Romantic aspects in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde and “A Madison Square Arabian Night” by O. Henry
Romantic aspects in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and A Madison Square Arabian Night by O. Henry
Romanticism perpetuates the importance of the uniqueness of the individual and its relationship to nature:
The Picture of Dorian Gray and A Madison Square Arabian Night are two such romantic works of art1. It is almost as if Oscar Wilde and O. Henry used extensive guidelines while writing their stories.
The first evidence is found in the titles:
The Picture of Dorian Gray is not a random title. It is a well thought out declaration: Dorian is the focal point in the lives of the other characters – Basil Hallward, the painter who perceives Dorian as his muse2, his sweetheart – Sibyl Vane, the talented actress who forsakes her dreams – all the hopes she nurtured before Dorian came into her life – in order to serve as a maid servant in the love temple she had build for him3 and the chatty Lord Henry “Harry” Wotton, who becomes Dorian’s friend and seducer4.
The reflection of Dorian, as expressed in his portrait, changes the lives of all the characters in the story5.
A Madison Square Arabian Night by O. Henry evidently corresponds to One Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights). He uses the same structure as in Arabian Nights – a man suspects the loyalty of his wife6 and hints at some of the more familiar stories in the collection7.
The two stories have a common romantic theme – the portrait:
The authors’ intentions were not to cling to the ordinary, but to penetrate their protagonist’s inner feelings and reveal the subconscious of the “I”. This goal is achieved by using the portrait, which reflects the soul of the protagonist most accurately.
In The Picture of Dorian Gray the portrait borrows a central element from the Romantic movement: the fact of the portrait’s alteration – as a result of the model’s sins –contradicts all logic8. Dorian’s perfect face causes those who watch him to consider him to be an honest man. They do not detect the traces of his sinful life. Only the reader and tormented Dorian are aware of this fact9. The exposure of the “I” is done in secret, by hiding the picture which represents the truth10.
The portrait in A Madison Square Arabian Night is a work of art with an added value: unlike the stories of Harun al – Rahid (in the original Arabian nights) who used to sneak out of his palace disguised as a beggar or common man in order to evaluate what was happening in his kingdom, Carson Chalmers, the protagonist of O. Henry’s story, does not leave his luxurious flat, but sends his butler out to bring the “voice of the people” to him – the voice of the homeless, who seek a decent meal and a place to spend the night.
The fact that Chalmers does not hide his identity and even emphasizes it, by throwing a rich and lavish dinner, causes the invited pauper to feel obligated to “over-pay” for the hospitality. The guest has a menu of fictional stories for each meal, according to the quality of the meal and his satisfaction of it. Yet Chalmers’s banquet was so excellent that the vagabond chose to reward his host by telling the truth about himself. He discloses his name is Sherrard Plumer11 – a former painter, whose special talent was to express the true identity of painting’s object, in his portraits: “I don’t know how I did it -I painted what I saw – but I know it did me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for divorce. I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his came in to look at it. ‘Bless me,’ says he, ‘does he really look like that?” I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. ‘I never noticed that expression about his eyes before,’ said he; ‘I think I’ll drop downtown and change my bank account.’ He did drop down, but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker.”12
This remarkable ability enables Chalmers to solve the question of his wife’s loyalty: he asks Plumer to paint her portrait and then invites his neighbor, a young painter, to evaluate the result.
Painting people from the inside out defines Sherrard Plumer as a liberated artist. This is an additional Romantic concept that presents Plumer as an autonomous genius with regards to tradition and society: in light of his special ability, no one is interested in hiring him and so he wanders around as a beggar: a social refugee in a world fearing the truth revealed in his paintings. Basil Hallward, the artist in The Picture of Dorian Gray, also succeeds in creating an enchanted painting that answers Romanticism’s ambitions to combine reality with imagination, art with the ordinary, the ugly and the beautiful. Dorian makes sure no one sees Basil Hallward’s painting. Thus Hallward’s genius, very much like Sherrard Plumer’s aptitude, is isolated from the world.
Romanticism requires the realization of three criteria that are fully evident in The Picture of Dorian Gray and A Madison Square Arabian Night: a detailed time and place, well anchored in reality, which is undermined due to the invasion of the extraordinary. This unusual phenomenon causes chaos and confusion that result in a problematic ending (in Oscar Wilde’s novel) and struggle to reconcile the abyss between the two opposite poles (in O. Henry’s story).
The love for nature is well portrayed in The Picture of Dorian Gray, true to Romantic demand: Hallward’s house, where the story enfolds, is crowded with paintings about journeys, abundant with a garden of beautiful flowers and green lawns. Wilde’s description of this is almost three pages long13.
All this and more: Basil paints Dorian as a legendary hero in his amazing quests. He does so from his own memory, by creating an impression of the champion who serves as an example to all.
Love for nature also preaches experiencing the world – not living life between four walls14.
Lord Henry, the perpetual cynic, was the first to encouraged Dorian to explore the world.
During his journey to the above “world outside” Dorian comes across a mysterious book that no one – but he – knows its content. Dorian does not take from it instructions or guidance for a better life, because reading it only upsets his disposition and urges him to dig deeper into the wicked world of materialistic hedonism – a deterioration which had started when he first met Lord Henry.
