feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_0_part_2.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 2
feat_summary_id: chapter 2
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210228142327/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/section1/", "summary": "Dorian Gray proves to be every bit as a handsome as his portrait. Basil introduces him to Lord Henry, and Dorian begs Lord Henry to stay and talk to him while he sits for Basil. Basil warns Dorian that Lord Henry is a bad influence, and Dorian seems intrigued by this idea. Lord Henry agrees to stay and, while Basil puts the finishing touches on the portrait, discusses his personal philosophy, which holds that \"the highest of all duties the duty that one owes to one's self. While Basil continues to work, Lord Henry escorts Dorian into the garden, where he praises Dorian's youth and beauty and warns him how surely and quickly those qualities will fade. He urges Dorian to live life to its fullest, to spend his time \"always searching for new sensations\" rather than devoting himself to \"common\" or \"vulgar\" pastimes. Basil calls the men inside, and Dorian sits for another quarter of an hour until the portrait is complete. It is a thing of remarkable beauty--\"the finest portrait of modern times,\" Lord Henry tells Basil--but looking at it makes Dorian unhappy. Remembering Lord Henry's warning about the advance of age, he reflects that his portrait will remain young even as he himself grows old and wrinkled. He curses this fate and pledges his soul \"f it were only the other way. Basil tries to comfort the young man, but Dorian pushes him away. Declaring that he will not allow the painting to ruin their friendship, Basil makes a move to destroy it. Dorian stops him, saying that he loves the painting, and a relieved Basil promises to give it to him as a gift. Dorian and Lord Henry depart after Dorian promises, despite Basil's objections, to go to the theater with Lord Henry later that evening", "analysis": "The Preface-Chapter Two The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is a collection of epigrams that aptly sums up the philosophical tenets of the artistic and philosophical movement known as aestheticism. Aestheticism, which found its footing in Europe in the early nineteenth century, proposed that art need not serve moral, political, or otherwise didactic ends. Whereas the romantic movement of the early and mid-nineteenth century viewed art as a product of the human creative impulse that could be used to learn more about humankind and the world, the aesthetic movement denied that art must necessarily be an instructive force in order to be valuable. Instead, the aestheticists believed, art should be valuable in and of itself--art for art's sake. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Walter Pater, an English essayist and critic, suggested that life itself should be lived in the spirit of art. His views, especially those presented in a collection of essays called The Renaissance, had a profound impact on the English poets of the 1890s, most notably Oscar Wilde. Aestheticism flourished partly as a reaction against the materialism of the burgeoning middle class, assumed to be composed of philistines  who responded to art in a generally unrefined manner. In this climate, the artist could assert him- or herself as a remarkable and rarefied being, one leading the search for beauty in an age marked by shameful class inequality, social hypocrisy, and bourgeois complacency. No one latched onto this attitude more boldly, or with more flair, than Oscar Wilde. His determination to live a life of beauty and to mold his life into a work of art is reflected in the beliefs and actions of several characters in Wilde's only novel.  The Picture of Dorian Gray has often been compared to the famous German legend of Faust, immortalized in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play Doctor Faustus and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's nineteenth-century poem Faust. The legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities. Although Dorian Gray never contracts with the devil, his sacrifice is similar: he trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth. For its overtones of supernaturalism, its refusal to satisfy popular morality, and its portrayal of homoerotic culture, The Picture of Dorian Gray was met with harsh criticism. Many considered the novel dangerously subversive, one offended critic calling it \"a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.\" The fear of a bad--or good--influence is, in fact, one of the novel's primary concerns. As a work that sets forth a philosophy of aestheticism, the novel questions the degree and kind of influence a work of art can have over an individual. Furthermore, since the novel conceives of art as including a well-lived life, it is also interested in the kind of influence one person can have over another. After all, the artful Lord Henry himself has as profound an effect upon Dorian's life as Basil's painting does. While Lord Henry exercises influence over other characters primarily through his skillful use of language, it is Dorian's beauty that seduces the characters with whom he associates. Basil, a serious artist and rather dull moralist, admits that Dorian has had \"ome subtle influence\" over him; it is this influence that Basil is certain that his painting reveals. As he confides to Lord Henry, \"I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry.\" Ultimately, however, Lord Henry's brilliant speech is a much more influential force than aesthetic beauty. His witty and biting epigrams threaten to seduce not only the impressionable young Dorian but the reader as well. Lord Henry's ironic speech cuts through social convention and hypocrisy to reveal unexpected, unpleasant truths. The characters whose lifestyles Lord Henry criticizes resist his extreme theories. Basil's resistance to Lord Henry's argument that scandal is a function of class typifies the reactions of the characters whom Lord Henry criticizes; after all, their position and comfort depend upon the hypocrisies he tends to expose. To some degree, every character in the novel is seduced by Lord Henry's philosophies, Dorian Gray more so than anyone else. In these opening chapters, Dorian emerges as an incredibly impressionable young man, someone who Basil fears is open to the \"influence\" of Lord Henry, which will \"spoil\" him. Basil's fear is well founded, as before the end of his first conversation with Lord Henry, Dorian is \"dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him.\""}
text: 
  As they entered they saw Dorian Gray.  He was seated at the piano, with
  his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's
  "Forest Scenes."  "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried.  "I want
  to learn them.  They are perfectly charming."
  
