during Wilde’s trials are missing. (Sewell

26)

In one of his letters to Louÿs, there is a mention of a relationship with a woman. It is not clear whether Gray had relationships with women and whether he was bisexual but probably not. Sewell mentions: “Dr Peter Vernon suggests that she may even be a phantom of Gray’s imagination.” (29) Reading the next letter, Gray seemed to be close to emotional breakdown and as if he wanted to take his own life. In that letter, Calumny was mentioned, which referred most probably to the rumors about his relationship with Oscar Wilde, as well as the poems he intended to withdraw before publishing Silverpoints, a collection of his poems. Some of them were dedicated to Wilde, who also promised to pay production costs. (29-30) Louÿs, Gray and Wilde met regularly until, on 3 July 1892, Wilde went with

Douglas for his rest cure to Bad Homburg, where Louÿs would visit him later. (Ellmann

391)

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In November 1892 Gray met Marc-André Raffalovich who was then his best friend for the rest of his life. He came from Russia, lived in Paris and settled in London and had enough funds to support John Gray. He was a writer, a poet and he contributed to a couple of magazines. He also wrote criticisms of Gray’s as well as Wilde’s works. Wilde and

Raffalovich did not get on with each other. Wilde mentioned one of his poems in a negative way in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Raffalovich’s revenge was ruining his friendship with

John Gray. (30-32) Richard Ellmann explains this situation in his biography:

Late in 1892, Gray informed Louÿs that he was thinking of committing suicide: Douglas’s ascendancy over Wilde was pre-emptive and Gray felt jilted. It was at this time that André Raffalovich, who had admired Gray without knowing him, intervened. Out of jealousy he had published an article attacking both Gray and Wilde for their literary styles. But when Arthur Symons introduced him to Gray in November 1892, he repented and fell in love. Pressing his suit, he denounced Wilde’s intimacy with Douglas as vain and debauched. (391)

John Gray started to have admirers – , a society girl of aristocratic family, among them. In 1890 or 1891, they met at a party and she fell in love with him. She was a poet and she sent him her poems. (Sewell 55)

In late December 1894 Olive Custance received from John Gray his first Blue Calendar. These almanacs, of which there were to be four in all – for the year 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1898 – are tiny booklets, in pale blue paper covers, containing a calendar for each month of the succeeding year, with a devotional poem by John Gray printed under each month. The Blue Calendars were privately printed, and were sent by Gray to his friends as a kind of Christmas card. (Sewell 61)

As Sewell then puts it: “The Blue Calendars are the rarest of all John Gray’s publications, most of which appeared in small limited editions.” and “mark the beginning of John’s return to the practice of his religion, and the beginning of a life of devotion.” (61)

At the end of 1898 Gray ended his career in Civil Service and went to study for the priesthood at the Scots College in Rome. His conversion developed slowly and the main

8 reason for it was most probably because of Wilde’s trials. (80) Fletcher describes in the chapter dedicated to John Gray’s life in his The Poems of John Gray following:

He was ordained priest on 21 December 1901, and late the following year appointed to a curacy at St. Patrick’s, Edinburgh. The parish was a strange one for the late, golden boy of Park Lane and the Café Royale, situated in the Cowgate, then one of the more desperate slums, populated largely by the rough Irish. Here he became known as a priest who would go anywhere, would do anything for his flock. (Fletcher 11)

From 1905 he focused on the building of a new church in Morningside. Raffalovich offered financial support for the building of the church, which was blessed in April, 1907.

After that he decided to move to Edinburgh. (12-13) His health, however, was not in a good state. He had problems with high blood pressure. It got better when he started to walk in hills and got better diet. He also started to be interested in social and economic issues at St.

Patrick’s.

He had been writing poems and in 1922 published Vivis, collection of his quatrains.

From 1921 he contributed to the Dominican periodical Blackfriars. His last works are

Poems (1931) and Park: A Fantastic Story (1932) which was issued by Shees and Ward, whose opinion of Gray’s work or of its possible appeal was minimal. (13)

In 1930, Gray was appointed a canon of the Cathedral Chapter of the diocese of St.

Andrews and Edinburgh.

Fletcher describes John Gray’s end of life as follows:

André Raffalovich died in the sleep in 1934. ‘Gray was severely affected: “I am,” he told the sacristan at St. Peter’s, “the saddest man in Edinburgh. My friend has gone to Heaven.” The two-fold cord of forty years had been broken. At the funeral in Mount Vernon Cemetery, just outside Edinburgh, on a bitterly cold day, Canon Gray officiated. He wore only his vestments and it has been plausibly suggested that it was then that he “contracted the seeds of the illness from which he died four months later.” His own death took place from congestion of the lungs and pleurisy, with the complication of an abscess on the left lung which necessitated an operation. The operation succeeded, but his heart gave out.’ (Fletcher 14)

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ALLUSIONS TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

JOHN GRAY AND OSCAR WILDE

IT IS not completely known how and where Wilde and Gray became acquainted. There is no evidence for John just being ‘picked up’ in a bar by Wilde, as some of the biographers assume. (Sewell 9)

Richard Ellmann claims in his biography Oscar Wilde that they met in 1889:

In August of that year, Ricketts and Shannon, with whom Gray was on close terms, included two pieces by him in the first number of their magazine, The Dial. One was an article on the Goncourt brothers, the other a fairy tale in Wilde’s manner entitled ‘The Great Worm.’ On receiving a copy, Wilde promptly came to No. 1, The Vale, to thank them for it. ‘It is quite delightful,’ he told them, ‘but do not bring out a second number, all perfect things should be unique.’ The subject of his young imitator must have come up, and Ricketts and Shannon could not have failed to describe their young, fair, and beautiful contributor.

