Mirror, Mirror On The Wall….

Dorian Gray, in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, is one of the most iconic characters in literature. The basic premise of his story is well known. While his portrait ages, he enjoys everlasting youth and beauty. “I bet he/she has a painting in the attic somewhere” is a phrase used even by those who haven’t read the book to compliment people who look younger than their age. His story is everyone’s story. We all have a little bit of Dorian Gray within us for who hasn’t harbored a desire to drink from the fountain of eternal youth, to stay unwrinkled and unblemished forever?

Basil Hallward, an artist who lives only for his art, is utterly besotted with the amazingly handsome Dorian, his muse. He paints a strikingly beautiful portrait of him but does not want to exhibit it to the world as he has put too much of himself into it. While Dorian sits for his picture, he meets Lord Henry Wotton, Hallward’s old friend who also ends up being captivated by him. Lord Henry encourages him to cherish his good looks and lead a life devoted to the pursuit of sensual pleasure. Basil believes him to be a bad influence on Dorian and asks him to refrain from advising him.

He speaks too late though for Dorian is already succumbing to Lord Henry’s influence. His words prompt him to unwittingly make a wish that will change his life forever. “ If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” He wishes his appearance would remain the same forever just as it is in the portrait and his wish is miraculously granted. He keeps his beauty intact and remains unsullied while the portrait pays the price for his excesses by changing into an ugly picture and becoming a grotesque reminder of his dishonorable behavior.

Lord Henry Wotton becomes Dorian’s mentor, philosopher and guide. He tests his theories and philosophies on the impressionable young man and gives him a book that serves as a blueprint for how he should live his life. Dorian lives a life of extravagance and debauchery ruining himself and those around him. When he breaks a young girl’s heart and drives her to commit suicide, he notices an evil glint in the eye of his portrait. With each of his transgressions, he remains pure and untainted but the figure in the portrait bears the burden of his actions and withers. His soul becomes more dark and damaged as he descends further and further into depravity and his picture continues reflecting the ravages of his lifestyle.

Dorian Gray’s situation reminds us of Faust’s pact with the devil for he is eternally enslaved to the picture. Even the sight of the aging picture fills him with grief. There is no deal with the devil here although one could say that Lord Henry is akin to the devil. He takes a fiendish delight in being the instigator while remaining unscathed himself as a passive observer.

Basil and Henry seem, respectively, like the good and evil conscience of Dorian’s nature. It is interesting that Oscar Wilde had once remarked: “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me: Dorian is what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.” Like Basil, Wilde was a devotee of the cult of beauty and believed in the purity of art but was ostracized by society for being gay. Lord Henry could have been his public persona, the delightful dandy who regaled everyone at parties with his witticisms. And perhaps, Wilde wished to be loved and admired as Dorian and to indulge in a licentious lifestyle without suffering the consequences of his actions.

The book is known for its homosexual undertones. I would even say it is explicitly homoerotic. You don’t have to read between the lines. When it was published, it was considered ‘effeminate’ and ‘contaminating’ and was used against Wilde during his trial with the result that he was eventually prosecuted and imprisoned ‘for acts of gross indecency’ with other men. The fetishized descriptions of Dorian mirror Wilde’s own fascination with the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas with whom he had an affair and who, like Dorian, had a similar resemblance to Adonis, the Greek God of beauty and desire.

The story begins as an amusing novel of manners reflecting the aristocratic lifestyle of old Britain with intellectual and witty conversations in the drawing room and friendships that blossom over tea and strolls in the garden. There are male characters picking flowers for their buttonholes, perfuming themselves with exotic scents and fainting at the drop of a hat, reflecting the dandyism of the era but slowly the story takes a darker turn and incorporates Gothic elements of violence, horror and doubling- the portrait functioning as Dorian’s doppelgänger.

Dorian devotes himself to the study and acquisition of beautiful objects like tapestries,  embroideries, perfumes, musical instruments and jewels. His journey through the dark and dingy streets frequenting an opium den and encountering men of disrepute contrasts with the opulence he enjoys and reflects the lifestyle of unbridled hedonism that he has embraced. For all his vices, I didn’t view the morally depraved Dorian as a villain. I felt the poor guy needed a mother figure to knock sense into him. Eventually his conscience catches up with him and we have one of the best and most brilliant endings in literature.

The ending seems to contradict the preface to the novel which is a meditation on the nature of art and the concept of aestheticism or art for art’s sake. The novel paradoxically has a moral message although Wilde wasn’t a moralist. The question we have to ask ourselves is if art can be be truly beautiful without conveying some truth!