  "That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian."
  
  "Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of
  myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a
  wilful, petulant manner.  When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
  blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up.  "I beg your
  pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you."
  
  "This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine.  I
  have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you
  have spoiled everything."
  
  "You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said Lord
  Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand.  "My aunt has often
  spoken to me about you.  You are one of her favourites, and, I am
  afraid, one of her victims also."
  
  "I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian with a
  funny look of penitence.  "I promised to go to a club in Whitechapel
  with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it.  We were to
  have played a duet together--three duets, I believe.  I don't know what
  she will say to me.  I am far too frightened to call."
  
  "Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt.  She is quite devoted to you.
  And I don't think it really matters about your not being there.  The
  audience probably thought it was a duet.  When Aunt Agatha sits down to
  the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people."
  
  "That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian,
  laughing.
  
  Lord Henry looked at him.  Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,
  with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp
  gold hair.  There was something in his face that made one trust him at
  once.  All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's
  passionate purity.  One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from
  the world.  No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.
  
  "You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray--far too
  charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened
  his cigarette-case.
  
  The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes
  ready.  He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last
  remark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said,
  "Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think it
  awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away?"
  
  Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray.  "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?"
  he asked.
  
  "Oh, please don't, Lord Henry.  I see that Basil is in one of his sulky
  moods, and I can't bear him when he sulks.  Besides, I want you to tell
  me why I should not go in for philanthropy."
  
  "I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray.  It is so tedious a
  subject that one would have to talk seriously about it.  But I
  certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop.  You
  don't really mind, Basil, do you?  You have often told me that you
  liked your sitters to have some one to chat to."
  
  Hallward bit his lip.  "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
  Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."
  
  Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves.  "You are very pressing, Basil,
  but I am afraid I must go.  I have promised to meet a man at the
  Orleans.  Good-bye, Mr. Gray.  Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon
  Street.  I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when
  you are coming.  I should be sorry to miss you."
  
  "Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I shall go,
  too.  You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is
  horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant.  Ask
  him to stay.  I insist upon it."
  
  "Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward,
  gazing intently at his picture.  "It is quite true, I never talk when I
  am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious
  for my unfortunate sitters.  I beg you to stay."
  
  "But what about my man at the Orleans?"
  
  The painter laughed.  "I don't think there will be any difficulty about
  that.  Sit down again, Harry.  And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,
  and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry
  says.  He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the
  single exception of myself."
  
  Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek
  martyr, and made a little _moue_ of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he
  had rather taken a fancy.  He was so unlike Basil.  They made a
  delightful contrast.  And he had such a beautiful voice.  After a few
  moments he said to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord
  Henry?  As bad as Basil says?"
  
  "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray.  All influence
  is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul.  He does
  not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.  His
  virtues are not real to him.  His sins, if there are such things as
  sins, are borrowed.  He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an
  actor of a part that has not been written for him.  The aim of life is
  self-development. To realize 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.  Of course, they are charitable.  They feed the hungry and
  clothe the beggar.  But their own souls starve, and are naked.  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.  And
  yet--"
  
  "Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
  boy," said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look
  had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.
  
  "And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with
  that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of
  him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one man
  were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to
  every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I
  believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we
  would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the
  Hellenic ideal--to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it
  may be.  But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself.  The
  mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial
  that mars our lives.  We are punished for our refusals.  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 a pleasure,
  or the luxury of a regret.  The only way to get rid of a 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.  It has been said that
  the great events of the world take place in the brain.  It is in the
  brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place
  also.  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!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me.  I don't know
  what to say.  There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it.  Don't
  speak.  Let me think.  Or, rather, let me try not to think."
  
  For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and
  eyes strangely bright.  He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh
  influences were at work within him.  Yet they seemed to him to have
  come really from himself.  The few words that Basil's friend had said
  to him--words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in
  them--had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,
  but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.
  
  Music had stirred him like that.  Music had troubled him many times.
  But music was not articulate.  It was not a new world, but rather
  another chaos, that it created in us.  Words!  Mere words!  How
  terrible they were!  How clear, and vivid, and cruel!  One could not
  escape from them.  And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!  They
  seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to
  have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.  Mere
  words!  Was there anything so real as words?
  
  Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.
  He understood them now.  Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him.
  It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire.  Why had he not
  known it?
  
  With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him.  He knew the precise
  psychological moment when to say nothing.  He felt intensely
  interested.  He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had
  produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen,
  a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he
  wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience.
  He had merely shot an arrow into the air.  Had it hit the mark?  How
  fascinating the lad was!
  
  Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had
  the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes
  only from strength.  He was unconscious of the silence.
  
  "Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray suddenly.  "I must
  go out and sit in the garden.  The air is stifling here."
  
  "My dear fellow, I am so sorry.  When I am painting, I can't think of
  anything else.  But you never sat better.  You were perfectly still.
  And I have caught the effect I wanted--the half-parted lips and the
  bright look in the eyes.  I don't know what Harry has been saying to
  you, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression.
  I suppose he has been paying you compliments.  You mustn't believe a
  word that he says."
  
  "He has certainly not been paying me compliments.  Perhaps that is the
  reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."
  
  "You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his
  dreamy languorous eyes.  "I will go out to the garden with you.  It is
  horribly hot in the studio.  Basil, let us have something iced to
  drink, something with strawberries in it."
  
  "Certainly, Harry.  Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will
  tell him what you want.  I have got to work up this background, so I
  will join you later on.  Don't keep Dorian too long.  I have never been
  in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my
  masterpiece.  It is my masterpiece as it stands."
  
  Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his
  face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their
  perfume as if it had been wine.  He came close to him and put his hand
  upon his shoulder.  "You are quite right to do that," he murmured.
  "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
  senses but the soul."
  
  The lad started and drew back.  He was bareheaded, and the leaves had
  tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads.
  There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
  suddenly awakened.  His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some
  hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.
  
  "Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of
  life--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
  of the soul.  You are a wonderful creation.  You know more than you
  think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
  
  Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away.  He could not help liking
  the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him.  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, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm.  They
  moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their
  own.  But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.  Why had
  it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?  He had known
  Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never
  altered him.  Suddenly there had come some one across his life who
  seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery.  And, yet, what was
  there to be afraid of?  He was not a schoolboy or a girl.  It was
  absurd to be frightened.
  