McKenna describes it similarly in his biography The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. He also mentions that shortly after his first meeting with John Gray, Wilde was invited for a dinner with J.M. Stoddart, the managing editor of the American Lippincott’s Magazine.

There are two versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray as Lawler deals with:

The text of The Picture of Dorian Gray exists in two published states. The novel first appeared as the featured work of fiction in the July, 1890 number of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. There are extant two manuscripts for the Lippincott's Dorian Gray. The holograph manuscript is at the Pierpont Morgan Library and the corrected typescript is now at the William Andrews Clark Library. In June of 1891, Wilde published Dorian Gray in an expanded version. The manuscript of the book version of Dorian Gray, published by Ward, Lock and Company, has not been found, if indeed a full manuscript ever existed. (Lawler 126)

It was Stoddart who had taken Oscar to meet Walt Whitman at his house in Camden,

New Jersey five years earlier. Arthur Conan Doyle was also present at his dinner. Stoddart

10 wanted to persuade Oscar Wilde as well as Arthur Conan Doyle to write a story for

Lippincott’s. Oscar Wilde agreed to it and later contributed by The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Frank Liebich, the pianist who was present, remembered John Gray to be ‘bored and tired’. He found ‘nothing memorable in his speech nor in his manner, which seemed tinged with condescension.’ He thought him ‘a thoroughly blasé worldling.’ Attributes like

‘bored’, ‘tired’, ‘blasé’, condescending and worldly, as McKenna mentions, remind of

Wilde’s description of his fictional equivalent, Dorian Gray, as ‘a complex multiform creature’, capable of multiple and fascinating moods. ‘He could be frivolous or deeply serious; charming or petulant; intelligent, engaging and articulate; or haughty and condescending. He could also be loyal and loving.’ (McKenna 163)

John was nicknamed ‘Dorian’ in the circles of writers, as his resemblance with original protagonist of the novel was undisputable for anyone. Sewell points out in his biography:

In the novel, Dorian is described as “a young man of extraordinary personal beauty... who looks as if made out of ivory and rose-leaves”. That John Gray’s look was no less remarkable appears from incident of 1892, when he was twenty-five. ‘Florence Gribbell, a lady who had been for many years with Raffalovich family…, was sitting one night in a box at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden. Somebody pointed out to her, across the long row of stalls, a seated figure in an opposite box, saying: “That is the young poet John Gray.” Miss Gribbell looked through her opera glasses and exclaimed: “What a fascinating man. I never knew that anybody could be so beautiful.” ‘Apart from the coincidence of name and physical appearance, Wilde also knew that John Gray, like Dorian, was leading a double life. (14)

John was flattered, as Ellmann puts it ‘overwhelmed’ while ‘Wilde’s attention was not so concentrated’, at first and signed his letters to Oscar as ‘Dorian’. By 1892, he started to distance from the idea that he is an actual model of Dorian Gray from the novel. However, it is well-known and quite obvious that the character was inspired by him:

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Oscar had taken John Gray’s surname, changing his Christian name to the suggestive Dorian – a name replete with implicit paiderastia. The Dorians were a tribe of ancient Greece, inhabiting the major cities of Sparta, Argos and Corinth. They were famous for their custom of institutionalized paiderastia, by which an older man became the lover and the teacher of youth. The Dorians were generally held responsible for the spread of paiderastia throughout ancient Greece. In his privately printed and cautiously circulated A Problem In Greek Ethics, John Addington Symonds wrote: The Dorians gave the earliest and most marked encouragements to Greek love. Nowhere else, indeed, except among Dorians, who were an essentially military race, living like an army of occupation in the countries they had seized, herding together in barracks and at public messes, and submitting to martial drill and discipline, do we meet with paiderastia developed as an institution. (McKenna 164)

McKenna explains Wilde’s extraordinary affection for John Gray:

Of all the young men Oscar had met, none was so supremely beautiful as John Gray, none at once so desirable and so seemingly unattainable. Not long after he met John Gray, Oscar wrote about the suzerainty of beauty: And Beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. […] Here was the young man, the ideal boy incarnate, who could inspire Oscar’s ‘passionate adoration’, and his ‘strange worship’. Oscar fell in love with John Gray at once. (158)

Then he describes Oscar’s falling in love with John:

This was a new experience for Oscar, who had spent the years since his marriage having a series of affairs with young men, all of which had ended almost as soon as they had begun – usually when Oscar’s beloved started to show dangerous signs of falling in love with him. But John Gray showed no inclination to fall instantly and deeply in love with Oscar. And the more he hesitated, the more he doubted, the more he fired Oscar’s passion. (159)

After several months they met and after Wilde’s efforts, flatteries, presents and showing of his love, Gray agreed to be his lover. It seemed that John Gray did so just to be protected and supported by someone, who had connections and could provide him with access to the society of well-known writers and publishers. McKenna then mentions:

For Oscar, sex with John Gray was an act of worship. For John Gray, it was confirmation of his social and literary status. Oscar became his protector, his patron, his benefactor, poetically and materially. (160)

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Their relationship changed, as Sewell suggests, while publishing Gray’s collection of the poems, Silverpoints. He was supposed to pay all costs for the publication but on

4 January, 1893, the original contract was replaced by a new one, by which the publishers

Messrs Elkin Mathews and John Lane took over the cost of production. (39) However,

Raffalovich was most probably the person who was guaranteeing them against loss.

