«The Picture of Dorian Gray», Oscar WildeNearly eighteen years fit into one chapter

Nineteen chapters and one

The novel opens in the studio of the painter Basil Hallward on “this particular day of June”, as he finishes his portrait of Dorian Gray. Of his sitter Basil says, “he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty”. From there it goes day by day: lunch at Lord Henry’s aunt’s the next day, a month later an engagement to the actress Sibyl Vane, the next evening he breaks it off, and that same night Sibyl dies. Ten chapters, one summer.

Chapter XI begins, “For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book.” The next one begins, “It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday…” Between “over twenty” and thirty-eight there is one chapter.

The last nine chapters go day by day again: the ninth and tenth of November, a week later his country house at Selby, and one last evening that is already in May. Of the half-year in between you learn from a single phrase, “all during this wonderful May”. So nineteen chapters of twenty are a summer at the start and November and May at the end, and nearly eighteen years are one chapter, nine per cent of the text.

A month younger

On that day of June Dorian sees the finished portrait for the first time, right after Lord Henry has explained to him that youth doesn’t last. He realizes that he will grow old while the picture “will never be older than this particular day of June”. And he makes a wish on the spot: let the picture grow old instead.

A month later he jokes at Lord Henry’s that he is a little jealous of the picture “for being a whole month younger than I am”. The next night, after he has broken with Sibyl, he comes home and sees in the portrait “the touch of cruelty in the mouth”. The wish has come true, and the clock has started.

The chapter where nobody speaks

Chapter XI is the longest in the book, 7,369 words, and not one line in it is spoken aloud: it is all told. Dorian sends to Paris for nine copies of the yellow book Lord Henry sent him, and for years he collects: perfumes, musical instruments, jewels, embroideries. Wilde lists it all for pages, down to the number of embroidered parrots in one queen’s room.

The years go by in between: “For years”, “for a whole year”, “After a few years”, “after he had passed his twenty-fifth year”. Upstairs, in the locked room, the portrait grows old, and Dorian goes up to it with a mirror, “looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face” in the glass. The book’s main event happens here, in the background: the sentence in which the summers pass stands in the middle of a paragraph about embroidery.

An eighteen-year alibi

The tenth of November, at night, near an opium den: a sailor with a revolver takes Dorian by the throat. It is Sibyl’s brother. He has heard by chance the pet name his sister had for Dorian, Prince Charming, and has come to kill him. Dorian asks how long ago Sibyl died. “Eighteen years.” And Dorian laughs: “Set me under the lamp and look at my face!”

James Vane drags him under the lamp and sees the face of “a lad of twenty summers”. He begs his pardon, and Dorian even lectures him on taking “vengeance into your own hands”. Years that don’t show on his face save him better than any lawyer. The truth comes at once from a woman of the den: “it’s nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me what I am.” But Dorian is gone.

The years come back

May comes. Over dinner Lord Henry tells Dorian, “I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow.” Dorian goes home, climbs to the portrait and decides to destroy it, with the very knife that killed Basil.

The servants hear a cry, and only after about a quarter of an hour do they get into the room from the balcony. On the wall hangs a portrait of their master “in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty”, and on the floor lies a dead man with a knife in his heart. Chapter XI stretched those years over more than seven thousand words; they come back in one sentence.

Verdict

Read it. Not for the moral about selling your soul, but for the way the book handles time: Wilde shows you the days and hides the years, the way Dorian hides the portrait.

At school they ask what the book teaches. Wilde answered in advance, in the last line of his preface: “All art is quite useless.” One point off for the jewels of chapter XI: nearly eighteen years went by faster than I got through the opals.