feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_7_part_2.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 16
feat_summary_id: chapter 16
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section8/", "summary": "As the coach heads toward the opium dens, Dorian recites to himself Lord Henry's credo: \"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. He decides that if he cannot be forgiven for his sins, he can at least forget them; herein lies the appeal of the opium dens and the oblivion they promise. The coach stops, and Dorian exits. He enters a squalid den and finds a youth named Adrian Singleton, whom rumor says Dorian corrupted. As Dorian prepares to leave, a woman addresses him as \"the devil's bargain\" and \"Prince Charming. At these words, a sailor leaps to his feet and follows Dorian to the street. As he walks along, Dorian wonders whether he should feel guilty for the impact he has had on Adrian Singleton's life. His meditation is cut short, however, when he is seized from behind and held at gunpoint. Facing him is James Vane, Sibyl's brother, who has been tracking Dorian for years in hopes of avenging Sibyl's death. James does not know Dorian's name, but the reference to \"Prince Charming\" makes him decide that it must be the man who wronged his sister. Dorian points out, however, that the man James seeks was in love with Sibyl eighteen years ago; since he, Dorian, has the face of a twenty-year-old man, he cannot possibly be the man who wronged Sibyl. James releases him and makes his way back to the opium den. The old woman tells James that Dorian has been coming there for eighteen years and that his face has never aged a day in all that time. Furious at having let his prey escape, James resolves to hunt him down again", "analysis": "Chapters Fifteeen-Sixteen When Lord Henry alludes to the \"in de siecle\"  in Chapter Fifteen, he refers more to the sensibilities that flourished in the 1890s than the chronological time period. In this decade, many people in continental Europe and England felt an unshakable sense of discontent. The values that once seemed to structure life and give it meaning were apparently lost. Two main reasons for this disenchantment were linked to the public functions of art and morality, which, in Victorian England, seemed inextricably connected. Art, it was thought, should function as a moral barometer; to the minds of many, this dictum left room for only the most restrictive morals and the most unimaginative art. The term \"fin de siecle\" therefore came to describe a mode of thinking that sought to escape this disenchantment and restore beauty to art and reshape  public understandings of morality. In a way, though Dorian lives a life very much in tune with fin-de-siecle thinking, he rejects Victorian morals in favor of self-determined ethics based on pleasure and experience, and he retains--and is tortured by--a very Victorian mind-set. Indeed, by viewing the painting of himself as \"the most magical of mirrors,\" Dorian disavows the tenets of aestheticism that demand that art be completely freed of its connection to morality. The picture becomes the gauge by which Dorian measures his downfall and serves as a constant reminder of the sins that plague his conscience. If we understand Dorian as a victim of this Victorian circumstance, we can read his drastic course of action in a more sympathetic light. Indeed, by Chapter Sixteen, he is a man desperate to forget the sins for which he believes he can never be forgiven. As he sinks into the sordidness of the London docks and their opium dens, he reflects: Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of Song.  Here, Dorian's thoughts echo French poets like Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, who believed that the description of intense experience was the key to true beauty, even  when the experience itself was something sordid, ugly, or grotesque. Indeed, in this trip to the opium den, Dorian intends to do nothing less than \"cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.\" Of course, what Dorian finds in the opium den has a far less curative effect than he hopes. The presence of Adrian Singleton, a young man whose downfall and subsequent drug addiction is at least partially Dorian's fault, pains Dorian's conscience and makes it impossible for him to \"escape from himself.\" The reintroduction of James Vane makes this idea of escape quite literal. The avenging brother is, admittedly, a rather weak  plot device that Wilde added to his 1891 revision of the novel. If Dorian fears and wishes to escape from himself, we can consider James the physical incarnation of that fear: James exists to precipitate the troubled Dorian's final breakdown."}
text: 
  A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly
  in the dripping mist.  The public-houses were just closing, and dim men
  and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors.  From
  some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter.  In others,
  drunkards brawled and screamed.
  
  Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian
  Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and
  now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said
  to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the
  senses, and the senses by means of the soul."  Yes, that was the
  secret.  He had often tried it, and would try it again now.  There were
  opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the
  memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were
  new.
  
