Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

66 reviews

rubynicoll's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

another classic down 💪🏼

i'm not even sure how to describe the experience of reading this book. i normally dislike classics, but this was gripping, and thrilling, and twisted and so disgustingly vile.

i felt for dorian, in the beginning. he was just a young man, led astray by the lure of hedonism. henry was enticing, and cunning, and awful. i could see how his influence warped dorian into becoming the self-absorbed man he became.

but ultimately, it was weakness, left unchecked, that ruined him. many times he wanted to run from henry, to ignore his shallow "advice," to save what was left of his soul. but he didn't.

at the end, i saw a glimmer of hope for him. i thought, perhaps, he could change. but even his hope of self-improvement was selfish. he didn't feel true remorse.

ugh, this book. i feel like i have a million things to say about how it describes perfectly the nature of humanity, but it all sounds pretentious and wanky.

more like dorian GAY, tho, amirite? the homosexuality motifs are barely concealed. the closet is glass.

Content Warnings

emeralddoha's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

locomotive_xo's review against another edition

4.0

dark reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

When thinking about this book as the inner turmoil between the different versions of himself Oscar Wilde felt lived inside him, I really enjoy it. The essays at the beginning really helped to bring important context to the story, and I was easily able to draw the parallels between Wilde’s own real life experiences and what was happening in the story. I find it very relatable in the sense of having all these truths about you, and what you choose to hide and what you choose to show, who you choose to love openly, and how what you leave behind of yourself festers and curdles inside you.

There is a sort of melancholy you get throughout this book that I really enjoy, and the moments when the self-loathing and repression are so strong, you feel it as a heavy pit in your stomach. Sweet Basil!

I will admit I’m horribly terrible with philosophy and some of Lord Henry Wotton’s ramblings about life and morality truly had me dizzy, but the irony of his character shined through and was what I ultimately clung to. I did want to kick him a few times. I’m gonna be honest, I had to Google “did Oscar Wilde hate women?” while reading this 😭 just to make sure because there were so many long monologues about how women were boring and had no value and I was like hm alright.

Ooo and also what struck me was a lot of the discussion around puritanism, especially during the Victorian era in which is was written. I feel like it resonates especially right now…I don’t have fully fledged thoughts about it, but it did sit with me.

Fav quotes (looking now, I should’ve jotted down more substantive ones, but these are mostly ones that made me giggle it looks like 😭):

“Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.”

“The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.”

“I quite admit that I adored you, madly extravagantly, absurdly.”

“He grew more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and often with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy, sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the course, bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.”

“It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.” (PTV was on to something…)

“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts of the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee in the music room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely.”

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

charvi_48's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Personally, chapter 11 keeps a 5 star review.

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