(Ellmann, 392)

John Gray had broken with Wilde by March 1893 and informed Louÿs about it. Wilde invited Louÿs to the first performance of A Woman of No Importance. It was then when he realized what had been for Gray so difficult to bear. It was Wilde’s company who embarrassed him. (Ellmann, 393)

Gray decided to leave out some of the poems that were originally in Silverpoints. He did so either from technical reasons or because some of them were revealing. For instance, although the poem “Sound” would be definitely worthy to publish, he omitted it, for it is versified passage on ‘barbaric music’ in The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Sewell, 48) He tried to avoid being associated with Wilde anymore because of his affection for Lord Alfred

Douglas but also mainly because of Wilde’s accusation for immorality. Ari Adut deals with

Wilde’s immorality and its consequences in the American Journal of Sociology:

Pitilessly punished by the English homosexuality laws in 1895, Oscar Wilde is commonly considered to be the iconic victim of Victorian puritanism (e.g., Fisher 1995, p. 136; Pritchard 2001, p. 149). The Victorians held homosexuality in horror, and Britain stood out at the turn of the 20th century as the only country in Western Europe that criminalized all male homosexual acts with draconian penalties. Wilde was prosecuted and condemned to the fullest extent of the law even though the evidence against him was circumstantial, uncorroborated, and tainted. When Wilde’s first criminal trial terminated with a hung jury, the legal officials demonstrated fierce fervor in securing a conviction in a second trial. Wilde was vehemently vilified during his trials and was transformed into a pariah in the wake of his two-year prison-with-hard-labor sentence for gross indecency. (214)

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There was not much valuable evidence against Wilde, but, unfortunately, he did not avoid the prosecution. One of the reasons might have been his provocative attitude. Sewell describes circumstances of Wilde’s downfall as follows:

Wilde’s behaviour had become extraordinarily indiscreet and provocative, and this caused other people besides Gray and Louÿs, among them and André Raffalovich, to avoid his society from now on. For some time Raffalovich had been taking care to avoid finding himself alone in a room with Wilde. These defections from Wilde’s circle began a full two years before his downfall; so it seems unreasonable that the defectors should be accused, as they sometimes have been, of ‘abandoning’ Wilde in his time of trouble. We can admire loyalty of those who stood by him: Douglas, Ross, More Adey, Sherard, and others; but the fact is that they had all, in one way or another, and in greater or lesser degree, contributed to their friend’s downfall: a tragedy, in which Gray and Louÿs, Beardsley and Raffalovich, had no part. (77)

The thing that contributed most to his downfall was his provocative text The Picture of

Dorian Gray. McKenna writes in his biography The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde:

Oscar had set out to write a novel of Uranian love and Uranian lust, a novel that oozed homoeroticism from every pore and from every page. It was a novel of sexual exploration, a novel that took the reader on a journey through a hidden labyrinth of love and sex between men. The love that Basil feels for Dorian, the lust that Lord Henry feels for Dorian, the same lust that Dorian expands and explores and pushes to the very limits, is never named, but ever present. Dorian Gray is a triumph of revelation through concealment, of proclamation by insinuating whispers, hints and allusions. (182)

It was censored, because in the original version published in Lippincott’s Magazine 1891, there were plenty of more obvious homoerotic scenes and not just some ‘hints’. The accusation of his immorality came from John Sholto Douglas, Marquis of Queensberry and

Alfred Douglas’s father. He intended to ruin their relationship therefore he would have done almost everything just for their being apart. Oscar Wilde sued him for libel and claimed that his accusation is wrong and that none of it is true. Nevertheless, there were trials against him and he was convicted to two years of hard labour. Some of his friends or former lovers started to distance from him to avoid the difficulties. One of them, Walter

Pater, whose book Studies in the History of the Renaissance was obviously the inspiration

14 of the book given by Lord Henry to Dorian and which mainly influenced him, reviewed the novel unexpectedly. Michael Mathew Kaylor discusses Walter Pater’s distancing from the novel in his Secreted desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde:

The text that additionally provoked this breach, a text equally indiscreet, was The Picture of Dorian Gray, still in manuscript in 1890 when it was shown to Pater in the hope that he would review it, which he later did. In such a public venue as a review, there was much that Pater needed to avoid, namely that Wilde’s relationship with John Gray was intimately bound together with the text, as Richard Ellmann explains: To give the hero of his novel the name of ‘Gray’ was a form of courtship. Wilde probably named his hero not to point to a model, but to flatter Gray by identifying him with Dorian. Gray took the hint, and in letters to Wilde signed himself ‘Dorian’. Their intimacy was common talk. To Wilde’s surprise and displeasure, Pater took the occasion of this review not to flatter, elucidate, or cloak, but to distance himself as much as possible from both Dorian and his corrupter, Lord Henry Wotton — both of whom were unmistakably modeled on himself and the ideas he had expressed in his volume The Renaissance, for ‘Wilde evidently intended [Lord Henry] to be recognizably Paterian.’ (Kaylor 299)

The breach Kaylor talks about refers to Wilde’s and Pater’s end of friendship. The fact of the intimacy between Oscar Wilde and other men was dangerous and unacceptable therefore Walter Pater distanced from accepting it, possibly also because of his own homoerotic impulses.

It was not safe for any of Wilde’s friend to support him, as they were in danger of being accused, too, as Sewell explains:

In view of the public mood, many of Wilde’s former associates, John Gray among them, had reason to be apprehensive. At the third trial the foreman of the jury had asked the judge: ‘In view of the intimacy between and Mr Wilde, was a warrant ever issued for the apprehension of Lord Alfred Douglas?’ The judge replied that as far as he knew no such action had been contemplated; but no one knew what might or might not happen next; even people whose relations with Wilde had been a good deal less close than Douglas’s were nervous. Wilde had a very large number of friends in literary, artistic, and fashionable circles. Some of them were homosexuals; but it was not only these who took alarm. Some people lost their nerve, and hastened to remove or obscure as much as they could all traces of their association wit the brilliant and kindly man they had formerly courted. John Gray had broken with Oscar Wilde two years previously; but he still had reason, especially in view of his position as a civil servant, to be anxious. He had been very close to Wilde, even if for a short time only. Rumour had claimed to identify him as the original of Dorian Gray; even more potentially damaging was the matter of his relationship

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with some of Wilde’s more suspect acquaintances. His position was awkward, possibly dangerous, and he instructed barrister, Francis Mathew, to attend the trials and hold a watching brief on his behalf. But, in the event, his name was not mentioned. (78)

Oscar Wilde’s downfall shocked John Gray very much therefore he realized that he really has to change his life, so it made definitive his ongoing ‘conversion of manners’:

In December 1897 he made a retreat with Jesuit fathers at Manresa House, Roehampton, and it was during this retreat that he decided to give his life the most total reorientation possible by offering himself as a candidate for the priesthood. (Sewell 80)

He was convinced that his way of life is something which he had to be ashamed of and felt not happy living in this way. In religion, he probably found the compromise and he did not have to act like a heterosexual in the puritan society.

