feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_4_part_2.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 10
feat_summary_id: chapter 10
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section5/", "summary": "Once Basil is gone, Dorian orders his servant, Victor, to go to a nearby frame-maker and bring back two men. He then calls his housekeeper, Mrs. Leaf, whom he asks for the key to the schoolroom, which sits at the top of the house and has been unused for nearly five years. Dorian covers the portrait with an ornate satin coverlet, reflecting that the sins he commits will mar its beauty just as worms mar the body of a corpse. The men from the frame-maker's arrive, and Dorian employs them to carry the painting to the schoolroom. Here, Dorian muses, the painting will be safe from prying eyes, and if no one can actually see his deterioration, then it bears no importance. After locking the room, he returns to his study and settles down to read a book that Lord Henry has sent him. This yellow book is accompanied by a newspaper account of Sibyl's death. Horrified by the ugliness of the report, Dorian turns to the book, which traces the life of a young Parisian who devotes his life to \"all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own. After reading a few pages, Dorian becomes entranced. He finds the work to be \"a poisonous book,\" one that confuses the boundaries between vice and virtue. When Dorian meets Lord Henry for dinner later that evening, he pronounces the work fascinating. Is insincerity such a terrible thing. I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities", "analysis": "Sibyl's death compels Dorian to make the conscious decision to embrace Lord Henry's philosophy of selfishness and hedonism wholeheartedly. The contrast between Dorian's and Basil's reactions to Sibyl's death demonstrates the degree to which Lord Henry has changed Dorian. Dorian dismisses the need for grief in words that echo Lord Henry's: Sibyl need not be mourned, he proclaims, for she has \"passed . . . into the sphere of art.\" In other words, Dorian thinks of Sibyl's death as he would the death of a character in a novel or painting, and chooses not to be affected emotionally by her passing. This attitude reveals one way in which the novel blurs the distinction between life and art. Dorian himself passes \"into the sphere of art\" when his portrait reflects the physical manifestations of age and sin. While it is usually paintings that never age and people who do, it is the other way around with Dorian, as he has become more like a work of art than a human. Basil's declaration of his obsession with Dorian is in many ways a defense and justification of homosexual love. In 1895, five years after Dorian Gray was published, Wilde was famously convicted of sodomy for his romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde defended homosexual love as an emotion experienced by some of the world's greatest men. He insisted that it had its roots in ancient Greece and was, therefore, fundamental to the development of Western thought and culture. In his trial, when asked to describe the \"love that dare not speak its name,\" Wilde explained it as  such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. . . . It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.  This testimony is strikingly similar to Dorian's reflection upon the kind of affection that Basil shows him:  t was really love-- had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.  Basil translates these highly emotional and physical feelings into his art; his act of painting is an expression of his love for Dorian. This romantic devotion to Dorian becomes clear when he admits his reason for not wanting to exhibit the painting: he fears that people will see his \"idolatry.\" Dorian reflects, for a moment, that with this love Basil might have saved him from Lord Henry's influence, but he soon resigns himself to living a life dictated by the pursuit of passion. He devours the mysterious \"yellow book\" that Lord Henry gives him, which acts almost as a guide for the journey on which he is to travel. Like the protagonist of that novel, Dorian spirals into a world of self-gratification and exotic sensations. Although Wilde, in letters, identified the novel as imaginary, it is based in part on the nineteenth-century French novel A Rebours , by Joris-Karl Huysmans, in which a decadent and wealthy Frenchman indulges himself in a host of bizarre sensory experiences. The yellow book has profound influence on Dorian; one might argue that it leads to his downfall. This downfall occurs not because the book itself is immoral here is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book\") but because Dorian allows the book to dominate and determine his actions so completely. It becomes, for Dorian, a doctrine as limiting and stultifying as the common Victorian morals from which he seeks escape. After all, Lord Henry is a great fan of the yellow book, but, to his mind, it is no greater or more important than any other work of notable art. He does not let it dominate his life or determine his actions, which, in turn, allows him to retain the respectability that Dorian soon loses."}
text: 
  When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and wondered if
  he had thought of peering behind the screen.  The man was quite
  impassive and waited for his orders.  Dorian lit a cigarette and walked
  over to the glass and glanced into it.  He could see the reflection of
  Victor's face perfectly.  It was like a placid mask of servility.
  There was nothing to be afraid of, there.  Yet he thought it best to be
  on his guard.
  
  Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he
  wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to
  send two of his men round at once.  It seemed to him that as the man
  left the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen.  Or was
  that merely his own fancy?
  
  After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread
  mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library.  He
  asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
  
  "The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed.  "Why, it is full of
  dust.  I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it.
  It is not fit for you to see, sir.  It is not, indeed."
  
  "I don't want it put straight, Leaf.  I only want the key."
  
  "Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it.  Why, it
  hasn't been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died."
  
  He winced at the mention of his grandfather.  He had hateful memories
  of him.  "That does not matter," he answered.  "I simply want to see
  the place--that is all.  Give me the key."
  
  "And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents
  of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands.  "Here is the key.  I'll
  have it off the bunch in a moment.  But you don't think of living up
  there, sir, and you so comfortable here?"
  
  "No, no," he cried petulantly.  "Thank you, Leaf.  That will do."
  
  She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
  the household.  He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought
  best.  She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
  
  As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round
  the room.  His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
  embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
  Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
  Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in.  It had perhaps
  served often as a pall for the dead.  Now it was to hide something that
  had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death
  itself--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die.
  What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image
  on the canvas.  They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace.  They
  would defile it and make it shameful.  And yet the thing would still
  live on.  It would be always alive.
  
  He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
  the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away.  Basil
  would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still
  more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament.  The love
  that he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was
  not noble and intellectual.  It was not that mere physical admiration
  of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses
  tire.  It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and
  Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.  Yes, Basil could have saved him.
  But it was too late now.  The past could always be annihilated.
  Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that.  But the future was
  inevitable.  There were passions in him that would find their terrible
  outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
  
  He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that
  covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen.
  Was the face on the canvas viler than before?  It seemed to him that it
  was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.  Gold hair,
  blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there.  It was simply the
  expression that had altered.  That was horrible in its cruelty.
  Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil's
  reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--how shallow, and of what little
  account!  His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and
  calling him to judgement.  A look of pain came across him, and he flung
  the rich pall over the picture.  As he did so, a knock came to the
  door.  He passed out as his servant entered.
  
  "The persons are here, Monsieur."
  
  He felt that the man must be got rid of at once.  He must not be
  allowed to know where the picture was being taken to.  There was
  something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes.
  Sitting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,
  asking him to send him round something to read and reminding him that
  they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.
  
  "Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
  here."
  
  In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
  himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in
  with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant.  Mr. Hubbard was a
  florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was
  considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the
  artists who dealt with him.  As a rule, he never left his shop.  He
  waited for people to come to him.  But he always made an exception in
  favour of Dorian Gray.  There was something about Dorian that charmed
  everybody.  It was a pleasure even to see him.
  
  "What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
  hands.  "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in
  person.  I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir.  Picked it up at a
  sale.  Old Florentine.  Came from Fonthill, I believe.  Admirably
  suited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray."
  
  "I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
  Hubbard.  I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I
  don't go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a
  picture carried to the top of the house for me.  It is rather heavy, so
  I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."
  
  "No trouble at all, Mr. Gray.  I am delighted to be of any service to
  you.  Which is the work of art, sir?"
  
  "This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back.  "Can you move it,
  covering and all, just as it is?  I don't want it to get scratched
  going upstairs."
  
  "There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
  beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from
  the long brass chains by which it was suspended.  "And, now, where
  shall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?"
  
  "I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me.
  Or perhaps you had better go in front.  I am afraid it is right at the
  top of the house.  We will go up by the front staircase, as it is
  wider."
  
  He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
  began the ascent.  The elaborate character of the frame had made the
  picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
  protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike
  of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
  so as to help them.
  
  "Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they
  reached the top landing.  And he wiped his shiny forehead.
  
