The episode when the real transference begins is in
Chapter 2, when Basil unveils his final picture of Dorian and Dorian becomes immensely
depressed when he considers his youthful beauty and then contemplates that his own
beauty will wither and fade with age. Note what he says to justify his dislike of the
painting:
"I
am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you
have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes
something from me, and gives something to it. Oh if it were only the other way! If the
picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will
mock me some day - mock me
horribly!"
Ironically, of
course, the painting will mock, Dorian, though not quite in the way that he imagined. We
are not told what forces specifically enact the magic of allowing the painting to age
and Dorian to stay in a stasis of youth and beauty, but it is strongly suggested that
these forces are demonic. Consider the two main characters in the novel, apart from
Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry. These two characters seem to perform the function of the
angel and the devil sitting on Dorian's shoulders. Basil always tries to show Dorian
what he could be, whereas Lord Henry leads Dorian on into ever-greater depths of
hedonism and unthinking selfishness. Certainly this Mephistopheles-like role that Lord
Henry plays hints strongly at the demonic.
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