  "Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry.  "Parker has brought
  out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will be
  quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again.  You really must
  not allow yourself to become sunburnt.  It would be unbecoming."
  
  "What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on
  the seat at the end of the garden.
  
  "It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
  worth having."
  
  "I don't feel that, Lord Henry."
  
  "No, you don't feel it now.  Some day, when you are old and wrinkled
  and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and
  passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you
  will feel it terribly.  Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.
  Will it always be so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr.
  Gray.  Don't frown.  You have.  And beauty is a form of genius--is
  higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.  It is of the
  great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the
  reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon.  It
  cannot be questioned.  It has its divine right of sovereignty.  It
  makes princes of those who have it.  You smile?  Ah! when you have lost
  it you won't smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only
  superficial.  That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as
  thought is.  To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders.  It is only
  shallow people who do not judge by appearances.  The true mystery of
  the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the
  gods have been good to you.  But what the gods give they quickly take
  away.  You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly,
  and fully.  When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then
  you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or
  have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of
  your past will make more bitter than defeats.  Every month as it wanes
  brings you nearer to something dreadful.  Time is jealous of you, and
  wars against your lilies and your roses.  You will become sallow, and
  hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.  You will suffer horribly.... Ah!
  realize your youth while you have it.  Don't squander the gold of your
  days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,
  or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar.
  These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.  Live!  Live
  the wonderful life that is in you!  Let nothing be lost upon you.  Be
  always searching for new sensations.  Be afraid of nothing.... A new
  Hedonism--that is what our century wants.  You might be its visible
  symbol.  With your personality there is nothing you could not do.  The
  world belongs to you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that
  you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you really
  might be.  There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must
  tell you something about yourself.  I thought how tragic it would be if
  you were wasted.  For there is such a little time that your youth will
  last--such a little time.  The common hill-flowers wither, but they
  blossom again.  The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now.
  In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after
  year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.  But we
  never get back our youth.  The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty
  becomes sluggish.  Our limbs fail, our senses rot.  We degenerate into
  hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were
  too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the
  courage to yield to.  Youth!  Youth!  There is absolutely nothing in
  the world but youth!"
  
  Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering.  The spray of lilac fell
  from his hand upon the gravel.  A furry bee came and buzzed round it
  for a moment.  Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated
  globe of the tiny blossoms.  He watched it with that strange interest
  in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import
  make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we
  cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays
  sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.  After a time the
  bee flew away.  He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian
  convolvulus.  The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to
  and fro.
  
  Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made
  staccato signs for them to come in.  They turned to each other and
  smiled.
  
  "I am waiting," he cried.  "Do come in.  The light is quite perfect,
  and you can bring your drinks."
  
  They rose up and sauntered down the walk together.  Two green-and-white
  butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of
  the garden a thrush began to sing.
  
  "You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at
  him.
  
  "Yes, I am glad now.  I wonder shall I always be glad?"
  
  "Always!  That is a dreadful word.  It makes me shudder when I hear it.
  Women are so fond of using it.  They spoil every romance by trying to
  make it last for ever.  It is a meaningless word, too.  The only
  difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice
  lasts a little longer."
  
  As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's
  arm.  "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured,
  flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and
  resumed his pose.
  
  Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him.
  The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that
  broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back
  to look at his work from a distance.  In the slanting beams that
  streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden.  The
  heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.
  
  After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for
  a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,
  biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning.  "It is quite
  finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in
  long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.
  
  Lord Henry came over and examined the picture.  It was certainly a
  wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
  
  "My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said.  "It is the
  finest portrait of modern times.  Mr. Gray, come over and look at
  yourself."
  
  The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.
  
  "Is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.
  
  "Quite finished," said the painter.  "And you have sat splendidly
  to-day. I am awfully obliged to you."
  
  "That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry.  "Isn't it, Mr.
  Gray?"
  
  Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture
  and turned towards it.  When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks
  flushed for a moment with pleasure.  A look of joy came into his eyes,
  as if he had recognized himself for the first time.  He stood there
  motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to
  him, but not catching the meaning of his words.  The sense of his own
  beauty came on him like a revelation.  He had never felt it before.
  Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the
  charming exaggeration of friendship.  He had listened to them, laughed
  at them, forgotten them.  They had not influenced his nature.  Then had
  come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his
  terrible warning of its brevity.  That had stirred him at the time, and
  now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full
  reality of the description flashed across him.  Yes, there would be a
  day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and
  colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed.  The scarlet
  would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair.  The
  life that was to make his soul would mar his body.  He would become
  dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.
  
  As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a
  knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver.  His eyes
  deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears.  He felt
  as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.
  
  "Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the
  lad's silence, not understanding what it meant.
  
  "Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry.  "Who wouldn't like it?  It
  is one of the greatest things in modern art.  I will give you anything
  you like to ask for it.  I must have it."
  
  "It is not my property, Harry."
  
  "Whose property is it?"
  
  "Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.
  
  "He is a very lucky fellow."
  
  "How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon
  his own portrait.  "How sad it is!  I shall grow old, and horrible, and
  dreadful.  But this picture will remain always young.  It will never be
  older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other
  way!  If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was
  to grow old!  For that--for that--I would give everything!  Yes, there
  is nothing in the whole world I would not give!  I would give my soul
  for that!"
  
  "You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord
  Henry, laughing.  "It would be rather hard lines on your work."
  
  "I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward.
  
  Dorian Gray turned and looked at him.  "I believe you would, Basil.
  You like your art better than your friends.  I am no more to you than a
  green bronze figure.  Hardly as much, I dare say."
  
  The painter stared in amazement.  It was so unlike Dorian to speak like
  that.  What had happened?  He seemed quite angry.  His face was flushed
  and his cheeks burning.
  
  "Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your
  silver Faun.  You will like them always.  How long will you like me?
  Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.  I know, now, that when one
  loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything.
  Your picture has taught me that.  Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right.
  Youth is the only thing worth having.  When I find that I am growing
  old, I shall kill myself."
  
  Hallward turned pale and caught his hand.  "Dorian!  Dorian!" he cried,
  "don't talk like that.  I have never had such a friend as you, and I
  shall never have such another.  You are not jealous of material things,
  are you?--you who are finer than any of them!"
  
  "I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.  I am jealous of
  the portrait you have painted of me.  Why should it keep what I must
  lose?  Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives
  something to it.  Oh, if it were only the other way!  If the picture
  could change, and I could be always what I am now!  Why did you paint
  it?  It will mock me some day--mock me horribly!"  The hot tears welled
  into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the
  divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.
  
  "This is your doing, Harry," said the painter bitterly.
  
  Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders.  "It is the real Dorian Gray--that
  is all."
  
  "It is not."
  
  "If it is not, what have I to do with it?"
  
  "You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered.
  
  "I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.
  
  "Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between
  you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
  done, and I will destroy it.  What is it but canvas and colour?  I will
  not let it come across our three lives and mar them."
  
  Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid
  face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal
  painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window.  What
  was he doing there?  His fingers were straying about among the litter
  of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something.  Yes, it was for
  the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel.  He had
  found it at last.  He was going to rip up the canvas.
  
  With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to
  Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of
  the studio.  "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried.  "It would be murder!"
  
  "I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter
  coldly when he had recovered from his surprise.  "I never thought you
  would."
  
  "Appreciate it?  I am in love with it, Basil.  It is part of myself.  I
  feel that."
  
  "Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and
  sent home.  Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked
  across the room and rang the bell for tea.  "You will have tea, of
  course, Dorian?  And so will you, Harry?  Or do you object to such
  simple pleasures?"
  