  "I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the
  door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
  secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
  
  He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,
  since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
  as a study when he grew somewhat older.  It was a large,
  well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
  Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
  to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
  desired to keep at a distance.  It appeared to Dorian to have but
  little changed.  There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its
  fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
  he had so often hidden himself as a boy.  There the satinwood book-case
  filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.  On the wall behind it was
  hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen
  were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by,
  carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists.  How well he
  remembered it all!  Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to
  him as he looked round.  He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish
  life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait
  was to be hidden away.  How little he had thought, in those dead days,
  of all that was in store for him!
  
  But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
  this.  He had the key, and no one else could enter it.  Beneath its
  purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden,
  and unclean.  What did it matter?  No one could see it.  He himself
  would not see it.  Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his
  soul?  He kept his youth--that was enough.  And, besides, might not
  his nature grow finer, after all?  There was no reason that the future
  should be so full of shame.  Some love might come across his life, and
  purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already
  stirring in spirit and in flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose
  very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm.  Perhaps, some
  day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive
  mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.
  
  No; that was impossible.  Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing
  upon the canvas was growing old.  It might escape the hideousness of
  sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it.  The cheeks would
  become hollow or flaccid.  Yellow crow's feet would creep round the
  fading eyes and make them horrible.  The hair would lose its
  brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross,
  as the mouths of old men are.  There would be the wrinkled throat, the
  cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the
  grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood.  The picture
  had to be concealed.  There was no help for it.
  
  "Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round.
  "I am sorry I kept you so long.  I was thinking of something else."
  
  "Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
  was still gasping for breath.  "Where shall we put it, sir?"
  
  "Oh, anywhere.  Here:  this will do.  I don't want to have it hung up.
  Just lean it against the wall.  Thanks."
  
  "Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
  
  Dorian started.  "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," he said,
  keeping his eye on the man.  He felt ready to leap upon him and fling
  him to the ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that
  concealed the secret of his life.  "I shan't trouble you any more now.
  I am much obliged for your kindness in coming round."
  
  "Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray.  Ever ready to do anything for you,
  sir." And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant,
  who glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough
  uncomely face.  He had never seen any one so marvellous.
  
  When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door
  and put the key in his pocket.  He felt safe now.  No one would ever
  look upon the horrible thing.  No eye but his would ever see his shame.
  
  On reaching the library, he found that it was just after five o'clock
  and that the tea had been already brought up.  On a little table of
  dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady
  Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty professional invalid who had
  spent the preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry,
  and beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn
  and the edges soiled.  A copy of the third edition of _The St. James's
  Gazette_ had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had
  returned.  He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were
  leaving the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
  He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already,
  while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set
  back, and a blank space was visible on the wall.  Perhaps some night he
  might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the
  room.  It was a horrible thing to have a spy in one's house.  He had
  heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some
  servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked
  up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower
  or a shred of crumpled lace.
  
  He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's
  note.  It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper,
  and a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at
  eight-fifteen. He opened _The St. James's_ languidly, and looked through
  it.  A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye.  It drew
  attention to the following paragraph:
  
  
  INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell
  Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of
  Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre,
  Holborn.  A verdict of death by misadventure was returned.
  Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who
  was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of
  Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.
  
  
  He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and
  flung the pieces away.  How ugly it all was!  And how horribly real
  ugliness made things!  He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for
  having sent him the report.  And it was certainly stupid of him to have
  marked it with red pencil.  Victor might have read it.  The man knew
  more than enough English for that.
  
  Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something.  And, yet,
  what did it matter?  What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's
  death?  There was nothing to fear.  Dorian Gray had not killed her.
  
  His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.  What was
  it, he wondered.  He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal
  stand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange
  Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung
  himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves.  After a
  few minutes he became absorbed.  It was the strangest book that he had
  ever read.  It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the
  delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
  show before him.  Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly
  made real to him.  Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
  revealed.
  
  It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being,
  indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who
  spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the
  passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
  own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
  which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
  artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
  as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.  The
  style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid
  and obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical
  expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work
  of some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_.
  There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in
  colour.  The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
  philosophy.  One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
  spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions
  of a modern sinner.  It was a poisonous book.  The heavy odour of
  incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.  The
  mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so
  full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated,
  produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter,
  a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of
  the falling day and creeping shadows.
  
  Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
  through the windows.  He read on by its wan light till he could read no
  more.  Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
  lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed
  the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
  bedside and began to dress for dinner.
  
