Reviews with content warning for Antisemitism - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

445 reviews

terri_writing's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

amyjaney22's review against another edition

4.0

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Gayer than I expected. Second half was better than the first

Content Warnings

amre23's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A very interesting story. Many sentences were beautifully written and others a tad redundant. Overall enjoyed the story. A few parts dragged on with the descriptions of w.e. was happening. Good points to learn from the greediness some have with youth and the obsession to be considered "interesting".

Vanity is rampant in almost every character.

Henry can kick rocks. He's an asshat.

Content Warnings

maurice_greenware's review against another edition

5.0

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

ej19's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book took a long time to get started which made me think I wasn’t enjoying it however I read the final 100 pages very quickly and found myself fascinated by the story and Dorian Gray’s choices, actions and feelings. I understand why this book must be read by all those who are young and have ever been young.

Content Warnings

chasinggrace's review against another edition

3.0

reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Look, I know this is a beloved story. I slept on my review too so I wouldn’t be too rash, but I have to say: this was mid. I was expecting more from such an iconic story.

Pros:

For the first third of the story, I appreciated the “flowery” language (that’s a pun - if you’ve read this, you know Wilde was quite obsessed with describing the surrounding flora in ever scene. Purposeful? Probably. Useful? Debatable).
Lord Henry was characterized well, and I think how you interpret his dialogue truly impacts your impression of his character. I read him with a perpetual light-hearted sarcasm, which is to say that I didn’t take a single thing he said seriously. He characterized the shallow Brit exceptionally well, especially when he made his comments about class. He forces you to stop and think, “do I agree with what he’s saying, or is he just speaking with such pomp that I tend to agree with him based solely off of the confidence with which he speaks?”
The amount of times characters flopped on couches was hilarious to me. They were always flinging themselves to and fro, it really added to the drama of it all.
Characters descending into true madness is fascinating to me, always.

Cons:

Where this story fell apart from me was what seems to happen off-page. Wilde focuses so intently on setting or history or flippant dialogue between characters, but doesn’t spend nearly enough time focusing on what Gray is actually DOING. In the latter half, years and years pass by where we are just told that Gray is being a dick - he’s following Lord Henry’s belief system and living a debaucherous life. But we don’t SEE IT, and that’s where Wilde lost me. If you’re going to critique good vs bad, if we are going to debate what makes or breaks a soul, if we are going to have conversations of morality, then let’s actually see the “bad” things he does so we can form our own opinions! Instead, we just have to trust that he’s become vapid and treats people poorly because he is living without physical consequences. That was a huge miss for me.
For most of the novel, that picture is degrading in the attic off-page. I think it would have been a much more interesting experiment if, every time Gray did something, he ran to go check the portrait. We would have been able to better measure the degradation of his mind as he debated internally about what the painting was telling him. But again, this was missed with the time jumps.
The gender hypocrisy was very heavy-handed. One could argue that it was purposeful, but given the timeframe that this story was written, I think it is just a reflection of how men actually thought of women. Multiple times, women were characterized as overly romantic, shallow, and vapid. But the ENTIRE STORY centers men who want to do nothing but romanticize their life based off of being beautiful and observing beautiful things.
Also, trigger warning for blatant antisemitism.
Was Gray born a narcissist or was he made into one? Either way, this man seriously lacked empathy for others and I don’t know if it can all be blamed on Lord Henry’s influence.
My favorite character died and that pissed me off.

Maybe I just need to stop reading about privileged men in high British society, because the way they love the sound of their own voice is CRAZY.

Content Warnings