Comprehension

·         What are you told of Dorian’s lifestyle?

Dorian Gray tries to show his beauty to the world. As a result very young men saw in him “the true realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the world”.

·         What is for him the greatest of arts?

The greatest of arts for Dorian Gray is Life.

·         Why is Dorian Gray an ideal for educated young men? Why is being consulted on matters of fashion not enough for Dorian?

Because they try to copy Dorian’s lifestyle to become more important in the society.

Because “he sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the sense its highest realization. ”

·         What is the common attitude to “the worship of the senses” and what has this attitude caused?

It is a natural instinct of terror about passion and sensations. This attitude caused a feeling of loss.

·         What are the principles of Dorian’s “new Hedonism”?

New Hedonism was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, ugly puritanism that is having its curious revival.

Interpretation

·         What kind of narrator does Wild use in his novel? Do you feel his presence?

The third person omniscient narrator. Yes I feel his presence.

·         What idea of life is expressed in the final sentence of the passage?

The idea of a life that men must live every moment as if it were the last.

·         Where in the last paragraph does Wilde quote Pater?

Wilde quotes Pater when he said: its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.

·         What does the historian Arnold Hauser underline about the 1880s in the following paragraph?

He underlines that the younger generation is hostile to the bourgeoisie and its aim is to enjoy life and to become enraptured with it.

·         Could this sort of fin – de- siècle hedonism be a suitable term for the younger generation of our age?

No, I don’t think.

·         Considering the end of the novel, how can this story be interpreted?

As a criticism of the moral hypocrisy, vulgarity and materialism of Victorian society.