I view the book as a cautionary tale. It is a study of vanity, selfishness, shallowness and moral turpitude. It is a philosophical and psychological novel with a fascinating look into human nature. What is the meaning of beauty, what is the true value of external beauty when it is ephemeral and what is the price we are willing to pay for eternal youth and beauty? Could you be beautiful on the outside without inner beauty? It is a timeless story that addresses these questions that are as relevant as ever in our current times with our unhealthy obsession on physical beauty.

Oscar Wilde’s prose is rich in dialogue in keeping with his talent as a playwright. This book which happens to be his only novel is full of quotable quotes- little nuggets of wisdom mouthed by Lord Henry. Even Dorian remarks on his caustic wit : ‘’You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.’’ We could call these epigrams Henryisms or rather Wildisms for Wilde was well known for his acerbic wit. I had read this fin de siècle novel as a teenager and I enjoyed revisiting it again now with a deeper understanding. There is a misogynistic worldview espoused by some of the characters and that’s the only flaw I can reproach the author with in an otherwise outstanding piece of literature. I leave you with some of the humorous repartee as I conclude my post:

“….there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it & your soul grows sick with longing for things it has forbidden itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

“Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty.”

“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.”

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”  

“……each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion.” 

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” 

“The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future”

And last but not the least, the aphorism that could apply to the book itself: “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

The Picture Of  Dorian Gray is an introspective read that had me completely enthralled. Reading the book is like looking into a mirror and gazing at your own soul.

 

 

 

 

Social Distancing With Mrs. Dalloway!

A recent article in The New Yorker points out that people are reaching for Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to read during the pandemic. Mrs. Dalloway, the titular character of the book is preparing for a party she is hosting in the evening and goes about her day running errands around London. According to Evan Kindley, the writer of the piece, “At a time when our most ordinary acts—shopping, taking a walk—have come to seem momentous, a matter of life or death, Clarissa’s vision of everyday shopping as a high-stakes adventure resonates in a peculiar way…”and she adds, “We are all Mrs. Dalloway now…”. Clarissa Dalloway’s mundane activities laced with a feeling of impending doom strike a chord with the readers as “she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.” The fact that Clarissa Dalloway is possibly a survivor of the global influenza pandemic of 1918 adds to the book’s current relevance.

I read this book for the first time coincidentally during the pandemic and not because of it and I was awed by its structural virtuosity. Like Joyce’s Ulysses which could have served as its inspiration, it is set in the course of a single day. The book is essentially plotless and it seems like there is not a lot going on but there is a lot going on as during the course of that day when Clarissa is planning her party and thinking about buying flowers, she reminisces about her childhood, her youth, her loves, her life and the choices she has made.There are moments of epiphany within the mundane moments.

Clarissa is not just Mrs. Dalloway, the lonely wife of a prominent MP in the conservative government but an intriguing woman with a past. An old flame Peter Walsh who has just returned from India drops by on the afternoon of the party. Peter was madly in love with her but she chose to marry Richard Dalloway, the safe option who could provide her with a stable life. She may have been in love with Sally too, a wild girl from her youth who also ends up making an appearance at the party.

Parallel to Clarissa’s story is the story of the young veteran, Septimus Smith who suffers from what was known then as shell shock and is now referred to as PTSD. As he retreats more and more from reality and loses his ability to feel, his wife and caretaker Rezia desperately yearns for babies and holds on to her impossible dreams.

In this modernist novel, the whole narrative flows in a stream of consciousness style from one person to the other, from one flashback to the other. This technique allows us to enter the minds of the characters- we know what they think and not just what they say or do. There are no chapters. Woolf subverts the traditional linear writing styles of literature and creates a new literary aesthetic. The narrative is disjointed and it is up to the readers to piece all the disparate strands together. The act of reading might seem like a tedious task and disorienting at first but ultimately becomes a transcendent experience.

Woolf employs a combination of free direct and indirect discourse, evident from the opening lines of the book itself:

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach. 

What a lark! What a plunge!” 

The use of indirect discourse is a technique that enables her to effortlessly meander in and out of her characters’ minds and capture their private thoughts. Along with the characters’ sensory experience of the world outside, there is an unceasing and undulating flow of interior action. Isn’t this exactly how our minds work, wandering from thought to thought and hurtling through time and space? She jumps to a new character without warning and yet the rambling style flows seamlessly and has a cadence to it. While reading, I marveled at Woolf’s ingenious use of free indirect speech. It’s sheer genius.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf wrote that “Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners”. She uses the metaphor in this novel to connect events and characters in an expanding web like structure with Mrs. Dalloway at the center and the other characters attached to her by threads around her however tenuous they might be.

