Chapter 1 Quotes Flashcards
Sensual opening
‘Rich odour of…
Roses’
rose is a symbol of beauty and coming of age/sexuality
Sensual opening
‘Divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, …
Smoking as was his custom innumerable cigarettes.’
Shows the adoption of lower class habits aristocracy. Adaptable aristocracy.
Exotic settings
Sensual opening
‘Making him think of those pallid…
Jade faced painters of Tokyo’ (Lord Henry)
aristocracy had the chance to visit these places, shows his wealth.
‘Portrait of a young man of…
Extraordinary personal beauty’
On Basils refused to display portrait Lord Henry
‘Looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up…
In such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium tainted cigarette’
Lord Henry aphorism
‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about…
And that is not being talked about’
Lord Henry talking about displaying Basils work
‘Make the old men quite jealous, if old men are…
Ever capable of any emotion’
Being old immediately made a bad thing
Lord Henry talking about Dorian
‘This young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of…
Ivory and rose leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a narcissus’
Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. Dorian does the same thing. Ivory is delicate pale and expensive, rose is beautiful
Lord Henry talking
‘But beauty, real beauty, ends…
Where an intellectual expression begins’
Beauty is the best thing established immediately
Lord Henry about Dorian
‘He is some brainless beautiful creature. Who should…
Be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at’
links further into imagery of Dorian as a flower, as something beautiful and delicate.
Basil to lord Henry foreshadowing
‘Your rank and wealth Harry; my brains, such as they are- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks- …
We shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly’
Lord Henry Witticism
‘The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of…
deception absolutely necessary for both parties’
Basil to lord Henry
‘You never say a moral thing and you never do a wrong thing. …
Your cynicism is simply a pose’
Lord Henry influences others in the text but never directly does anything that is bad.
Basil about the portrait
‘The reason u will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid…
That I have shown in it the secret of my own soul’
Homosexuality may be the secret he is referring to here
Basil about meeting Dorian
‘I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I know that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality…
Was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole souls, my very art itself’
Homosexuality, he is obsessed. He is punished in his mind by God for this absorption.
