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| English Literature books summarynews and Basil is quite worried. Finally Dorian arrives elated to tell the others of his news. Over dinner he tells them that he proposed to Sibyl on the previous evening after watching her as Rosalind. He kissed her and told her he loved her and she told him she wasn’t good enough to be his wife. They are keeping their engagement a secret from her mother. Dorian tells Lord Henry that she will save him from Lord Henry’s "wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories" about life, love, and pleasure. Lord Henry says they aren’t his theories but Nature’s. Basil Hallward begins to think the engagement will be a good thing for Dorian after all. As they leave, Lord Henry tells Hallward to take a separate conveyance to the theater since his is large enough only for him and Dorian. As he rides in the carriage behind Lord Henry’s, Basil Hallward feels a strong sense of loss, as if Dorian Gray will never again be to him all that he had been in the past. He realizes that life has come between them. He feels, when he arrives at the theater, that he has grown years older. CHAPTER 7 At the theater, Dorian is surprised to find it crowded with people. He takes Lord Henry and Basil Hallward to his usual box and they discuss the crowd below. He tells them that Sibyl’s art is so fine that she spiritualizes the common people, transforming their ugliness into beauty. Basil tells him he now agrees that the marriage will be a good thing for him. When Sibyl appears on the stage, both men are entranced by her beauty, but when she starts to act, they are embarrassed for Dorian. Dorian doesn’t speak, but he is horribly disappointed. Sibyl’s acting is horribly wooden. The people below hiss and catcall to the stage making fun of her poor acting. After the second act, Lord Henry and Basil Hallward leave. Dorian tells them he will stay out the performance. He hides his face in anguish. When the play is over, he goes to the green room to find Sibyl. She’s waiting for him. She looks radiantly happy. She tells him she acted so badly because she loves him. She says that before she loved him, the stage was real and alive for her. she never noticed the tawdriness of the stage set or the ugliness of her fellow actors. She had put everything into it because it was all of her life. When she realized tonight that she was acting horribly, she was struck by the realization that it was because she had found a new reality. When she finishes, Dorian tells her she disappointed him and embarrassed him horribly. He says she killed his love. Sibyl is shocked and horrified by his words. She begs him to take them back, but he goes on. he tells her he loved her for her art and now she has nothing of her art and so he doesn’t love her any more. Now she is nothing but "a third-rate actress with a pretty face." Sibyl throws herself at his feet begging him to be kind to her, but he walks away scornfully, thinking how ridiculous she looks. He walks through the poverty-stricken streets of London for a long time. Then he gets back to his room, recently redecorated since he learned to appreciate luxury from Lord Henry. He is undressing when he happens to glance at the portrait. He is taken aback to notice a change in it. Lines around the mouth have appeared. The face has a cruel expression. He turns on the lights and looks at it more carefully, but nothing changes the look of cruelty on the face. He remembers what he said in Basil’s studio the day he saw it for the first time. He had wished to change places with it, staying young forever while it aged with time and experience. He knows that the sin he committed against Sibyl that evening had caused him to age. He realizes that the portrait will always be an emblem of his conscience from now on. He dresses quickly and hurries toward Sibyl’s house. As he hurries to her, a faint feeling of his love for her returns to him. CHAPTER 8 Dorian doesn’t wake up the next day until well past noon. He gets up and looks through his mail, finding and laying aside a piece of mail hand delivered from Lord Henry that morning. He gets up and eats a light breakfast all the while feeling as if he has been part of some kind of tragedy recently. As he sits at breakfast, he sees the screen that he hurriedly put in front of his portrait the night before and realizes it was not a dream but is true. He tells his servant that he is not accepting callers and he goes to the portrait and removes the screen. He hesitates to do so, but decides he must. When he looks at the portrait he sees that it was not an illusion. The change remains. He looks at it with horror. He realizes how unjust and cruel he had been to Sibyl the night before. He thinks the portrait will serve him as a conscience throughout life. He remains looking at the portrait for hours more. Finally, he gets paper and begins to write a passionate letter to Sibyl apologizing for what he had said to her and vowing eternal love. He reproaches himself in the letter so voluptuously that he feels absolved, like a person who has been to confession. He lays the letter to the side and then he hears Lord Henry calling to him through the door. Lord Henry begs to be let in and Dorian decides he will let him. Lord Henry apologizes for all that has happened. Dorian tells him he was brutal with Sibyl the night before after the performance, but now he feels good and is not even sorry that it happened. Lord Henry says he had worried that Dorian would be tearing his hair in remorse. Dorian says he is quite happy now that he knows what conscience is. He asks Henry not to sneer at it, and says that he wants to be good. He adds that he can’t stand the idea "of [his] soul being hideous." Lord Henry exclaims about this "charming artistic basis for ethics." Dorian says he will marry Sibyl. It is then when Lord Henry realizes Dorian didn’t read his letter. In it, he had told Dorian that Sibyl committed suicide the night before by swallowing some kind of poison. Lord Henry begins advising Dorian about how to avoid the scandal that such a story would attach to his name. He asks if anyone but Sibyl knew his name and if anyone saw him go behind stage to speak to her