  The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull.  From time to time a
  huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it.  The
  gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.  Once the
  man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile.  A steam rose from
  the horse as it splashed up the puddles.  The sidewindows of the hansom
  were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.
  
  "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of
  the soul!"  How the words rang in his ears!  His soul, certainly, was
  sick to death.  Was it true that the senses could cure it?  Innocent
  blood had been spilled.  What could atone for that?  Ah! for that there
  was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness
  was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing
  out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.
  Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done?  Who
  had made him a judge over others?  He had said things that were
  dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.
  
  On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each
  step.  He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster.
  The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him.  His throat burned
  and his delicate hands twitched nervously together.  He struck at the
  horse madly with his stick.  The driver laughed and whipped up.  He
  laughed in answer, and the man was silent.
  
  The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
  sprawling spider.  The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist
  thickened, he felt afraid.
  
  Then they passed by lonely brickfields.  The fog was lighter here, and
  he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange,
  fanlike tongues of fire.  A dog barked as they went by, and far away in
  the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed.  The horse stumbled in a
  rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.
  
  After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over
  rough-paven streets.  Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
  fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind.  He
  watched them curiously.  They moved like monstrous marionettes and made
  gestures like live things.  He hated them.  A dull rage was in his
  heart.  As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from
  an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred
  yards.  The driver beat at them with his whip.
  
  It is said that passion makes one think in a circle.  Certainly with
  hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
  those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
  them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
  intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
  still have dominated his temper.  From cell to cell of his brain crept
  the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all
  man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre.
  Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real,
  became dear to him now for that very reason.  Ugliness was the one
  reality.  The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of
  disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more
  vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious
  shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song.  They were what he needed
  for forgetfulness.  In three days he would be free.
  
  Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane.  Over
  the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black
  masts of ships.  Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the
  yards.
  
  "Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
  trap.
  
  Dorian started and peered round.  "This will do," he answered, and
  having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had
  promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay.  Here and
  there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman.  The
  light shook and splintered in the puddles.  A red glare came from an
  outward-bound steamer that was coaling.  The slimy pavement looked like
  a wet mackintosh.
  
  He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he
  was being followed.  In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small
  shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories.  In one of
  the top-windows stood a lamp.  He stopped and gave a peculiar knock.
  
  After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being
  unhooked.  The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a
  word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the
  shadow as he passed.  At the end of the hall hung a tattered green
  curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him
  in from the street.  He dragged it aside and entered a long low room
  which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill
  flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that
  faced them, were ranged round the walls.  Greasy reflectors of ribbed
  tin backed them, making quivering disks of light.  The floor was
  covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud,
  and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor.  Some Malays were
  crouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and
  showing their white teeth as they chattered.  In one corner, with his
  head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the
  tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side stood two
  haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his
  coat with an expression of disgust.  "He thinks he's got red ants on
  him," laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by.  The man looked at her
  in terror and began to whimper.
  
  At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a
  darkened chamber.  As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
  heavy odour of opium met him.  He heaved a deep breath, and his
  nostrils quivered with pleasure.  When he entered, a young man with
  smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin
  pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.
  
  "You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.
  
  "Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly.  "None of the chaps
  will speak to me now."
  
  "I thought you had left England."
  
  "Darlington is not going to do anything.  My brother paid the bill at
  last.  George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added
  with a sigh.  "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends.
  I think I have had too many friends."
  
  Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
  fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses.  The twisted limbs, the
  gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him.  He knew in
  what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were
  teaching them the secret of some new joy.  They were better off than he
  was.  He was prisoned in thought.  Memory, like a horrible malady, was
  eating his soul away.  From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of
  Basil Hallward looking at him.  Yet he felt he could not stay.  The
  presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him.  He wanted to be where no
  one would know who he was.  He wanted to escape from himself.
  
  "I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause.
  
  "On the wharf?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "That mad-cat is sure to be there.  They won't have her in this place
  now."
  
  Dorian shrugged his shoulders.  "I am sick of women who love one.
  Women who hate one are much more interesting.  Besides, the stuff is
  better."
  
  "Much the same."
  
  "I like it better.  Come and have something to drink.  I must have
  something."
  
  "I don't want anything," murmured the young man.
  
  "Never mind."
  
  Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar.  A
  half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
  greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
  them.  The women sidled up and began to chatter.  Dorian turned his
  back on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.
  
  A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
  the women.  "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.
  
  "For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot on
  the ground.  "What do you want?  Money?  Here it is.  Don't ever talk
  to me again."
  
  Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, then
  flickered out and left them dull and glazed.  She tossed her head and
  raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers.  Her companion
  watched her enviously.
  
  "It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton.  "I don't care to go back.
  What does it matter?  I am quite happy here."
  
  "You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian,
  after a pause.
  
  "Perhaps."
  
  "Good night, then."
  
  "Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping
  his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
  
  Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face.  As he drew
  the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the
  woman who had taken his money.  "There goes the devil's bargain!" she
  hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
  
  "Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."
  
  She snapped her fingers.  "Prince Charming is what you like to be
  called, ain't it?" she yelled after him.
  
  The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
  round.  The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear.  He
  rushed out as if in pursuit.
  
  Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain.  His
  meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered
  if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as
  Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult.  He bit his
  lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad.  Yet, after all, what did
  it matter to him?  One's days were too brief to take the burden of
  another's errors on one's shoulders.  Each man lived his own life and
  paid his own price for living it.  The only pity was one had to pay so
  often for a single fault.  One had to pay over and over again, indeed.
  In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
  
  There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or
  for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of
  the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
  impulses.  Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their
  will.  They move to their terrible end as automatons move.  Choice is
  taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at
  all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its
  charm.  For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are
  sins of disobedience.  When that high spirit, that morning star of
  evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
  
  Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
  rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but
  as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a
  short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
  suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself,
  he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his
  throat.
  
  He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the
  tightening fingers away.  In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
  and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head,
  and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.
  
  "What do you want?" he gasped.
  
  "Keep quiet," said the man.  "If you stir, I shoot you."
  
  "You are mad.  What have I done to you?"
  
  "You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl Vane
  was my sister.  She killed herself.  I know it.  Her death is at your
  door.  I swore I would kill you in return.  For years I have sought
  you.  I had no clue, no trace.  The two people who could have described
  you were dead.  I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call
  you.  I heard it to-night by chance.  Make your peace with God, for
  to-night you are going to die."
  
  Dorian Gray grew sick with fear.  "I never knew her," he stammered.  "I
  never heard of her.  You are mad."
  
  "You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you
  are going to die."  There was a horrible moment.  Dorian did not know
  what to say or do.  "Down on your knees!" growled the man.  "I give you
  one minute to make your peace--no more.  I go on board to-night for
  India, and I must do my job first.  One minute.  That's all."
  
  Dorian's arms fell to his side.  Paralysed with terror, he did not know
  what to do.  Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain.  "Stop," he
  cried.  "How long ago is it since your sister died?  Quick, tell me!"
  
  "Eighteen years," said the man.  "Why do you ask me?  What do years
  matter?"
  
  "Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his
  voice.  "Eighteen years!  Set me under the lamp and look at my face!"
  
  James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
  Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.
  
  Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him
  the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face
  of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
  unstained purity of youth.  He seemed little more than a lad of twenty
  summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been
  when they had parted so many years ago.  It was obvious that this was
  not the man who had destroyed her life.
  
  He loosened his hold and reeled back.  "My God! my God!" he cried, "and
  I would have murdered you!"
  
  Dorian Gray drew a long breath.  "You have been on the brink of
  committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly.
  "Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
  hands."
  
  "Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane.  "I was deceived.  A chance
  word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."
  
  "You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into
  trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the
  street.
  
  James Vane stood on the pavement in horror.  He was trembling from head
  to foot.  After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping
  along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him
  with stealthy footsteps.  He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked
  round with a start.  It was one of the women who had been drinking at
  the bar.
  
  "Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite
  close to his.  "I knew you were following him when you rushed out from
  Daly's. You fool!  You should have killed him.  He has lots of money,
  and he's as bad as bad."
  
  "He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no man's
  money.  I want a man's life.  The man whose life I want must be nearly
  forty now.  This one is little more than a boy.  Thank God, I have not
  got his blood upon my hands."
  
  The woman gave a bitter laugh.  "Little more than a boy!" she sneered.
  "Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
  what I am."
  