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COMPARISON OF DEPICTIONS OF JOHN GRAY IN THE PICTURE OF DORIAN

GRAY AND “THE PERSON IN QUESTION”

THIS CHAPTER focuses on the analysis of both literary works and the comparison of them.

The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is remarkably longer than the short story and it is also very well-known while the short story “The Person in Question” was written by a minor poet which means that there has been not much written about it, so far. However, it is certainly worthy to compare these two works as they share common aspects in the depiction of John Gray.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was significant work for the aesthetic movement and had a great influence on the Victorian society, as Richard Ellmann explains in his biography

Oscar Wilde:

Aestheticism in its new guise modified the relationship between reader and writer. If matter once the exclusive preserve of pornography could be broached, then the reader’s calm and sense of unthreatened distance were violable. Many young men and women learned of the existence of uncelebrated forms of love through the hints in The Picture of Dorian Gray […] People also learned from Wilde how to shape a sentence and live in style. In the eighties, aestheticism suffered for lack of example: Dorian Gray filled the need. With its irreverent maxims, its catch phrases, its conversational gambits, its insouciance and contrariness, it announced the age of Dorian. (305)

The novel deals with many interesting characters and personalities. Most of them are at least partially autobiographical. Oscar Wilde imprinted his own soul, emotions and experience in them. Nevertheless, Dorian Gray is significantly based on the real personality of John Gray. Wilde, as McKenna puts it in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, began to write the text at the same time as he was trying to become Gray’s lover. Much of the novel reflects their relationship and, as it was mentioned above, Dorian, like John Gray, was a young man of ‘extraordinary personal beauty’, ‘a young Adonist’ who ‘looks as if he were

17 made out of ivory and rose-leaves’, a veritable ‘Narcissus’. And like John Gray, Dorian looks much younger than he really is. He is ‘a little more than a lad, although he is really over twenty’ (165). McKenna continues as follows:

Throughout the original manuscript of the novel, Oscar described Dorian Gray as a ‘boy’, changing this word to the more neutral ‘lad’ later, along with dozens of other mutings of the more obvious homoerotic passages. Basil Hallward, an artist in paint, falls in love with Dorian at the first sight, just as Oscar, an artist in words, fell in love with John Gray at first sight. At a crush at Lady Brandon’s (a thinly disguised portrait of Speranza and her at-homes), Basil suddenly becomes conscious that someone is looking at him: I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious instinct of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself… Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I knew that if I spoke to Dorian I would become absolutely devoted to him, and that I ought not to speak to him. I grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. (165)

Basil’s devotion was not just the case of the book. Wilde depicted in the novel his own idol

– John Gray. They were sexually attracted to each other. The sexuality of the characters is an important aspect of the whole novel. Its homoerotic overtones were the main reason for

Oscar Wilde’s troubles with the court, nevertheless, also very specific and important features, which made the work so unique. Renier mentions in Oscar Wilde following:

Unnamed infamies hover through its pages. Appetites and lusts are hinted at, but remain unspecified. Again and again, Oscar’s obsession with sin comes bobbing up. It was an obsession prevalent in the ‘nineties, though it appears nowhere with the same awkward insistence as in the work of Wilde. (51)

Such a work was rare, taking puritan society into consideration. Someone, who wrote such a book, put not only himself at risk, but his close friends and lovers or ex-lovers, as well.

For Wilde, John Gray might have immortalized his true love, as it seemed that his feelings for him were proved by his actions, as he took care of him, wrote the novel about

18 him, supported him and introduced him to then famous writers. His feelings were also depicted through Basil’s character. McKenna deals with Basil’s feelings for Dorian as follows:

For Basil to possess Dorian sexually, to penetrate him anally, just as, perhaps Oscar had penetrated Clyde Fitch, would be to despoil ‘the white purity of his boyhood’, to taint and destroy the very purity he worships. In the moral forest of Oscar’s fauns, Basil follows the song, not the shadow, and pursues selfless love, not sex. Basil’s yearning, aspiring, unrequited love for Dorian is a paradox. It exists merely because it cannot exist. In its realization lies its destruction. (165)

Not only by coincidence it is said that the true love is the one we cannot posses. It seems that when we want something most and can never get that, we will not stop longing for it.

In the moment we posses it, it loses the charm and we are no longer excited by it. This might be also the case of Basil’s love, which is not reciprocated by Dorian in exactly the same way as Wilde’s love was not reciprocated by John Gray. John Gray rather seemed to be taking an advantage of him and enjoy the moments when he did not have to care about his financial issues, even though he surely had some feelings for him or at least enjoyed physical contact with Wilde. Even if the love we cannot have would not be as we expected it to be, once we would get to know it, until we do not get it we would still be wondering about the possibility of having it. The bigger distance John kept, the more Oscar perhaps wanted his love to be mutual.