after her performance. Lord Henry urges Dorian not to let the episode get on his nerves. He invites him out to dinner and to the opera with his sister and some smart women. Dorian exclaims that he has murdered Sibyl Vane. He marvels that life is still as beautiful with birds singing and roses blooming. He adds that if he had read it in a book, he would have thought it movingly tragic. He recounts the exchange between he and Sibyl the night before, telling Henry of how cruel he was in casting her aside. He ends by condemning her as selfish for killing herself. Lord Henry tells him that a woman can only reform a man by boring him so completely that he loses all interest in life. He adds that if Dorian would have married Sibyl, he would have been miserable because he wouldn’t have loved her. Dorian concedes that it probably would have been. He is amazed that he doesn’t feel the tragedy more than he does. He wonders if he’s heartless. He thinks of it as a wonderful ending to a wonderful play, a "tragedy in which [he] took a great part, but by which [he] has not been wounded." Lord Henry likes to play on Dorian’s unconscious egotism, so he exclaims over the interest of Dorian’s sense of it. Dorian thinks he will now have to go into mourning, but Lord Henry tells him it is unnecessary since there is already enough mourning in life. He adds that Sibyl must have been different from all other women who are so trivial and predictable. When Dorian expresses remorse at having been cruel to her, Lord Henry assures him that women appreciate cruelty more than anything else. They are primitive. Men have emancipated them, but they have remained slaves and they love being dominated. He reminds Dorian that Sibyl was a great actress and that he can think of her suicide as an ending to a Jacobean tragedy. Dorian finally thanks Lord Henry for explaining himself to him. He revels in what a marvelous experience it has all been for him. He wonders if life will give him anything more marvelous and Henry assures him that it will. He wonders what will happen when he gets old and ugly. Henry tells him that then he will have to fight for his victories. Dorian decides he will join Lord Henry at the opera after all. Lord Henry departs. When he is alone, Dorian looks again at the portrait. He sees that it hasn’t changed since he last saw it. He thinks of poor Sibyl and revels in the romance of it all. He decides that he will embrace life and the portrait will bear the burden of his shame. He is sad to think of how the beautiful portrait will be marred. He thinks for a minute about praying that the strange sympathy that exists between him and the picture would disappear, but he realizes that no one would give up the chance at being forever young. Then he decides that he will get pleasure out of watching the changes. The portrait would be a magic mirror for him, revealing his soul to him. He pushes the screen back in front of it and dresses for the opera. CHAPTER 9 The next morning after the opera, Dorian is visited by Basil Hallward. Basil assumes that he really didn’t go to the opera the night before and is shocked to find out that he did so after all. He can’t believe that Dorian is so unfeeling when Sibyl isn’t even buried yet. Dorian tells him he doesn’t want to hear about it because it’s in the past. He thinks if he is a strong man, he should be able to dominate his feelings and end them when he wants to end them. Basil blames Dorian’s lack of feeling on Lord Henry. Dorian tells Basil that it was he who taught him to be vain. Basil is shocked to find out that Sibyl killed herself. Dorian tells him it is fitting that she did, more artistic. "Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty." He tells Basil that he has suffered, that he was suffering terribly yesterday around five or six o’clock. He says he no longer has these emotions and it would be nothing but empty sentimentality to try to repeat the feelings that have passed. He asks Basil to help him see the art in it rather than to try to make him feel guilt over it. He begs Basil not to leave him but to stop quarreling with him. Basil is moved by Dorian’s speech and decides Dorian might be passing through a momentary lapse of feeling and should be berated for it. He agrees not to speak to Dorian again of Sibyl. Dorian asks him, however, to draw him a picture of Sibyl. Basil agrees to do so and urges Dorian to come sit for him again, saying he can’t get on with his painting without Dorian. Dorian starts and says he will never be able to sit for Basil again. Basil is shocked and then looks around to see if he can see the portrait he gave Dorian. He is annoyed to find that it is hidden behind a screen and goes toward it. Dorian jumps up and stands between him and the screen keeping him away from it. He makes Basil promise never to look at it again and not to ever ask why. Basil is surprised but agrees to do so, saying that Dorian’s friendship is more important to him than anything. He tells Dorian he plans to show the portrait in an exhibit. Dorian remembers the afternoon in Basil’s studio when Basil said he would never show it. He remembers Lord Henry telling him to ask Basil one day about why. He does so now. Basil explains to him reluctantly that he was fascinated with him and dominated by his personality from the first moment he saw him. He painted every kind of portrait of him, putting him in ancient Greek garb and in Renaissance garb. One day he decided to paint Dorian as he was, and as he painted each stroke, he became fascinated with the idea that the portrait was revealing his idolatry of Dorian. He swore then hat he would never exhibit it. However, after he gave the portrait to Dorian, the feeling passed away from him. He realized that "art conceals the artist far more completely than if ever reveals him." That was when he decided to exhibit the portrait as a centerpiece. Dorian takes a breath. He realizes he is safe for the present since Basil clearly doesn’t know the truth about the painting. Basil thinks Dorian sees what he saw in the portrait, his idolatry of Dorian. He tries to get Dorian to let him see the portrait, but Dorian still refuses. Basil leaves and Dorian thinks over what he had said to him. He calls