Dorian Gray and Narcissus: A Literary Comparison
Oscar Wilde’s *The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer of the 19th century who anticipated modernism in literature. He became very popular because of his attitude. He was very witty and an extraordinary conversationalist who liked to scandalize his audience.
*The Picture of Dorian Gray*: A Summary
His most important and famous work was *The Picture of Dorian Gray*. It was published in 1890 and made him renowned as a novelist. The plot became very popular thanks to a large amount of sensuality, visual and erotic elements, but narrated in a non-explicit way. It is an exchange of internal beauty for external beauty.
The novel narrates the story of Dorian Gray, a young and handsome man who wants to preserve that beauty above all else. For that reason, a portrait of him is painted. The bad and insensible things he does deform the portrait, but his beauty remains intact. When he realizes and tries to forget his past, he destroys the painting, which entails his death.
Vanity, insanity, and derangement are part of the themes of this novel that criticizes that society.
*The Picture of Dorian Gray* and *Faustus*
This novel is based on *Faustus* by Goethe, published in 1775. Faustus sells his soul to the Devil to get wisdom and love. He obtained the opposite results since he does good when he looks for doing evil. Faustus starts to experience the frustrations which will bring him to enter the pacts.
Both novels have a common origin: pride.
The handsome young man and the old doctor feel superior to the rest: Dorian by his beauty and Faustus by his wisdom. Paradoxically, those qualities will play against them. For Dorian, it had been better not being an Adonis; therefore, old age will not result so strange and frightening. In Faustus’ case, the fact that being an intelligent person will bring him to the conviction that man, in his short life, despite his dedication, is incapable to fill completely his curiosity by himself and solve the problem of the insecurity of the existence mystery.
Both characters want more than a regular human life; they want an extraordinary life and will try anything to attain it.
Narcissus and Dorian Gray: A Comparison
*The Picture of Dorian Gray* deals with evidences, recreation of archetypes (Faustus), but also it deals with the myth of Narcissus, written by Ovid.
The Myth of Narcissus
Narcissus was born from a rape. His parents are the nymph Liríope and the river Cefiso, and he inherited from both the essential characteristics for his tragedy: his mother’s beauty and the water element, from which he will find his own beauty.
Narcissus seduced men and women, but everybody obtained his indifference until he discovered his image. Firstly, he did not recognize that image as his, but finally, it astonished him. When Narcissus discovered the truth, he fell in love with himself and drowned in the water because of his reflection.
Similarities Between Dorian and Narcissus
Like Narcissus, Dorian Gray was born signed by a violent story: his father is murdered by his father-in-law, and his mother also dies. He also comes from a beautiful mother from whom he inherits this attribute, but it is as well the beginning of his tragedy.
As well as Narcissus, Dorian also has a significant irresistible influence on the rest, who he does not get involved with because they only satisfy his experimentation and unlimited pleasures wishes.
But while Narcissus begs for being split physically to get joined and be able to love his another part, which was his reflection, Dorian desires to escape from himself by the fact he was suffering from his pictorial double ruin.
On Narcissus, it occurs an identity between himself and his reflected image, an equality between the subject and its projection. This relation is given in the same way at the beginning between Dorian and his portrait, but when the story goes by, this symmetry starts to break.
The tautology gets more and more violent, which leads to an asymmetry in the speculiarity, artifice used as a narrative resource to metaphorize the same impossibility in Narcissus: not be able to be “one” again. Maybe this is the true human conflict: his fragmentary nature, his fragility, his expiry.
Both Dorian and Narcissus use their own bodies as sexual objects, and that is what makes a relationship with other people impossible for them.
Differing Fates
On the other hand, Narcissus does not enter adult life because he thinks death is the only possible ending for his conflict. However, Dorian suffers the tragedy and the punishment of old age, although metaphorically, in his represented otherness, finishing with the same tragic ending.
Narcissus wants to get attached to his object of desire, and he is only a victim of his image, dying when the ecstasy of “self-intoxication” comes. This incessant and growing self-fascination is what drives him to be merged with “the other part.” While in Dorian, the horror is what pushes him to break free from his otherness, ignoring the fact that he will destroy himself too.
Narcissus desires to be merged and “fit in with,” Dorian to “be split from.” As well as Narcissus perpetuates in flower through metamorphosis, Dorian will live on in his portrait.
We can suppose that Narcissus finds immortality through nature, whereas Dorian only lives on through an artificial element.