A Madison Square Arabian Night does not deal with nature and does not “go out to the world”, but the mysterious message appears in it as well, thanks to the two envelopes in the opening exposition, the motivating power of the story: “One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, absorbed, for a long time.”15
Thos unknown letter has the same effect on Chalmers as the mysterious book had on Dorian – a “letter (that) was from another woman and {…} contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman. Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts when he is housed in a jungle of doubt.”16
The usage of the animal-like image corresponds with the notion of the Romantic Forest17, a very vivid aspect in The Picture of Dorian Gray: in the forest Dorian (accidentally) kills Sibyl Vane’s brother, who wishes to revenge his sister’s death. Thus Dorian (supposedly) stops fearing for his life and can start a new, free one18. Only the forest (jungle) is actually the birthplace of a tremendous emotional turmoil: Dorian does not find gratification in his profligacy and Carson Chalmers does not succeed in dismissing his rising anxiety of his wife’s (alleged) infidelity.
Only in the abnormal arena – before the enchanted portraits – will they be able to rediscover themselves and to put an end, once and for all, to the vicious circle in which they were trapped.
The Romantic movement’s glorifying of medieval times is expressed in The Picture of Dorian Gray thanks to the Faustic characteristic of a contract with an unidentifiable diabolical entity19: the purity of his youth is forever kept as the price of his pure soul, which slowly but gradually settles in the dwelling of Satan (Lucifer – Mephisto). This literary affinity holds another common Romantic pattern: the hero who leaves his house on his way to search for a spiritual goal and returns with a new achievement at the end of a long journey.
Many times the Romantic, legendry quest could have been interpreted as a psychological search, taking place in the protagonist’s psyche. This is exactly the case in Wilde’s novel, when – with the discovery of the disfiguration of the portrait – Dorian embarks on a journey throughout England’s doubtful areas, to new and wretched destinations that no nobleman had visited before. Thus he experiences an inner-personal voyage, which changes his personality beyond recognition. The return to the attic, where he concealed the secret of the painting, is equivalent to the Romantic hero’s return to his home and to the discovery that by corruption of the picture he could have actually avoided all the hardship of his journey. Romantic irony – the truth is in the house – manifests prominently in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Carson Chalmers, unlike Dorian, does not go on an actual quest – his wife who is three thousands miles away does that for him, as she generates (unintentionally) the cause that sets his feelings of suspicion. The Satanic pact is also missing from O. Henry’s story, yet the evil indeed enters Chalmers’s life, wearing the persona of a conniving woman who sends a dangerous and poisonous letter in order to upset the tranquility of the Chalmers’s household. This vicious attempt sends Carson Chalmers on an inner – personal journey, taking place within his own house. This voyage transfers him from suspicion to a restful serenity, thanks to the magical portrait by Sherrard Plumer. Furthermore, Carson’s psychological “trip” causes a transformation, in his eyes, from his wife being suspected of possible disloyalty into an angelic figure.
O. Henry’s story began as a conspiracy to destroy holy matrimony, but thanks to the Romantic elements and the belief in the positive nature of human kind, it rose above it and corrected the distortion.
Carson Chalmers’s life is not subjected to supernatural powers but to the malignant thoughts of one woman. Chalmers refuses to reconcile with such a scenario and precisely when he searches for a distraction – “Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored and Arabian”20 – he finds the solution.
A Madison Square Arabian Night undoubtedly echoes with One Thousand and One Nights, as stated earlier, but also with Oscar Wilde’s novel: Basil Hallward’s destruction is repaired by Sherrard Plumer.
The seed of calamity – the portrait – which marked the beginning in the long immoral decline of Dorian’s soul is the low place from which O. Henry starts: society, which was so oblivious to Gray’s decay, wrongfully blemishes Mrs. Carson Chalmers and her purity. It is the portrait that does this, by exposing the unmistakable truth.
Dorian Gray’s portrait reflected who he was: untainted at first and later corrupted.
Mrs. Carson Chalmers was and remained spotless, thus presenting “the face of one of God’s own angels”21.
Dorian Gray goes through a Romantic transformation from a good person to bad, from handsome to hideous. Mrs. Carson Chalmers goes through alteration, in the opposite direction: from unlawful to faithful, from seductive to sublime.
The portrait saves the marriage of Carson Chalmers in O. Henry’s story.
The portrait kills Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s story22.
The Picture of Dorian Gray and A Madison Square Arabian Night should be considered Romantic works of art: they place man in the center of the plot and unfold his uniqueness. The blurring of boundaries between reality and the miraculous blend and intertwine. The artists (Basil Hallward and Sherrard Plumer) are a bridge between the invisible world and the perceptible world. Their portraits bring paranormal powers into everyday reality.
Dorian Gray is the Romantic hero that does not survive in the materialistic world. Although he is responsible for everything that had happened to him, he cannot find a place for himself and is utterly sick of life. He is oblivious to the mysterious forces that control him. Even his love for others – mainly Sibyl Vane – is essentially self-love.
Carson Chalmers is a Romantic hero without being aware of it: the materialistic world is very much acceptable to him. He feels at home in the environment he had created for himself, thanks to his achievements and successes. Yet, when his routine is suddenly undermined by a mysterious force (the unknown woman), he is terrified and searches for something out of the ordinary. His desire, to entertain a pauper, results from a selfish need to escape his troubles and from his refusal to reconcile with the mysterious force’s intervention. He eventually rejects the suspicion and doubts implied by the unknown woman.
The portraits in the stories reflect the personalities of the sitters. From then their future is to be decided:
The portrait of Dorian Gray drives him away from the correct path.
The portrait of Carson Chalmers’s wife soothes Chalmers’s troubled soul.
Honore de Balzac once said – if only we could place on the canvas that which the eye sees.
Oscar Wilde’s and O. Henry’s stories achieved both.
