Youth Does Not Guarantee Your Hapiness

4.5 out of 5 stars. Youth does not guarantee your hapiness.              

October 29, 2013

By Mónica Fernanda Guevara Maldonado.

This review is from: The Picture of Dorian Gray

I was looking for a reading with some mystery, suspense, fiction and romance; on “The picture of Dorian Gray”, definitely I got all of these. 

There has been a lot of controversy with classifying this novel into the correct genre, but generally it is placed in the genre of Philosophical fiction and Gothic fiction.

This novel was written by the Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde, and first published as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890 in Philadelphia.

 The story tells of a young, captivating and extremely beautiful young man called Dorian Gray, grandson of one Lord Kelso, who returns to London as the unique heir of the house of his aunt, Lady Brandon. Here, he meets Basil Hallward, a well-known artist who immediately becomes interested in Dorian.

Basil asks Dorian to sit for a portrait, he accepted and when it is finished; it becomes the masterpiece of Basil and also the key of the story.  

On the other hand is Lord Henry Wotton, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth, beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure; when he meets Dorian he upsets him with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth; this speech makes Dorian to worry of his most impressive characteristics that are fading day by day, so he eventually curses his portrait, which he believes will one day remind him of the beauty he will have lost.

In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him to stay forever young; however, he has no idea of the price of this action…

Over the time, Lord Henry’s influence over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a disciple of the “new Hedonism” and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London’s slums, however, a series of unfortunately events incite Dorian to put the matter behind him and started to live a life full of irregularities that slowly transform to the charming Dorian Gray in a masked and sadistic monster.

In style and content, this story has as much in common with science fiction as it does with other Romantic novels, with the first, due to the hallucinations that Dorian experiment and the creepy descriptions of the portrait when it begins to transform.  

In contrast, its similarity with Romantic style is because of the description in the dark Dorian's thoughts, his changing mood and at the end, with his feeling of regret and loneliness.

In conclusion, personally I think this is a complicated read because of some terms and allusions with the Greco-Roman literature, but it goes quickly, that makes it exciting and unpredictable keeping your attention in the whole book.

This story is a good utopia in which eternal beauty and youth are possible, definitely an enviable opportunity for those who are afraid of getting old or for narcissist people, but at the end, the reading makes clear that: “youth does not guarantee your happiness”. This could be the learning of this brilliant story.