The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

We read did a buddy read with our good friend Nicole Knudsen from @thegodfreyguide! The Godfrey Audio Guide is a wonderful fiction podcast about a delightfully creepy art museum and all the beautiful pieces of art held within it’s boundaries. GO LISTEN to The Godfrey AND listen to our crossover episode with Nicole on IGTV, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Now to Dorian Gray. This book is canon, however, neither Sky nor I had to read it for school, so this was my first pass.

Anyone who doesn’t realize how gay this book is, might be a bit oblivious. The gay coding was not so coded for me and it was delightful! Overall, I didn’t really enjoy reading the book. I thought it would be more gothic horror fiction than the lecture on morality and class than it actually is. That being said, the last half of the book was very good, that is when things actually started happening to Dorian beyond going to the club and the theatre and dressing for dinner.

It’s a pretty dense read, as books from the 18th and 19th century are. Honestly, if you want to read some Oscar Wilde, give yourself a laugh and go for “Importance of Being Earnest” or better yet, go support your local theater and go see it! - Ford

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Oh, Dorian, how I wish being queer was not something that made you spiral, because this entire book is the lengths that queer people in stupid-old-morality-times went through to be seen in secret. The book also feels very autobiographical to Wilde himself, in his rejection of societal standards and understanding of his needs as those separate from what is deemed “acceptable” in England at the time he was alive.

It made me so sad, reading the reasons for which people were shunned, killed, or committed suicide. I kept hoping for a fictional world in which they would all be ok if only Dorian could reverse the curse.

None of that happened, because the world is cruel to anyone who is “other” by the currently wealthiest majority, and everyone tries to claw their way towards the persisted top.

The saddest part is that the book can be applied to the current “influencer” moment. How people seek validation on the specific parameters set by this subculture.

I pity Dorian and the people he represents. I wish he was loved, just as he was and not as a shell of himself. -Sky