  "You lie!" cried James Vane.
  
  She raised her hand up to heaven.  "Before God I am telling the truth,"
  she cried.
  
  "Before God?"
  
  "Strike me dumb if it ain't so.  He is the worst one that comes here.
  They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.  It's nigh
  on eighteen years since I met him.  He hasn't changed much since then.
  I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer.
  
  "You swear this?"
  
  "I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth.  "But don't give
  me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him.  Let me have some
  money for my night's lodging."
  
  He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street,
  but Dorian Gray had disappeared.  When he looked back, the woman had
  vanished also.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 16
target: As the coach heads toward the opium dens, Dorian recites to himself Lord Henry's credo: "To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. He decides that if he cannot be forgiven for his sins, he can at least forget them; herein lies the appeal of the opium dens and the oblivion they promise. The coach stops, and Dorian exits. He enters a squalid den and finds a youth named Adrian Singleton, whom rumor says Dorian corrupted. As Dorian prepares to leave, a woman addresses him as "the devil's bargain" and "Prince Charming. At these words, a sailor leaps to his feet and follows Dorian to the street. As he walks along, Dorian wonders whether he should feel guilty for the impact he has had on Adrian Singleton's life. His meditation is cut short, however, when he is seized from behind and held at gunpoint. Facing him is James Vane, Sibyl's brother, who has been tracking Dorian for years in hopes of avenging Sibyl's death. James does not know Dorian's name, but the reference to "Prince Charming" makes him decide that it must be the man who wronged his sister. Dorian points out, however, that the man James seeks was in love with Sibyl eighteen years ago; since he, Dorian, has the face of a twenty-year-old man, he cannot possibly be the man who wronged Sibyl. James releases him and makes his way back to the opium den. The old woman tells James that Dorian has been coming there for eighteen years and that his face has never aged a day in all that time. Furious at having let his prey escape, James resolves to hunt him down again
feat_summary_analysis: Chapters Fifteeen-Sixteen When Lord Henry alludes to the "in de siecle"  in Chapter Fifteen, he refers more to the sensibilities that flourished in the 1890s than the chronological time period. In this decade, many people in continental Europe and England felt an unshakable sense of discontent. The values that once seemed to structure life and give it meaning were apparently lost. Two main reasons for this disenchantment were linked to the public functions of art and morality, which, in Victorian England, seemed inextricably connected. Art, it was thought, should function as a moral barometer; to the minds of many, this dictum left room for only the most restrictive morals and the most unimaginative art. The term "fin de siecle" therefore came to describe a mode of thinking that sought to escape this disenchantment and restore beauty to art and reshape  public understandings of morality. In a way, though Dorian lives a life very much in tune with fin-de-siecle thinking, he rejects Victorian morals in favor of self-determined ethics based on pleasure and experience, and he retains--and is tortured by--a very Victorian mind-set. Indeed, by viewing the painting of himself as "the most magical of mirrors," Dorian disavows the tenets of aestheticism that demand that art be completely freed of its connection to morality. The picture becomes the gauge by which Dorian measures his downfall and serves as a constant reminder of the sins that plague his conscience. If we understand Dorian as a victim of this Victorian circumstance, we can read his drastic course of action in a more sympathetic light. Indeed, by Chapter Sixteen, he is a man desperate to forget the sins for which he believes he can never be forgiven. As he sinks into the sordidness of the London docks and their opium dens, he reflects: Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of Song.  Here, Dorian's thoughts echo French poets like Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, who believed that the description of intense experience was the key to true beauty, even  when the experience itself was something sordid, ugly, or grotesque. Indeed, in this trip to the opium den, Dorian intends to do nothing less than "cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Of course, what Dorian finds in the opium den has a far less curative effect than he hopes. The presence of Adrian Singleton, a young man whose downfall and subsequent drug addiction is at least partially Dorian's fault, pains Dorian's conscience and makes it impossible for him to "escape from himself." The reintroduction of James Vane makes this idea of escape quite literal. The avenging brother is, admittedly, a rather weak  plot device that Wilde added to his 1891 revision of the novel. If Dorian fears and wishes to escape from himself, we can consider James the physical incarnation of that fear: James exists to precipitate the troubled Dorian's final breakdown.