“And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin 
thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which (as she dozed there) became hazy with the sound of bells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spider’s thread is blotted with rain –drops, and, burdened, sags down. So she slept.

 And Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whithbread hesitated at the corner of Conduit Street at the very moment that Millicent Bruton, lying on the sofa, let the thread snap; snored.”

The characters move back and forth in time. In a novel that is not in chronological order -where the past is constantly interspersed with the present, the bells of Big Ben are a constant reminder of the linear and inexorable passage of time. Big Ben’s regular tolling is also a reminder that time and tide wait for no one. Death is the only concrete and inevitable reality.

Death is a constant and menacing presence lurking around. Through the description of  Septimus’ PTSD, we have a penetrating insight into mental illness and how shoddily it was treated at the time. Clarissa loves life and escapes her sorrows by throwing parties (although tempted at times by death she doesn’t act on that impulse) whereas Septimus is in utter despair. It is then surprising to consider that Woolf intended Septimus to be Clarissa’s double. Her life affirming presence is a contrast to Septimus’ depressing state of mind; he is removed from the world while she throws herself heartily into it.

Although they seem to be polar opposites, the discerning reader can sense that they are two sides of the same coin. Apart from sharing the physical trait of a beak nose, they read or think of the same lines from Shakespeare: “Fear no more the heat ’o the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages.” The lines are from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline and imply that death is not to be feared but celebrated. The two never meet but observe the same external events like the passing of a motor car and a skywriting plane. They may seem to be in different mental states but the line between sanity and insanity is a thin one and their two stories intersect with a forceful climax at the end.

Woolf suffered from bipolar disease and attempted suicide a few times before her final ‘successful’ attempt. I got goosebumps reading about death and suicide in the novel knowing that it eventually became her own story. I was struck by the recurring theme of waves and the sea for Woolf died by drowning and both Septimus and Clarissa identify with images of water. Even the writing style mimics the motion of water. The sentences and paragraphs with the ebb and flow of memories and thoughts are uncontrolled like the movement of water.

To go with the imagery of water, the novel addresses the concept of sexual fluidity. Septimus has sexual feelings for his commanding officer Evans and Clarissa reflecting on her youth thinks that the moment Sally Seton kissed her was the most exquisite moment of her life. She is definitely attracted to her and to Peter too. She could have had bisexual tendencies. She also wonders about the nature of her daughter’s relationship with her history teacher. Woolf was bold and ahead of her time in her exploration of repressed sexual desires given that Mrs. Dalloway was written during a period when homosexuality was considered an outrage.

The novel offers a glimpse into post war British society with its class structures, the falling Empire, increased industrialization and the devastation brought on by World War 1. It is also a window into human nature touching upon love and marriage, unfulfilled wishes, sexuality, mental illness, feminism, mortality, death and suicide. To me one of the most poignant moments of the story is when Richard buys a bouquet of roses for Clarissa with the intention of telling her he loves her but can’t bring himself to say the words but yet “she understood without his speaking.”The conflict between solitariness and connection is pronounced in an increasingly alienating world no matter how many glittering parties you host.

In the current time of social distancing, we don’t have the luxury of hosting parties like Clarissa but the novel resonates as just getting through the day by completing daily chores requires endurance under these grim circumstances. And we have the same existential thoughts like the characters …..What is life and how do we live and find meaning in it when it goes by in the blink of an eye? Along with physical confinement, there is that crushing feeling of loneliness and much like Clarissa who feels the need to socialize recognizing all the same that it is a superficial way of connecting, we turn to our phones- to social media and to zoom calls in a desperate attempt to reach out however shallow the connections might be.

Mrs. Dalloway is a challenging read as the narrative continuously shifts perspectives and leaps across time and space but I think that creates a powerful psychological effect and an almost real and palpable sense of the way the minds of the characters shift from one thought to the other. I think this is one of the most stylistically beautiful and brilliant books of the English language I have ever read. And during the pandemic it was one of the books that helped me get through my own day and routine just like Mrs. Dalloway’s daily activities provided some structure in a chaotic, uncertain world.

 

 

A View Without A Room

Do you wonder what happens to the characters in a book after finishing the last page and putting it down? Although it is exciting to imagine how their lives would have turned out, our visions of their futures do not always align with those of the authors of sequels. A continuation of another author’s book is not always a good idea. There are hundreds of sequels and spinoffs inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Although a few are entertaining, they don’t live up to the original. Even the sequels written by the original authors fall far short of the primary text. The example that comes immediately to mind is The Testaments, the continuation of The Handmaid’s Tale which is entirely different in tone from its predecessor or Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman which reveals a very dark side to Atticus Finch compared to his portrayal in To Kill A Mockingbird. The readers do not want all the gaps filled. Endings are what make books amazing and some things are best left ambiguous or unanswered.  

