Summary: Chapter Fifteen
That evening, Dorian goes to a dinner party, at which
he flirts with bored noblewomen. Reflecting on his calm demeanor,
he feels “keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.” Lady Narborough, the
hostess, discusses the sad life of her daughter, who lives in a region
of the countryside that has not witnessed a scandal since the time
of Queen Elizabeth. Dorian finds the party tedious and brightens
only when he learns Lord Henry will be in attendance.
During dinner, after Lord Henry has arrived, Dorian finds
it impossible to eat. Lord Henry asks him what is the matter. Lady Narborough
suggests that Dorian is in love, though Dorian assures her that
she is wrong. The party-goers talk wittily about marriage, and the
ladies then leave the gentlemen to their “politics and scandal.”
Lord Henry and Dorian discuss a party to be held at Dorian’s country
estate. Lord Henry then casually asks about Dorian’s whereabouts
the night before; Dorian’s calm facade cracks a bit and he snaps
out a strange, defensive response. Rather than join the women upstairs,
Dorian decides to go home early.
Once Dorian arrives home, he retrieves Basil’s belongings
from the wall compartment and burns them. He goes to an ornate cabinet and,
opening one of its drawers, draws out a canister of opium. At midnight,
he dresses in common clothes and hires a coach to bring him to a
London neighborhood where the city’s opium dens prosper.
Summary: Chapter Sixteen
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 “[f]in de siècle”
(or “end of the century”) 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 siècle” therefore came to describe a mode
of thinking that sought to escape this disenchantment and restore
beauty to art and reshape (and broaden) public understandings of
morality.
In a way, though Dorian lives a life very much in tune
with fin-de-siècle 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:
