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

Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

22 reviews

lunar_witch's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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

Content Warnings

niles_reads's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I've been experiencing the symptoms of BPD while reading this book.

Chapter eleven was a snoozefest to get through, though afterwards I enjoyed the rest of the book a lot better than the part before it.

I understood this book, I understood its message, but my god will you ever finish a sentence, Mr Wilde? I would start reading a sentence then forget what I even read by the end of it.

It's a 4.5 for me. If chapter 12 and onwards didn't exist, it would've been lower.

Content Warnings

aidualc_clau's review against another edition

4.0

dark mysterious tense 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

My first Classic! What an experience really. I loved the old English prose, and how do I see elements of this story on the next generations of books. However I didn't give 5 stars because of few things. First was that I wish that the story had gone deeper with the things Dorian had done. The passing of time, wasnt executed well, it didn't flow. Thirdly, I felt that I wanted more of the book, and I think that was because of the overhyped this book is on the internet. After all, I love the book!

Content Warnings

hazellikestoread's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I’m really not sure what to rate this book. It was undeniably good, and the context in which it was written and what is has to say about that society is fascinating. From a modern perspective, not much happened in the book and there were a lot of statements characters gave that I disagreed with- lord Henry wonton seemed awfully full of himself. But keeping in mind the context, it was an excellent read.

Content Warnings

lovingblackcat's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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