Étude du roman Le portrait de Dorian Gray de Wilde

Dorian Gray-Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

The picture of Dorian Gray is a novel, written by Oscar Wilde and published in 1891. The author shows how a young man keeps his beauty as he grows old, while his portrait becomes hideous and reflect the corruption of his soul.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novel, written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published in 1886. It’s the story of a doctor who finds a drug which allows him to dissociate his good and evil personnalities. During this notion which is the world of imagination, we will ask ourselves about the duality present in the books.

The historical background is the victorian age which was a period of enormous changes : Britain was fast becoming a rich and powerful nation, the financial centre of the world. But the change from an agricultural to an industrial society, the overcrowded urban centres, the difficult economic situation and poor harvests in the1830s and 1840s led to a growing division between the rich and the poor. All through the 19 th century, social reforms helped to improve the electoral system, the situation of women, education, justice and particularly the working conditions of factory workers. Moroever, there was strong moral values and the discovery of the Western culture thanks to the sea expedition. Such changes were accompanied by contradictions :

The feeling of wealth and progress often resulted in pride in the puritain ideals and respectability of the middle class, in complacency and self confidence. Its often associated with hypocrisy and sexual repression. There was also an increasing sense of anxiety in the last two decades of the century.

The literary genre is the gothic literatery which combines romance and horror in order to frighten the readers, creating the weird atmosphere and inducing feelings of horror and terror. The genre has tis roots in folklore and religious traditions. In the 1880s the revival of the gothic was seen as a powerful literary from which fictionnalised contemporary feard like ethical degeneration and questionned the social structures of the time. The setting still evoked the atmosphere of dread but also portrayed the deterioration. As for the gothic hero, he was usually isolated either voluntarily or not. These books are gothic novels beacause there are some supernatural elements, murders. There are a gloomy atmosphere where meddle night , sex, unsavory activities in unsavory places. There are some mystic items.

Now, we will present one extract from The picture of Dorian Gray which called « My soul for that ».

This extract is from the chapter 2 of the book : Dorian is easily swayed by Lord Henry's seductive ideas, revealing that Dorian's true morals are vague, to say the least. At the beginning of the chapter, Dorian has no greater friend than Basil, but by the end of the chapter, he has abandoned Basil for Lord Henry after a very short afternoon. The reader might first attribute Dorian's weakness and fickle nature to youth, but the change in his nature occurs only after he has realized the importance of his own beauty, a very worldly attitude. In this short chapter, the reader not only meets the main character of the book; the reader also witnesses a complete transition in his nature from innocence to self-involved worldliness. Dorian's fall from grace takes place in just a few short pages. Chapter 2 is also very important because it introduces

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