There is no doubt that while describing Basil’s feelings for Dorian, he had in mind his own feelings for John. McKenna elaborates this topic as follows:

And Oscar’s portrait of John, just like Basil’s portrait of Dorian, betrays ‘the secret of his soul’, the secret of his sexuality, the only difference being that while Basil seeks to conceal his love, Oscar seeks to proclaim it, wanting those who read The Picture of Dorian Gray to understand the true nature of his sexuality. (166)

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Wilde’s novel betrays the secret of his own soul, as well, and like Basil, Wilde imprinted to his work his own affection. Basil, however, corrupts his friend Dorian and makes the portrait real by putting his love in it. Houston mentions in The Tragedy of the Artist: The

Picture of Dorian Gray following:

Hallward's excessive self-consciousness, his selfish desires, and his jealous zeal in keeping Dorian from others have corrupted the simple, natural, and affectionate model who sat for the portrait (127). As long as Hallward painted Dorian as Paris or Adonis, he performed the true function of the artist, for he then presented “imaginative reality.” Of his work during this period, the artist says, “And it had been what art should be-unconscious, ideal, and remote” (128). But when Hallward decided to paint the fatal portrait, his work became self- conscious, real, and overly personal. (353)

Basil’s selfishness could be considered as a metaphor for Wilde’s provocative writings. He wrote a novel which could have exposed not only his homosexuality but he endangered his friends who were close to him. While Basil’s love was purely platonic and unrequited,

Wilde’s relationship with John Gray was emotional as well as physical, but when he started to write the novel, it was at the time when he was trying to seduce Gray therefore the novel probably mirrors his platonic desire instead of actual relationship.

Then McKenna mentions the traits of John’s character and compares it with the passage in which Basil describes his relationship with Dorian closer:

There are other echoes of Oscar’s relationship with John Gray when Basil tells his friend Lord Henry Wotton – another autobiographical aspect of Oscar – of his relationship with Dorian. ‘He likes me,’ Basil says. ‘I know he likes me’: Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put it in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day. In her unpublished reminiscences, André Raffalovich’s sister, Sophie, commented on a slightly less savoury side of John Gray’s character during the early years of his later love affair with André. She claimed that John took André’s kindness and generosity too much for granted, that he was ‘selfish, over-concerned for his own comfort, inclined to be greedy,

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and not always polite’. Did Oscar flatter John Gray dreadfully? And was John as a rule charming, but at the same time vain, self-centered, sometimes thoughtless, if not downright cruel? Oscar’s greatest act of flattery was to immortalize John Gray as Dorian, to hymn in prose the boyish poet he had fallen in love with. (166)

It seems that John resembled Dorian a lot, since, as it was mentioned above, according to

Frank Liebich, who met him, he looked ‘bored and tired’ and ‘tinged with condescension.’

Indeed, it reminds of people who are sometimes self-centered and hard to be amused. That is why they look very often unsatisfied or bored with the others who represent the inferior.

Dorian also visited the same places as John, such as Café Royal which also occurs in the

Gray’s short story, where he meets his doppelgänger for the first time.

Whatever John Gray might have become, it could probably be only because of Oscar

Wilde’s provocative attitude. Sometimes when we meet someone who is acting in a different way than we have been used to, it can easily change us because we try to be happy in the same way. Then we are changing our attitude, too, although it can be unknowingly or just the opposite – compulsorily. Soon or later, however, we often find that we should have not adapted so much and rather have preserved our own identity.

McKenna discusses relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian:

While Basil follows Dorian’s song of love, his friend Lord Henry pursues Dorian’s sensual, sexual shadow. One day when Dorian is sitting for Basil in his studio, Lord Henry Wotton arrives and is dazzled by Dorian’s perfect beauty, just as Dorian is dazzled by Lord Henry’s ‘beautiful voice’, his worldly wisdom, his sophistication, wit and intelligence: Dorian… could not help liking the tall, graceful young man… his romantic olive- coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. Was this scene barely disguised fictional counterpart of the scene in the studio of Ricketts and Shannon, when Oscar was dazzled by John Gray’s beauty, and John Gray was seduced by Oscar’s beautiful voice, his wit and wisdom? Certainly the description of Lord Henry could be a convincing self-portrait of Oscar, who was thirty-five when he met John Gray. Like Lord Henry, Oscar was married. And like Lord Henry, he was tall, six foot tall,

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with pale olive skin, a low, languid voice that was deservedly famous for being fascinating, and hypnotically expressive hands. (167)

Oscar Wilde was overwhelmed by Gray. He himself was also attractive because of his intelligence and charisma therefore Gray must have been attracted, as well, so he could not resist for a long time and finally he was seduced by Wilde, even though he probably did not share the same feelings and especially because he was afraid of his sexuality and he just considered another way of life.

McKenna discusses sexual nature of every human because it is necessary for everyone to realize that people are born with sexual orientation and it cannot be cured of which opinion then Victorian society was:

Lord Henry preaches a strange and compelling gospel to Dorian. ‘The aim of life is self- development,’ he says. By self-development, Lord Henry of course means sexual development, specifically acknowledgement and acceptance of one’s true sexual nature: To realise one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self… their own souls starve, and are naked. Lord Henry argues that it is society and religion which have conspired to suppress by fear men’s true nature: Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion – these are the two things that govern us… the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. (168)

It is a paradox that then so many strong men were afraid of themselves as Wilde explains through Lord Henry’s character. It is quite unbelievable that sexual orientation could be considered to be something that can be cured and something which deserves to be punished.

Even more unbelievable is the fact that also nowadays, there are many prejudices against homosexuality. Wilde was not ashamed and wanted to reveal his desires at least partially.

