Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

50 reviews

starryknightace's review against another edition

challenging medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

1.5

Such an interesting concept but didn't age well into the 21st century. With controversial anti-Semitism and misogyny dotted throughout the story it made it easy to dislike the characters and made for an interesting read. I personally struggle with the classic English writing style and found at times struggling to understand what I was reading, Wilde uses a lot of flowery descriptive paragraphs, which were quite honestly, boring. I found myself 70 pages in and gritting my teeth to get through the rest. Admittedly the action did somewhat pick up and I found myself enthralled to see the confliction in Dorian Gray's moral come to blows. A bit of a lackluster climax but definitely can see the appeal and why the novel is still considered a classic.

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warlockdorian's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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neali's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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bxnnny's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

i found this book to be incredibly dull. the first 60 pages or so consist entirely of two introductions to the story, giving context for the political climate of the time this was published and the fact that so much of the original story was altered or removed. this is supposed to be the original, unaltered, more "graphic" version. but it wasn't graphic at all and was in fact quite a boring and dense letdown. i struggled to get through this because the writing was so dense, the monologues were long, and i just wasn't absorbing much of the information, mainly when lord henry would go on his long, misogynistic rants or the entire chapter in which about a decade of dorian's life passes. i truly have little clue what all was said in that chapter because it was just nonsense! long paragraphs of nonsense. the homosexuality was tame and mildly alluded to and nowhere near as graphic as it was made out to be and if i could travel back in time, i would simply tell everyone to grow up.

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keelia_swafford1's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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thequeercaseofmarius's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Dark, bewitching, and so very gay.

‘Why is your friendship so fateful to young men?’

In The Picture of Dorian Gray; Oscar Wilde crafts a narrative of Queer love, desire, vanity, and fear, embodied in a twink who wishes to remain young and beautiful forever. Wilde’s only novel is one that is both frighteningly fantastical, but also harrowingly personal. In Dorian we see the picture of the dark version of ourselves; the Hyde to our Jekyll, and it is his ability to transform with each reader that makes The Picture of Dorian Gray so enduring as a staple of Queer Literature, and one of the bestselling titles in Penguin’s Classics series.

Wilde’s writing and descriptions are breathtakingly beautiful, so much so that I would find myself rereading the same sentences over and over again. Wilde’s genius and intellect is also evident in the text, and his use of Queercoding through historical and art references is very clever.

Our main cast of characters are so very gay, and it’s crazy because it’s almost like Wilde met my gay friends and acquaintances and wrote a book about us (I like to think that I am Basil). But I also see each character as a different side to the Queer experience; Basil being the Queer artist who represents the beauty and tenderness of love between men, Lord Henry as the witty sass Queen that gay men are often viewed as from the outside, and Dorian represents Queer fears and anxieties that most of us have experienced some point in our life. The result is one of the most ingenious Queer horror stories ever written.

The Picture of Dorian Gray should be a (not-so) straight five-stars, however it does contain some racism and anti-semitism that I can’t ignore. It is a book of it’s time, but I’m also aware of writers and people from Wilde’s time who tried their best at not being racist. I think it’s important to appreciate this novel for everything good about it, but also to recognise it’s faults rather than excuse them, so that we as the readers can grow as people.