I recently re-read The Room With A View by E. M. Forster. I was basking in that dreamy state of enchantment along with Lucy and George in the room with a view at the Pension Bertolini in Florence where they return for their honeymoon. Although Forster didn’t write a sequel as such, he returned to the characters fifty years later in an epilogue.

The book was published in 1908 and the author in 1958 imagined how their lives would have turned out. I had often wondered myself about the characters. Will they have children? Will they live happily ever after? In those fifty years they have lived through two world wars. I am a little nervous as I am not sure I want to know what happened to them. I am a die- hard romantic and didn’t want my illusions to be shattered but in the end, my curiosity got the better of me. 

Here’s the epilogue if you are interested in finding out how Forster envisioned the future of his characters. Warning: Read at your own peril. You risk disillusionment.  

A View without a Room

A Room with a View was published in 1908. Here we are in 1958 and it occurs to me to wonder what the characters have been doing during the interval. They were created even earlier than 1908. The Italian half of the novel was almost the first piece of fiction I attempted. I laid it aside to write and publish two other novels, and the returned to it and added the English half. It is not my preferred novel – The Longest Journey is that – but it may fairly be called the nicest. It contains a hero and heroine who are supposed to be good, good-looking and in love – and who are promised happiness. Have they achieved it?

Let me think.

Lucy (Mrs George Emersen) must now be in her late sixties, George in his early seventies – a ripe age, though not as ripe as my own. They are still a personable couple, and fond of each other and of their children and grandchildren. But where do they live? Ah, that is the difficulty, and that is why I have entitled this article ‘A View without a Room’. I cannot think where George and Lucy live.

After their Florentine honeymoon they probably settled down in Hampstead. No – in Highgate. That is pretty clear, and the next six years were from the point of view of amenity the best they ever experienced. George cleared out of the railway and got a better-paid clerkship in a government office, Lucy brought a nice little dowry along with her, which they were too sensible not to enjoy, and Miss Bartlett left them what she termed her little all. (Who would have thought it of Cousin Charlotte? I should never have thought anything else.) They had a servant who slept in, and were becoming comfortable capitalists when World War I exploded – the war that was to end war – and spoiled everything.

George instantly became a conscientious objector. He accepted alternative service, so did not go to prison, but he lost his government job and was out of the running for Homes for Heroes when peace came. Mrs Honeychurch was terribly upset by her son-in-law’s conduct.

Lucy now got on her high horse and declared herself a conscientious objector too, and ran a more immediate risk by continuing to play Beethoven. Hun music! She was overheard and reported, and the police called. Old Mr Emerson, who lived with the young couple, addressed the police at length. They told him he had better look out. Shortly afterwards he died, still looking out and confident that Love and Truth would see humanity through in the end.

They saw the family through, which is something. No government authorized or ever will authorize either Love or Truth, but they worked privately in this case and helped the squalid move from Highgate to Carshalton. The George Emersons now had two girls and a boy and were beginning to want a real home – somewhere in the country where they would take root and unobtrusively found a dynasty. But civilization was not moving that way. The characters in my other novels were experiencing similar troubles. Howard’s End is a hunt for a home. India is a Passage for Indians as well as English. No resting-place.

For a time Windy Corner dangled illusively. After Mrs Honeychurch’s death there was a chance of moving into that much loved house. But Freddy, who had inherited it, was obliged to sell and realize the capital for the upbringing of his family. And unsuccessful yet prolific doctor, Freddy could not do other than sell. Windy Corner disappeared, its garden was built over, and the name of Honeychurch resounded in Surrey no more.

In due course World War II broke out – the one that was to end with a durable peace. George instantly enlisted. Being both intelligent and passionate, he could distinguish between a Germany that was not much worse than England and a Germany that was devilish. At the age of fifty he could recognize in Hitlerism an enemy of the heart as well as of the head and the arts. He discovered that he loved fighting and had been starved by its absence, and also discovered that away from his wife he did not remain chaste.

For Lucy the war was less varied. She gave some music lessons and broadcast some Beethoven, who was quite all right this time, but the little flat at Watford, where she was trying to keep things together against George’s return, was bombed, the loss of her possessions and mementos was complete, and the same thing happened to their married daughter, away at Nuneaton.

At the front George rose to the rank of corporal, was wounded and taken prisoner in Africa, and imprisoned in Mussolini’s Italy, where he found the Italians sometimes sympathetic as they had been in his tourist days, and sometimes less sympathetic.