Maybe John Gray was the reason, why Wilde wrote so provocatively, as he was in love and did not want to hide anymore. Although he uses rather symbols and does not write

22 openly about homosexuality, the homoerotic desires are very apparently depicted. For John

Gray, it was difficult because he was uncertain whether his way of life was right and whether it would have not been better to become Roman Catholic or even priest and live without ‘sin’. McKenna sees the parallel between John’s and Dorian’s life:

The struggle between Dorian Gray’s body and his soul has an almost exact counterpart in the real-life struggle John Gray was experiencing between his body and his soul, between the sins of the flesh and the call of the spirit. When Dorian considers becoming a Catholic, it is almost certainly the reference to John Gray’s half-hearted conversion to Catholicism, a process which began not long after he met Oscar. In the summer of 1889, John Gray embarked on a course of religious instruction and, on Valentine’s Day 1890, was baptized and conditionally received into the . Like many Catholic converts, John Gray failed to have the transforming experience he had hoped for. ‘I went through instruction as blindly and indifferently as ever anyone did,’ he wrote later, ‘and immediately I began a course of sin compared with which my previous life was innocence.’ (178)

For John, as much as for Dorian, the change was necessary but hard to accomplish. Dorian never succeeded:

John Gray implies that this course was a continuation, an intensification of his previous life of sin. He never revealed exactly what his course of sin consisted of, just as Dorian Gray’s sins are only ever adumbrated and never spelt out. But clearly, both Dorian’s and John’s sins are sexual. Was John Gray’s ‘course of sin’ the inspiration – if inspiration is the right word – for Dorian’s course of sin? Oscar began writing The Picture of Dorian Gray in the late autumn of 1889 finishing it some time in the late spring of 1890, two and half months or so after John Gray’s formal reception into the Catholic Church. Or was it a case of life imitating art? Had Oscar somehow inspired or encouraged John Gray towards a deeper, darker exploration of his sexuality, just as Lord Henry Wotton impels Dorian down the same course? (179)

Maybe John Gray was really influenced by Wilde at that time and had a lust for experiencing new things and exploring his own sexuality. Nevertheless, Wilde probably wanted to point out that Gray and any other homosexuals should have not denied their own nature and rather accepted it and enjoyed it. McKenna mentions following:

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Self-denial, sexual denial is a form of emotional and bodily mutilation, a marring of lives which could otherwise be beautiful, perfect, happy. ‘We are punished for our refusals,’ Lord Henry tells Dorian: Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. ‘Desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful’ is not-so- coded reference to the ancient laws against sodomy and the passing, four years earlier in 1885, of the Labouchère Amendment, which outlawed oral sex and mutual masturbation between men. If men who love men are to realise themselves, are to arrive at their erotic destiny, then morality, law, religion must all be thrown aside. They were prophetic words. Oscar would deliberately cast them all aside in the quest to fulfil his own erotic destiny. (168)

Oscar Wilde was most probably sick of denying himself, as well as of others denying themselves, including John Gray. John, however, did not agree and did everything for his sexuality to stay unrevealed to the society. He might have felt that something is wrong with him and way Dorian was similarly seduced by Lord Henry to the ‘wrong’ side in the novel and acted in ‘sin’ but always tried to pretend that he did nothing wrong, as well as in the real life. Dorian had picture which helped him more or less hide his sins but John could not hide his actions all the time, especially in case he had affairs with others from Wilde’s circle, too.

The compelling gospel according to Lord Henry Wotton is also the gospel according to Oscar Wilde. Sexual self-repression is a canker, which eats away the body and the soul. The only true cure is to admit and acknowledge who one is and what one is. It is not enough merely to be a lover of young men, one must proclaim one’s love for young men. It was a devastating and daring philosophy, and when Oscar first expounded his gospel to John Gray, he thrilled to its call for erotic revolution. Lord Henry Wotton throws down an erotic gauntlet to Dorian: You, Mr Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame. ‘Stop’ Dorian falters, in a Damascene moment of erotic self-revelation. The nature of these waking and dreaming passions has been revealed to him and revealed to us by the use of the word ‘shame’ – that resonant Uranian code-word meaning love and sex between

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men. ‘Of all sweet passions,’ Bosie was to write after reading Dorian Gray, ‘Shame is loveliest.’ (169)

John as well as Dorian probably defends himself from Wilde’s (Henry’s) influence because of his ‘shame’ and argues against his opinions at first but finally he yields to him and they become very close, like in the novel:

“You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you will tell me everything you do.” “Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did crime, I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.” (Wilde 51)

It seems as if Dorian is completely devoted to Lord Henry, as well. Throughout the novel, however, we find that Dorian is later wholly independent and after he is corrupted by him, he starts to act on his own and is not much in contact with Lord Henry. It reminds in a certain way of John Gray who was introduced to many significant writers or artists of his time by Oscar Wilde and then he, thanks to him, gained other acquaintances and later became friend of André Raffalovich and started to distance from Wilde.

For John Gray, of course, as for every healthy human being, sex with – in his case a man – had to be very tempting and he had to face sexual desires. Maybe the desire is even bigger for anyone who has to hide it every day and keep it undiscovered by the public.

McKenna discusses further the sex which he considers to be kind of a spiritualized entity in the novel:

Lord Henry Wotton’s interest in Dorian is far from avuncular. His powerful speech has disclosed to Dorian his ‘life’s mystery’, has ‘revealed to himself’. It is kind of forcible coming out, an erotic epiphany. Lord Henry’s words have touched some secret chord that has never been touched before, but that Dorian feels in now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.’ The sexual imagery is deliberate and obvious. Lord Henry has touched the ‘secret chord’ of Dorian’s anus, and he experiences a kind of spiritual and penile erection in consequence. Twenty years later, E.M. Forster would experience a similar and equally intense revelation of his true sexual nature on a visit to Edward Carpenter’s cottage at

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Millthorpe, near Sheffield. Carpenter’s lover, the working class George Merrill, ‘touched my backside’, wrote Forster: The sensation was unusual and I still remember it, as I remember the position of a long-vanished tooth. It was as much psychological as physical. It seemed to go straight through the small of my back into my ideas, without involving my thoughts. (169-170)

McKenna compares Forster’s first experience with the man to the description from Dorian

Gray, as there seems to be parallel of spirituality in the both cases. Forster perceived his experience to be psychological as well as ‘life’s mystery’ could be considered to be spiritual realization of feelings for a person of the same sex. McKenna then continues:

Indeed Oscar takes the metaphor of anal sex and penetration even further in Dorian Gray, when Lord Henry considers what he would like his relationship with Dorian to be. It involves a kind of spiritual sodomy: To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one’s own intellectual views echoed beck to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one’s temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that – perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own. Lord Henry wants to ejaculate the very essence of his soul into Dorian’s gracious form like ‘a subtle fluid’, just, perhaps, as Oscar wanted to inseminate John Gray with his own combination of subtle intellect and seminal fluid. (170)

This part was, of course, in the original version from Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. It was too provocative with obvious sexual content.