  "I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry.  "They are the last refuge
  of the complex.  But I don't like scenes, except on the stage.  What
  absurd fellows you are, both of you!  I wonder who it was defined man
  as a rational animal.  It was the most premature definition ever given.
  Man is many things, but he is not rational.  I am glad he is not, after
  all--though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture.  You
  had much better let me have it, Basil.  This silly boy doesn't really
  want it, and I really do."
  
  "If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!"
  cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy."
  
  "You know the picture is yours, Dorian.  I gave it to you before it
  existed."
  
  "And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you
  don't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young."
  
  "I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry."
  
  "Ah! this morning!  You have lived since then."
  
  There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden
  tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table.  There was a
  rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn.
  Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page.  Dorian Gray
  went over and poured out the tea.  The two men sauntered languidly to
  the table and examined what was under the covers.
  
  "Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry.  "There is sure
  to be something on, somewhere.  I have promised to dine at White's, but
  it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I
  am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a
  subsequent engagement.  I think that would be a rather nice excuse:  it
  would have all the surprise of candour."
  
  "It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward.
  "And, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
  
  "Yes," answered Lord Henry dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth
  century is detestable.  It is so sombre, so depressing.  Sin is the
  only real colour-element left in modern life."
  
  "You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry."
  
  "Before which Dorian?  The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the
  one in the picture?"
  
  "Before either."
  
  "I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the
  lad.
  
  "Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?"
  
  "I can't, really.  I would sooner not.  I have a lot of work to do."
  
  "Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."
  
  "I should like that awfully."
  
  The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture.
  "I shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.
  
  "Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling
  across to him.  "Am I really like that?"
  
  "Yes; you are just like that."
  
  "How wonderful, Basil!"
  
  "At least you are like it in appearance.  But it will never alter,"
  sighed Hallward.  "That is something."
  
  "What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry.  "Why,
  even in love it is purely a question for physiology.  It has nothing to
  do with our own will.  Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old
  men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."
  
  "Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward.  "Stop and
  dine with me."
  
  "I can't, Basil."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him."
  
  "He won't like you the better for keeping your promises.  He always
  breaks his own.  I beg you not to go."
  
  Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
  
  "I entreat you."
  
  The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them
  from the tea-table with an amused smile.
  
  "I must go, Basil," he answered.
  
  "Very well," said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup on
  the tray.  "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had
  better lose no time.  Good-bye, Harry.  Good-bye, Dorian.  Come and see
  me soon.  Come to-morrow."
  
  "Certainly."
  
  "You won't forget?"
  
  "No, of course not," cried Dorian.
  
  "And ... Harry!"
  
  "Yes, Basil?"
  
  "Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning."
  
  "I have forgotten it."
  
  "I trust you."
  
  "I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing.  "Come, Mr.
  Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.
  Good-bye, Basil.  It has been a most interesting afternoon."
  