  It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
  Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
  
  "I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your
  fault.  That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the
  time was going."
  
  "Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
  chair.
  
  "I didn't say I liked it, Harry.  I said it fascinated me.  There is a
  great difference."
  
  "Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry.  And they passed
  into the dining-room.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 10
target: Once Basil is gone, Dorian orders his servant, Victor, to go to a nearby frame-maker and bring back two men. He then calls his housekeeper, Mrs. Leaf, whom he asks for the key to the schoolroom, which sits at the top of the house and has been unused for nearly five years. Dorian covers the portrait with an ornate satin coverlet, reflecting that the sins he commits will mar its beauty just as worms mar the body of a corpse. The men from the frame-maker's arrive, and Dorian employs them to carry the painting to the schoolroom. Here, Dorian muses, the painting will be safe from prying eyes, and if no one can actually see his deterioration, then it bears no importance. After locking the room, he returns to his study and settles down to read a book that Lord Henry has sent him. This yellow book is accompanied by a newspaper account of Sibyl's death. Horrified by the ugliness of the report, Dorian turns to the book, which traces the life of a young Parisian who devotes his life to "all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own. After reading a few pages, Dorian becomes entranced. He finds the work to be "a poisonous book," one that confuses the boundaries between vice and virtue. When Dorian meets Lord Henry for dinner later that evening, he pronounces the work fascinating. Is insincerity such a terrible thing. I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities
feat_summary_analysis: Sibyl's death compels Dorian to make the conscious decision to embrace Lord Henry's philosophy of selfishness and hedonism wholeheartedly. The contrast between Dorian's and Basil's reactions to Sibyl's death demonstrates the degree to which Lord Henry has changed Dorian. Dorian dismisses the need for grief in words that echo Lord Henry's: Sibyl need not be mourned, he proclaims, for she has "passed . . . into the sphere of art." In other words, Dorian thinks of Sibyl's death as he would the death of a character in a novel or painting, and chooses not to be affected emotionally by her passing. This attitude reveals one way in which the novel blurs the distinction between life and art. Dorian himself passes "into the sphere of art" when his portrait reflects the physical manifestations of age and sin. While it is usually paintings that never age and people who do, it is the other way around with Dorian, as he has become more like a work of art than a human. Basil's declaration of his obsession with Dorian is in many ways a defense and justification of homosexual love. In 1895, five years after Dorian Gray was published, Wilde was famously convicted of sodomy for his romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde defended homosexual love as an emotion experienced by some of the world's greatest men. He insisted that it had its roots in ancient Greece and was, therefore, fundamental to the development of Western thought and culture. In his trial, when asked to describe the "love that dare not speak its name," Wilde explained it as  such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. . . . It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.  This testimony is strikingly similar to Dorian's reflection upon the kind of affection that Basil shows him:  t was really love-- had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself.  Basil translates these highly emotional and physical feelings into his art; his act of painting is an expression of his love for Dorian. This romantic devotion to Dorian becomes clear when he admits his reason for not wanting to exhibit the painting: he fears that people will see his "idolatry." Dorian reflects, for a moment, that with this love Basil might have saved him from Lord Henry's influence, but he soon resigns himself to living a life dictated by the pursuit of passion. He devours the mysterious "yellow book" that Lord Henry gives him, which acts almost as a guide for the journey on which he is to travel. Like the protagonist of that novel, Dorian spirals into a world of self-gratification and exotic sensations. Although Wilde, in letters, identified the novel as imaginary, it is based in part on the nineteenth-century French novel A Rebours , by Joris-Karl Huysmans, in which a decadent and wealthy Frenchman indulges himself in a host of bizarre sensory experiences. The yellow book has profound influence on Dorian; one might argue that it leads to his downfall. This downfall occurs not because the book itself is immoral here is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book") but because Dorian allows the book to dominate and determine his actions so completely. It becomes, for Dorian, a doctrine as limiting and stultifying as the common Victorian morals from which he seeks escape. After all, Lord Henry is a great fan of the yellow book, but, to his mind, it is no greater or more important than any other work of notable art. He does not let it dominate his life or determine his actions, which, in turn, allows him to retain the respectability that Dorian soon loses.