Dorian Gray’s character is developing throughout the novel. At the beginning he is naïve and surprised by discovering of his own beauty. He starts to realize that he can enjoy the life more deeply because of his beauty and youth. He is full of hope for existence and ability to experience true love with a woman but this ends soon as he finds that absolute devotion to him by Sibyl Vane deters him from the desire for such a love. As it was

26 mentioned above the love he can have, although it spoiled Sibyl’s ability to perform, is no longer attractive for him.

It seems that in the novel, Dorian Gray can change. The reader can hope and expect certain kind of change for the better, for it is uncertain what Dorian does next and at least he possessed reason in the beginning. One would expect that he will try to redeem what he has done as he suggests that he realizes his mistakes and sins. Stokes in his biography mentions following:

Wilde uses the first person very rarely, and by far the greater part is recounted in a third person narration, which appears to be distanced from the characters yet knowingly at ease with their world. Even so the central consciousness of the novel is Dorian’s: he is the most important, the most interesting, and probably the most intelligent of the characters. In contrast with Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton, moral idealist and amoral cynic respectively, both condemned to failure and regret, Dorian alone has the capacity for growth through change. (29)

However, somehow he is incapable of such change. It reminds of John Gray’s trying to change – after being baptized – at first he is, nevertheless, incapable of starting ‘better’ life. By better it is obviously meant the life without homosexuality as it was considered to be something which had to be eliminated. This dilemma is rendered in “The Person in

Question”, as well, although it is not directly expressed. John Gray is afraid of a mysterious unknown person, whom he very often meets. He looks exactly the same like himself but twenty-five years older. He does exactly the same unusual things, uses same gestures and makes same movements. Sewell wrote about the story following:

One story of this period, perhaps the most remarkable of them all, remained unpublished during its author’s lifetime; perhaps because it would have been too revealing. Dr McCormack believes that this story, ‘The Person in Question’, was written in 1892. Don Patricio Ganon was certainly right when he suggested that it contains hints of the motives that led John Gray to abandon his literary and civil service careers, and enter the priesthood. The person in question is a mysterious doppelgänger, or double, of the narrator, whom the narrator, a young man, keeps seeing in peculiar situations. This double is a

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pitiful version of himself as he can expect to be if he continues in the meaningless life of vain pursuits that he is leading. The Doppelgänger theme is a not uncommon one in eighteen-nineties’ fiction, and seems usually to combine fears of schizophrenia with fears of suicide: an act that John Gray had at one time contemplated. (Sewell, 73)

Whereas it is not wholly apparent in the story that Gray is homosexual and is struggling with it, in the novel by Wilde it is clear. John is depicted in the novel as a beautiful young man who is influenced and seduced to wrong path and feels miserable from his own actions. These actions may be considered to be parallel to John Gray’s sexuality which he was ashamed of. However, he has the portrait so he just locks it in the attic and does not have to worry about it while John Gray depicts himself in the story as a miserable man from the beginning. He is responsible for his actions and has to bear the consequences. He is confused by his life and therefore he creates his own older twin which shows him, as a warning, what he can become if he leads such a life longer. He lives maybe quite shallow life, including going to the parties, the opera, Café Royal, etc. but he seems not to be happy.

One of the reason could be that his life does not fulfil him and seeing his older self scares him as he realizes that when he gets older, he will be still the same, he will visit the same places, see the same type of people and wander pointlessly through the same streets completely alone. He will never be allowed to express his affection to any man in public and will have to be alone. His unhappiness is apparent from his bad mood:

I was lunching at the Café Royal. Once this has been my regular custom, but on this day I went there simply because I knew it was the only place where I could eat at all. I found how right my judgment had been – I remember being struck by it at the time – for even there I could find nothing to excite my fainting appetite. Ah, I was miserable that day. It was so hot, so hot, and I know not what fevers were raging in London. Miserable. I thought at first I would take something I could not afford. Then the smell of the dish I imagined passed in my brain and it was not to be thought of. (Gray 214)

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John Gray might have felt miserable at that time, as he was considering the suicide. His sorrow is apparent from the whole story because he starts to be mad when he ceases to see his double. Fletcher describes Gray’s life in his edition of Gray’s poems and focuses also on coincidences of the writing the story:

Wilde and Gray were close in the years from January 1891 to early 1893 and in 1892 Gray, whom Bernard Shaw described as one of Wilde’s “more abject disciples,” inscribed a copy of his translation of some of Paul Bourget’s stories “to my beloved master and my friend.” If not the actual original, Gray with his extreme physical beauty, itself a kind of genius, and his talents, must have appeared the incarnation of Dorian Gray, while Wilde must have been aware that like Dorian, John Gray was leading a double life. And as Jerusha McCormack has suggestively argued, the fictional persona may well have exercised a strange power over the immediately subsequent course of John Gray’s life. It was probably at about this time that Gray wrote a short story “The Person in Question” which was to remain unpublished for more than seventy years. Its theme is closely aligned to that of The picture of Dorian Gray but while Dorian evades his older self with his sins all too legible on his face, Gray’s younger self confronts his older self in a way that is quieter but more eerie that the hero of Wilde’s novel. It is the banality, the hollowness and moral fixity of what the narrator comes to recognize as his older self. (Fletcher 5)

