“The Gay Artist as Tragic Hero in The Picture of Dorian Gray” Literary Criticism

“To have a capacity for passion and not to realize it, is to make oneself incomplete and limited.” (67) This statement made by Oscar Wilde in his essay “The Critic as Artist” is one by which many can be characterized in the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” but to none so much as to the character of Basil Hallward. Throughout “The Gay Artist as Tragic Hero in The Picture of Dorian Gray” the author, Henry M. Alley, brings to light the passion and struggles behind whom many believe to be ‘the principle hero’ of the story, Basil Hallward.

“We take pleasure in the beauty of a statue, shall not then the living fill us with delight?”(2) This quote made by Aristotle does an excellent job of putting into words the internal struggle that Hallward faces until his untimely death. Hallward was indecisive on whether or not he should experience life, being too caught up in the perfect world of art. “Basil has no romances, no loves, no intimate relationships at all. When he dies, his absence is noted by his many friends but not grieved. His associations with the natural, with the web of life, and with vitality itself are in the context of art, not experience.” (4) This passage makes it clear that Hallward’s inexperience in life, resulting from his homophobia, led to a life of little consequence. “The choice of silence and an impossible love is Hallward’s own.” (5) Hiding behind his art and letting his homophobia control his life, there is no one to blame for Hallward’s tragic life but himself.

In Dorian’s final act of stabbing the portrait, a manifestation of his own internalized homophobia; he unwittingly ended up stabbing himself, becoming his own nemesis and ending his own life. In an act of poetic justice the corruption that embodied Dorian was killed and the beauty of the portrait was restored to life. “Hallward emerges again as the envisioner of that depicted youth and perfection, and so his manifestation of homoerotic love stands vindicated at the end, even while the accent must also fall upon his tragic inability to experience it carnally in his own life, or transcend his own worship of external beauty.” (6)

Both stabbings executed by Dorian were done out of his own internal homophobia. While the first stabbing resulted in the death of the man who loved him, the second stabbing resulted in the resurrection of the portrait to its original beauty. By restoring the beauty to the portrait, Dorian inadvertently restored Hallward’s expression of ‘homoerotic love.’ This act of poetic justice is bittersweet however when looking back on the talented artist’s tragic existence, which stemmed from what some believed to be his ‘hamartia’ or character flaw of being a sensitive gay man, whom through his own homophobia was unable to experience life outside of his art. “He is killed while he is still in the midst of his denial.” (6)

A claim made in the essay by Liebman stated, "The moral order that Basil believes in does not exist. At the end of Dorian Gray, the stage is strewn with the bodies of the innocent" (305). Who does Liebman believe to be innocent? Does he believe Dorian to be innocent? I understand that he mean to incorporate Sybil Vane, Basil Hallward, and Alan Campbell into the bodies of the innocent scattered across the stage, but Dorian is the one to die in the final scene. If he does mean to incorporate Dorian into the group of ‘innocent’ I am curious as to on what grounds he has for calling Dorian innocent, because from what I understand of the book Dorian could be said to be one of the main villains in the story.

When is comes to the question of whether or not Basil Hallward should be considered the hero of the novel, I find myself in agreement with Alley. Although I found that the authors reasoning behind calling Hallward ‘the principle hero’ was based primarily around his struggle with his identity as a gay man, I do agree that his intentions throughout the novel were to protect Dorian and ultimately save him from the corruption of his soul. This fact was clear to Dorian who believed that after Sybil’s death “Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him – for it was really love – had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire.” (P. 101)

One question that I have for Alley is in regards to a statement made in his essay, “Driven forward by his desire to consummate his love for Dorian, Hallward, in an equal and opposite way, pulls back, put off by the creatures which "are subject to generation and decay." (2) This statement directly contradicts the aforementioned passage from the novel in which it states that Hallward was truly in love with Dorian and not merely attracted to his beauty. If my understanding of the passage from the novel is correct, how can Hallward be completely in love with Dorian for more than his looks, while still aversive to Dorian’s eventual deterioration in beauty?

“Like the painter himself, Wilde began to hide away from the world the very sort of homoeroticism he sought to share with it.” (7) Hallward and Wilde were very much alike in the fact that they both tried to hide from the world their homosexuality. Both the painter and the writer were comparable in how they expressed their true feelings, through their art, which was probably the basis for their strong beliefs in aesthetics. Unfortunately their belief in aestheticism was the main factor in both their downfalls. In the case of Hallward, “Aesthetics put him into the danger zone of Dorian’s rage but not far enough to allow himself to come to a realization and seek refuge.” (6) Hallward’s love for Dorian and his beauty blinded him from Dorian’s true identity, leading to his death by the hands of Dorian. While, in the case of Wilde, “his plummet into penury, imprisonment, and isolation ultimately creates a ruin far more heartbreaking than Dorian’s murder of himself and the lovely and idealistic Hallward.” (7) Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was one of the main pieces of evident used against him in his trial, resulting in his imprisonment. The parallels in the tragic ends to both Hallward’s and Wilde’s life give a higher meaning to a statement Wilde made about Hallward and himself, “Hallward is what I think I am.” (3)


Work Cited:
• Henry M. Alley, "The Gay Artist as Tragic Hero in The Picture of Dorian Gray"
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 11.2 (2009)
• Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” New York (2006)
• Wilde, Oscar. "The Critic as Artist." The Portable Wilde. Ed. Richard Aldington and Stanley Weintraub. New York: Penguin,
1981. 51-137.
• Aristotle. Aristotle on the Art of Fiction: An English Translation of Aristotle's Poetics. Ed. L.J. Potts. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1968.