his servant, realizing that the portrait has to be put away where he won’t run the risk of guests trying to see it. CHAPTER 10 Dorian is in his drawing room when his manservant Victor enters. She scrutinizes Victor to see if Victor has looked behind the curtain at the portrait. He watches Victor in the mirror to see if he can see anything but can see nothing but "a placid mask of servility." He sends for the housekeeper. When she arrives, he asks her to give him the key to the old schoolroom. She wants to clean it up before he goes up to it, but he insists he doesn’t need it cleaned. She mentions that it hasn’t bee used for five years, since his grandfather died. Dorian winces at the mention of his grandfather, who was always mean to him. When she leaves, he takes the cover off the couch and throws it over the portrait. he thinks of Basil and wonders if he shouldn’t have appealed to Basil to help him resist Lord Henry’s influence. He knows Basil loves him with more than just a physical love. However, he gives up on the thought of asking Basil for help, deciding that the future is inevitable and the past can always be annihilated. He receives the men from the framemaker’s shop. The framemaker himself, Mr. Hubbard, has come. He asks the two men to help him carry the portrait upstairs. He sends Victor away to Lord Henry’s so as to get him out of the way in order to hide the operation from him. They get the portrait upstairs with some trouble and he has them lean it against the wall and leave it. He hates the idea of leaving it in the dreaded room where he was always sent to be away from his grandfather who didn’t like to see him, but it’s the only room not in use in the house. He wonders what the picture will look like over time. He thinks with repulsion of how its image will show the signs of old age. When he gets back downstairs to the library, Victor has returned from Lord Henry’s. Lord Henry had sent him a book and the paper. The paper is marked with a red pen on a passage about the inquest into Sibyl Vane’s death. He throws it away annoyed at Lord Henry for sending it and fearing that Victor saw the red mark. Then he picks up the book Lord Henry sent him. It is a fascinating book from the first page. It is a plot-less novel, a psychological study of a young Parisian who spends all his life trying to realize all the passions and modes of thought of previous ages. It is written in the style of the French Symbolistes. He finds it to be a poisonous book. He can’t put it down. It makes him late to dinner with Lord Henry. CHAPTER 11 For years afterwards, Dorian Gray continues to feel the influence of the book Lord Henry gave him. He gets more copies of the book from Paris and has them bound in different colors. He thinks of the book as containing the story of his life. He feels himself lucky to be different from the novel’s hero in respect to aging. While the novel’s hero bemoans his loss of youthful beauty, Dorian Gray never loses his youth. He reads the passages over and over again reveling in his difference from the hero in this respect. People in his social circle often hear dreadful things about Dorian Gray, but when they look at him and see his fresh, young looks, they dismiss the rumors as impossible. Dorian is often gone from home for long periods of time and never tells anyone where he has gone. He always returns home and goes straight upstairs to see the portrait’s changes. He grows more and more in love with his own beauty. He spends much time in a sordid tavern near the docks and thinks with pity of the degradation he has brought on his soul. Most of the time, though, he doesn’t think of his soul. He has "mad hungers that [grow] more ravenous as he [feeds] them." He entertains once or twice a month with such lavish fare and such exquisite furnishings that he becomes the most popular of London’s young men. He is admired by all the men who see him as a type of man who combines the real culture of a scholar with the grace of a citizen of the world. He lives his life as if it were an art work. His style of dressing sets the standard of all the fashionable shops. He worships the senses in many different forms. He lives the new Hedonism, that Lord Henry has told him of. He enjoys the service of the Catholic Church for its ritual and its pathos. Yet, he never embraces any creed or system of thought because he refuses to arrest his intellectual development. He studies new perfumes and experiments with them endlessly. He devotes himself for long periods to the study of all kinds of musical forms from all over the world. He even studies the stories written about the music, the stories of magic and death. He takes of the study of jewels for a while, collecting rare and precious jewels from all over the world for the pleasure of looking at them and feeling them. He collects stories about jewels as part of animals and stories of jewels which caused death and destruction. For a time, he studies embroideries of all sorts and the stories that attach to them. He collects embroideries and tapestries from all over the world. He especially loves ecclesiastical vestments. The beautiful things he collects are part of his methods of forgetfulness. He wants to escape the fear that sometimes seems to overwhelm him. After some years, he becomes unable to leave London for any purpose because he cannot bear to be away from the portrait for any length of time. Often when he’s out with friends, he breaks off and rushes home to see if the portrait is still where it should be and to ensure that no one has tampered with the door. He develops a desperate fear that someone might steal the portrait and then everyone would know about him. Most people are fascinated with Dorian Gray, but some people are distrustful of him. He is almost banned from two clubs. He is ostracized by some prominent men. People begin to tell curious stories about him hanging around with foreign sailors in run down pubs and interacting with thieves and coiners. People talk about his strange absences. He never takes notice of these looks people give him. Most of them see his boyish smile and can’t imagine that the stories could be true. Yet the stories remain. 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