When Italy collapsed he moved northward through the chaos towards Florence. The beloved city had changed, but not unrecognizably. The Trinita*0224* Bridge had been destroyed, both ends of the Ponte Vecchio were in a mess, but the Piazza Signoria, where once a trifling murder had occurred, still survived. So did the district where the Pension Bertolini had once flourished – nothing damaged at all.

And George set out – as I did myself a few years later – to locate the particular building. He failed. For though nothing is damaged all is changed. The houses on that stretch of the Lungarno have been renumbered and remodelled and, as it were, remelted, some of the facades have been extended, others have shrunk, so that it is impossible to decide which room was romantic half a century ago. George had therefore to report to Lucy that the View was still there and that the Room must be there, too, but could not be found. She was glad of the news, although at that moment she was homeless. It was something to have retained a View, and, secure in it and in their love as long as they have one another to love, George and Lucy await World War III – the one that would end war and everything else, too.

Cecil Vyse must not be omitted from this prophetic retrospect. He moved out of the Emersons’ circle but was not altogether out of mine. With his integrity and intelligence he was destined for confidential work, and in 1914 he was seconded to Information or whatever the withholding of information was then entitled. I had an example of his propaganda, and a very welcome one, at Alexandria. A quiet little party was held on the outskirts of that city, and someone wanted a little Beethoven. The hostess demurred. Hun music might compromise us. But a young officer spoke up. ‘No, it’s all right,’ he said, ‘a chap who know about those things from the inside told me Beethoven’s definitely Belgian.’

The chap in question must have been Cecil. The mixture of mischief and culture is unmistakable. Our hostess was reassured, the ban was lifted, and the Moonlight Sonata shimmered into the desert.

At first I regretted reading this piece. I was disappointed…no, I was disenchanted. I wanted to freeze that moment for eternity when Lucy and George were on their honeymoon whispering sweet nothings and smothering each other with kisses.

I find out that George and Lucy were happily married. They had three children but no house to call their own. “Windy Corner disappeared, its garden was built over, and the name of Honeychurch resounded in Surrey no more..” is one sad little sentence. But surely you can build a home without owning a house?

George, a conscientious objector during World War 1 decided to enroll  when World War 2 broke out.”He discovered that he loved fighting and had been starved by its absence, and also discovered that away from his wife he did not remain chaste.”Oh no! So he was unfaithful to Lucy. So much for the sweet love story! My cousin pointed out that “he did not remain chaste” could refer to the fact that he loved fighting and enrolled in the war. But the words “away from his wife” make me believe otherwise.

Some things did not change. Good old Mr. Emerson, my favorite character of the original novel was still confident that Love and Truth would see humanity through. The sanctimonious Charlotte who sort of redeems herself in the end of the novel by bringing the couple together leaves her money to Lucy. Forster believes in her innate goodness when in parentheses he states that even if that were hard to believe, he would never have thought anything else of Cousin Charlotte. 

Forster writes about the characters as if they were real. While bringing up Cecil, he writes: “He moved out of the Emersons’ circle but was not altogether out of mine.” In Alexandria at a party when they are hesitating to play Beethoven as German music might compromise them, someone refers to an officer who believed that Beethoven was Belgian and Forster believes they must be talking about Cecil. How delightful is this little snippet of information! It makes us see Cecil in an entirely different light. Forster’s characters are not intrinsically good or evil but human and as fabulous as flawed. 

Was this postscript necessary? Reading it is akin to attending a reunion of friends after decades and catching up on news and gossip. We might feel that it ruins the romantic note on which A Room With A View ends. But on reading it again, I quite like the outcome. Forster portrays life and life comprises of love, marriage, wars, birth, death..in other words-adventures and misadventures or ‘muddles’ to use his own preferred word. Lucy and George are a happy couple and still in love. Life came in the way. Marriage is not an ending but a beginning. If they had outgrown their love, I would have been disillusioned. But love takes on different expressions as you go through the trials and tribulations in life. Even if we assume George had been unfaithful to Lucy, he was away from her at war. There is no excuse for infidelity but like the saying goes ‘All is fair in love and war’. Let’s not forget that A Room with A View exudes a certain gentleness and optimism as it is a story written before the wars.  

I think if Forster had elaborated on this epilogue we could easily have had another A Room With A View with a similar happy ending. It could have retained the very apt title of the epilogue, A View Without A Room.  Neither George nor Forster are able to locate the room with a view when they go back to Florence. It doesn’t matter if the room is there or not. Love is not necessarily diminished by the tragedies of life, on the contrary, it is often strengthened. The room is no longer there but the view exists and that’s all that matters. 

What are your views on A View Without A Room? Do you think Forster should have left well alone or do you like the new view?