The narrator feels certain emptiness although he meets his friends from time to time. He might be frustrated by seeing his older self alone, always following him but neither ever speaking to him nor to be able to look straight in his eyes. The view of the uncertain future might be similarly frustrating. Sewell describes the story as follows:

‘The Person in Question’ which is to some extent a paradigm of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, is an eerie story, of considerable power. It reveals a state of mind that seems balanced on the razor’s edge between sanity and madness. At the end, the narrator speaks of a friend to whom he thinks of recounting these strange events. This friend can perhaps be identified as André Raffalovich. (73)

Indeed, John Gray gets in the story almost mad, is desperate and the only thing that could help him in his opinion is his friend – probably André, who was very close to him and a huge support.

He does not want to speak to his ‘twin’ or rather has no courage:

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Why did I not seek an excuse to speak to him, to touch him? I put myself a possible, absurd question for the mere sake of laughing at it. No, and no; I knew a little more, even then, than to have done such a thing. Seriously, was it a warning? or what was it – this acute phenomenon? I must be excessively ill, was all I could resolve; and, panic-struck, I was not altogether displeased. I left the Café and did not see the person in question for months. (Gray 216)

He asks himself if it was a warning. Probably it was, as he sees him really often during whole year and cannot speak to him. The person in question is supposed to warn him that if he will not change, he will be the same person who has his bad moods and even problems to decide what he wants to eat.

Later in the real life, John Gray became a priest, ended his dilemma and hopefully found the peace as Sewell describes it:

Although he had not completed his full course of studies, John was ordained priest on 21st December, 1901, the Saturday before the fourth Sunday in Advent, by Cardinal Respighi, the Pope’s vicar for the diocese of Rome, in the basilica of St John Lateran. The next day he offered Mass for the first time, in the chapel of the Scots College. He was now just over half way through his life’s span , and would spend a great part of his future life in ignoring Lord Henry Wotton’s advice to Dorian Gray listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, and giving away his life to the ignorant, the common, the vulgar. (94)

He gave up his sexuality and decided to serve the God unlike in Dorian Gray. In the novel, he is incapable of giving up his life full of joy and sex as he is already too corrupted by the book and Lord Henry’s opinions and thoughts. Oscar Wilde did not succeed completely in influencing John Gray as Lord Henry did in the novel.

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CONCLUSION

THE THESIS compares the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray to the short story “The Person in Question”. Even though the novel is much more complex piece of literature, it is worthy to compare it to the John Gray’s short story because both have main themes in common.

The goal of this thesis was to analyze both works as they share same topics and show that John Gray’s dilemma was depicted in The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as in “The

Person in Question”. John Gray was uncertain of his future which is imprinted in both works. He could not decide whether he lived in a right way and whether he should not have suppressed his sexual desires for men and rather have lived safely without ‘sins’ as a priest.

In the novel, Dorian faces Lord Henry who seduces him by his intelligence and wit and tries to persuade him about his beauty which should be used and enjoyed as much as possible.

He succeeds and Dorian entangles in the net of his own lies and sins. He behaves badly and cannot change even though he wanted to at first. He does not have to bear the consequences of his actions, therefore he cannot learn from his mistakes properly while in the short story the narrator – John Gray – has to bear them, therefore he gets almost insane and is afraid of his older self as he represents his meaningless future, which he feels he has to and has the opportunity to change. This is the main difference between these two works – the obligation of seeing one’s own mistakes and their consequences. As it was mentioned above, Dorian’s portrait is locked in a room and he only gets scared when he sees him for some time while in the story, John Gray faces his own future self almost every day, when he stops seeing him, he even gets more afraid and rather wants to see him because he is like his instant reminder of the need of change.

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However, John Gray is in both works depicted as a person who is really afraid of his future and therefore incapable of doing something on his own to change. In the short story, he is unable to speak to his older self and rather wants to give the responsibility to his friend and come to him for advice. In the novel, he is also unable to tell Basil about the picture immediately and try to act without sins in the hope that the picture will not change anymore or will even change to its original form. He also refuses to assume the responsibility for his horrible actions and rather tries to destroy the proof of his sins while, without realizing it, taking his own life.

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Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print.

Fletcher, Ian, ed. “John Henry Gray: His Life, His Poetry”. The Poems of John Gray.

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ENGLISH ABSTRACT

OSCAR WILDE’S novel The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as John Gray’s short story “The person in Question” deals with ‘double life’ of the main character. In both of them, the poet

John Gray, who was the lover of Oscar Wilde, is depicted. He was the main inspiration for the depiction of Dorian Gray in the novel which has biographical features and the short story is written by John Gray himself therefore it contains autobiographical features. The thesis analyses both works, compares them and tries to prove that in both of them, John

Gray is depicted as a man who leads double life, has to hide his true nature and is incapable to endeavor to change.

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CZECH ABSTRACT

Román Oscara Wilda Obraz Doriana Graye, stejně tak jako krátká povídka Johna Graye

„The Person in Question“, pojednává o otázce „dvojího života“ hlavní postavy. V obou je vyobrazen básník John Gray, který byl milencem Oscara Wilda. John Gray byl hlavní inspirací vyobrazení postavy Doriana Graye v románu, který má biografické rysy a krátká povídka je napsána Johnem Grayem samotným, proto obsahuje autobiografické prvky.

Práce analyzuje obě díla, porovnává je a snaží se dokázat, že je v nich John Gray vyobrazen jako muž, který vede dvojí život, musí skrývat svou pravou přirozenost a je neschopen usilovat o změnu.

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