  As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a
  sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 2
target: Dorian Gray proves to be every bit as a handsome as his portrait. Basil introduces him to Lord Henry, and Dorian begs Lord Henry to stay and talk to him while he sits for Basil. Basil warns Dorian that Lord Henry is a bad influence, and Dorian seems intrigued by this idea. Lord Henry agrees to stay and, while Basil puts the finishing touches on the portrait, discusses his personal philosophy, which holds that "the highest of all duties the duty that one owes to one's self. While Basil continues to work, Lord Henry escorts Dorian into the garden, where he praises Dorian's youth and beauty and warns him how surely and quickly those qualities will fade. He urges Dorian to live life to its fullest, to spend his time "always searching for new sensations" rather than devoting himself to "common" or "vulgar" pastimes. Basil calls the men inside, and Dorian sits for another quarter of an hour until the portrait is complete. It is a thing of remarkable beauty--"the finest portrait of modern times," Lord Henry tells Basil--but looking at it makes Dorian unhappy. Remembering Lord Henry's warning about the advance of age, he reflects that his portrait will remain young even as he himself grows old and wrinkled. He curses this fate and pledges his soul "f it were only the other way. Basil tries to comfort the young man, but Dorian pushes him away. Declaring that he will not allow the painting to ruin their friendship, Basil makes a move to destroy it. Dorian stops him, saying that he loves the painting, and a relieved Basil promises to give it to him as a gift. Dorian and Lord Henry depart after Dorian promises, despite Basil's objections, to go to the theater with Lord Henry later that evening
feat_summary_analysis: The Preface-Chapter Two The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray is a collection of epigrams that aptly sums up the philosophical tenets of the artistic and philosophical movement known as aestheticism. Aestheticism, which found its footing in Europe in the early nineteenth century, proposed that art need not serve moral, political, or otherwise didactic ends. Whereas the romantic movement of the early and mid-nineteenth century viewed art as a product of the human creative impulse that could be used to learn more about humankind and the world, the aesthetic movement denied that art must necessarily be an instructive force in order to be valuable. Instead, the aestheticists believed, art should be valuable in and of itself--art for art's sake. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Walter Pater, an English essayist and critic, suggested that life itself should be lived in the spirit of art. His views, especially those presented in a collection of essays called The Renaissance, had a profound impact on the English poets of the 1890s, most notably Oscar Wilde. Aestheticism flourished partly as a reaction against the materialism of the burgeoning middle class, assumed to be composed of philistines  who responded to art in a generally unrefined manner. In this climate, the artist could assert him- or herself as a remarkable and rarefied being, one leading the search for beauty in an age marked by shameful class inequality, social hypocrisy, and bourgeois complacency. No one latched onto this attitude more boldly, or with more flair, than Oscar Wilde. His determination to live a life of beauty and to mold his life into a work of art is reflected in the beliefs and actions of several characters in Wilde's only novel.  The Picture of Dorian Gray has often been compared to the famous German legend of Faust, immortalized in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play Doctor Faustus and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's nineteenth-century poem Faust. The legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities. Although Dorian Gray never contracts with the devil, his sacrifice is similar: he trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth. For its overtones of supernaturalism, its refusal to satisfy popular morality, and its portrayal of homoerotic culture, The Picture of Dorian Gray was met with harsh criticism. Many considered the novel dangerously subversive, one offended critic calling it "a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction." The fear of a bad--or good--influence is, in fact, one of the novel's primary concerns. As a work that sets forth a philosophy of aestheticism, the novel questions the degree and kind of influence a work of art can have over an individual. Furthermore, since the novel conceives of art as including a well-lived life, it is also interested in the kind of influence one person can have over another. After all, the artful Lord Henry himself has as profound an effect upon Dorian's life as Basil's painting does. While Lord Henry exercises influence over other characters primarily through his skillful use of language, it is Dorian's beauty that seduces the characters with whom he associates. Basil, a serious artist and rather dull moralist, admits that Dorian has had "ome subtle influence" over him; it is this influence that Basil is certain that his painting reveals. As he confides to Lord Henry, "I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry." Ultimately, however, Lord Henry's brilliant speech is a much more influential force than aesthetic beauty. His witty and biting epigrams threaten to seduce not only the impressionable young Dorian but the reader as well. Lord Henry's ironic speech cuts through social convention and hypocrisy to reveal unexpected, unpleasant truths. The characters whose lifestyles Lord Henry criticizes resist his extreme theories. Basil's resistance to Lord Henry's argument that scandal is a function of class typifies the reactions of the characters whom Lord Henry criticizes; after all, their position and comfort depend upon the hypocrisies he tends to expose. To some degree, every character in the novel is seduced by Lord Henry's philosophies, Dorian Gray more so than anyone else. In these opening chapters, Dorian emerges as an incredibly impressionable young man, someone who Basil fears is open to the "influence" of Lord Henry, which will "spoil" him. Basil's fear is well founded, as before the end of his first conversation with Lord Henry, Dorian is "dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him."