The Picture of Dorian Gray

The next day, Dorian doesn’t go out. He worries himself instead with thoughts of death. He is terrorized by visions of James Vane, despite not being entirely convinced that he actually saw the man’s face and not an apparition from his paranoid and guilty conscience. A few days later, however, Dorian convinces himself that he imagined James Vane’s face in the window.

In better spirits, Dorian joins a hunting party that includes the Duchess and her brother, Sir Geoffrey Clouston. He strolls with Geoffrey, and they see a hare in the grass. Dorian asks Geoffrey not to shoot it, taking a sudden liking to the creature. But Geoffrey does not listen, and after the gun blast, not only is the hare’s cry heard, but a human cry as well. Geoffrey immediately becomes annoyed that a man has put himself in the way of gunfire and spoiled his hunting outing. A group of men goes to retrieve the wounded man, who is declared dead after receiving a point-blank shot to the chest.

As Dorian and Lord Henry leave the hunt, Dorian confesses that he feels the man’s death is a bad omen. He also confesses that he does not have the ability to love: “I seem to have lost the passion, and forgotten the desire. I am much too concentrated on myself. My own personality has become a burden to me” (195). Lord Henry entreats Dorian to tell him what is bothering him, but Dorian will only reveal that he feels certain doom approaching. He retires to his room while Lord Henry banters with the Duchess. Alone in his room, Dorian’s feelings of apprehension increase. He resolves to send a letter to Lord Henry explaining his upcoming absence, when Thornton, his gamekeeper, calls upon him.

Dorian is already drawing up a check to provide for the family of the slain man when Thornton informs him that they do not know who the dead man is—although the tattoos on his body have led to speculation that he was a sailor of some sort. Dorian then rushes to the stables to identify the man himself. After commanding a farm-servant to remove the cloth from the dead man’s face, Dorian is thrilled to see that it is James Vane. He then rides triumphantly back home, crying with relief. 

Dorian insists that he has turned over a new leaf, and has decided to be good—which Lord Henry mirthfully dismisses. Dorian tells Lord Henry that he was taken with a young girl of a much lower class, named Hetty. Hetty is lovely and reminds Dorian of Sybil. However, instead of ruining her life, Dorian has decided to end the flirtation without breaking her heart. Lord Henry rejoins that Dorian does not actually know whether Hetty has already killed herself, and that she won’t be happy with a man of her own station after meeting Dorian. He also informs Dorian that people are still buzzing about Basil’s disappearance, then requests that Dorian play some Chopin on the piano.

When Dorian asks Lord Henry how he would respond if he found out Dorian killed Basil, Lord Henry answers, “I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It’s not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder” (203). He then conjectures that Basil did not expire in a romantic death, but more likely fell into the Seine river off of an omnibus. Lord Henry then begins reminiscing about Basil’s painting of Dorian. He claims that the painting characterized Basil’s best phase as an artist, although he never saw the painting afterward (Dorian earlier concocted a story about it being lost or stolen en route to Selby). Dorian tells Lord Henry that he ultimately found the painting loathsome, and that it put him in mind of a couplet from Hamlet: “Like the painting of a sorrow / A face without a heart” (204).

As Dorian continues playing the piano, Lord Henry idly asks him, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose—how does the quotation go? His own soul?” (205). When Dorian becomes upset by this question, Lord Henry laughs it off, dismissing the question as something he heard a vulgar street preacher say. Dorian tells Lord Henry not to make light of the fact that souls can indeed be bought and sold. Lord Henry then asks Dorian how he has managed to keep his youthful good looks. He tells Dorian that he is the same as he was on the first day that the two men met, although Dorian heartily protests this notion. He tells Lord Henry that, although their friendship will always endure, Lord Henry poisoned him with a book once, which he cannot forgive.

Lord Henry admits that Dorian’s moralizing is starting to sound ridiculous, and denies the existence of any such book. He then tells Dorian to join him and a woman named Lady Branksome for lunch the next day. Dorian hesitates, but ultimately keeps quiet and leaves. 

As Dorian walks home, he wonders if Lord Henry was right to say that Dorian would never change, and feels “a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood” (209). He feels regret for his prayer that his age should be trapped in the portrait so that he might remain young. Once again, Dorian resolves to start fresh, and hopes that his treatment of Hetty has somehow altered the portrait. When he looks upon the painting again, however, he’s horrified to find the portrait even more hideous than before. He then questions whether it was actually vanity that caused him to change his course with Hetty. He also considers confessing to the murder of Basil. However, he concludes that, in the absence of all evidence (which he himself has destroyed) he would simply be taken for a madman.

Dorian then takes the knife with which he murdered Basil and decides that he will destroy the painting that has cursed him. Suddenly, a loud cry echoes throughout the house—even a few passersby hear it. Eventually, Dorian’s servants open the door to the forbidden room and find the painting of Dorian, in which the man looks as resplendent as the last time they saw him. In front of the painting is the corpse of a man who was stabbed through the heart: “He [is] withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they [examine] the rings that they [recognize] who it [is]” (213).