The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [115]
In a sense the Dream Stage of the story continues for a long time. Dorian throws himself into a relentless round of sensual gratification, sometimes aided and abetted by his friend Lord Henry, and seems able to indulge himself wherever his fancy leads him. But gradually we are made aware that a dark aura of scandal is surrounding his name. A growing succession of young men and women are being destroyed, even committing suicide, because of their association with him. We learn of his increasingly morbid fascination with historical tales about sexual excess, murder and insanity ('there were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful'); and although after many years he still looks outwardly as young and beautiful as on the day he was painted by Hallward, the portrait locked away in his house shows more and more signs of a terrible corruption.
The Frustration Stage is setting in, and eventually someone - Hallward himself - has the courage to confront Dorian with the shocking stories which are circulating about him. Gray reacts with cold rage and cold-bloodedly murders Hallward (like Macbeth's murder of Banquo, a new `dark act' committed in an attempt to secure his position). An increasingly nightmarish atmosphere now shrouds the tale, as Gray blackmails a friend into dissolving Hallward's body in acid, fills the house with orchids to disguise the stench and heads off to the opium dens of east London ('dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new'). Here, in the fume-filled shadows, he is threatened with a revolver by Sibyl Vane's sailor brother, who has returned from years in Australia, bent on revenge.
Gray manages to extricate himself from this nightmare scene but is haunted by the mysterious figure of Jim Vane. Staying at a country house, he glimpses Vane peering through the conservatory windows and faints, and although Vane is accidentally killed the next day by a shooting party, Gray's thoughts are now in a ceaseless turmoil of horror and `wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood' before he had embarked on corrupting and destroying so many people's lives. 'A new life! That was what he wanted ... he would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.'
So he muses, alone one night in his house, and decides to take another look at his portrait, which he finds not only looking `more loathsome, if possible, than before' but shining with newly-spilt blood. If only he could `kill this monstrous life-soul' he thinks, `he could be at peace'. He takes up the knife with which he stabbed Hallward, to slash the picture. There is a tremendous crash and a cry, and his servants rush upstairs to find
`hanging on the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man ... with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage. It was not until they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.'
Carmen
Our next example is the story of Bizet's opera Carmen (1875), based on a novel by Prosper Merimee. When we meet the hero Don Jose, a corporal in the army, he is in love with a shy young girl, Micaela, and she with him. All might seem well, but our sense that something is about to disturb their happiness is aroused by the entry of the beautiful and imposing Carmen, a classic Temptress. She tries to flirt with Jose, at first in vain. She stalks off, but not before she has thrown down a blood-red flower at his feet. Wavering for a moment, he picks it up and places it next to his heart. Micaela