The Imaginary Realm of Dorian Gray: A Lacanian Analysis

by Grace Stainback

Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of the picture and turned

towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with

pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time.

He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to

him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him

like a revelation. He had never felt it before. (Wilde 27)

In this scene, in what psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan would deem a highly crucial

moment in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian sets his eyes upon an immaculate

version of himself, a beautiful image free from the gnawing of age and the trials of life. And thus

he is propelled into the destructive relationship with his own portrait, or rather, in Lacanian

terms, his mirror image. His identification with this idealized version of himself serves as the

catalyst for the unfolding of plot in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Interpreting the psychological

stages of Dorian’s development in conjunction with Lacan’s theory of psychological

development offers a revealing model through which to analyze Dorian’s self-inflicted demise.

According to Lacan, the human psyche functions within three orders: the Real, the

Imaginary, and the Symbolic. The incorporation of the two latter orders depends upon a subject’s

eventual mastery of language and how one uses it to relate to the world. In the earliest stages of

human existence, we are dominated solely by our primal senses and needs, free from the

influence of language. It is at “this is the stage, then, when you were closest to the pure
 2

materiality of existence, or what Lacan terms ‘the Real’" (Felluga). Entrance into the Imaginary

order is characterized by the mirror stage, in which a child reacts to his reflection in a mirror for

the first time. The mirror image looking back at the child represents a unified, idealized image of

oneself---free from the limitations of mortality and incongruity characteristic of the physical

self---and a construct that the child will then yearn to internalize. This marks a change from need

(food, water, etc) to demand (a longing to incorporate the rival mirror image into oneself):

“Whereas needs can be fulfilled, demands are, by definition, unsatisfiable; in other words, we are

already making the movement into the sort of lack that, for Lacan, defines the human

subject” (Felluga).

Prior to Dorian’s encounter with his own portrait, he is portrayed as a child, untainted by

the world and unaware of his own beauty and youth. In Lacanian terms, Dorian still dwells

within the realm of the Real order. It is this innocent child who looks upon his idealized,

“mirror” image, sees its potential, and thus feels a rivalry with it. He berates Basil for creating a

version of his image that will outlast him in youth and purity: “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.” (Wilde 28)

Lacan explains this phenomenon in his essay “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the

Function of the I As Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”: “These reflections lead me to

recognize in the spatial captation manifested in mirror-stage, even before the social dialectic, the

effect in man of an organic insufficiency in his natural reality---in so far as any meaning can be

given to the word ‘nature’” (4).

 3

To combat his perceived “organic insufficiency,” Dorian begins to internalize the portrait

as a part of his identity, yearning to shun the reality of worldly influence upon his new, idealized

self. The onset of the mirror stage marks an “assumption of the armour of an alienating identity,

which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental development” (Lacan 4).

He thus resists the onset of the Symbolic order, another dimension in psychological

maturation, achieved with the mastery of language, which allows one to integrate constructs

created in the Imaginary order within the accepted morals and conventions of society. Entrance

into the Symbolic order helps one to deal with others; when one is focused entirely upon oneself

he lacks the ability to function appropriately in the Symbolic realm (Felluga).

It is interesting to note that Lacan cites the onset of the Oedipus complex as an indicator

that one has moved into the Symbolic order. When one is made to recognize that killing one’s

father and sleeping with one’s mother does not align itself with accepted social standards, one

has now begun to understand “self” in relation to others (Felluga). It is thus important to point

out that Dorian lacked both a mother and a father throughout his rearing. His failure to

experience the Oedipus complex may have had disastrous effects on his ability to align himself

with the constructs of others and the constructs of society.

Dorian’s idealized identity quickly becomes the sole player in his life. In other words,

Dorian Gray falls in love with himself, at least, in love with the perfection depicted in his

portrait. He becomes an eternal dweller in the Imaginary order, driven by his own narcissism and

encouraged by his friend, Lord Henry Wotton, who represents the epitome of a man living within

his own imaginary world of self-authored theories and doctrines.

 4

Dorian’s isolated perception first makes a tragedy of his relationship with Sybil Vane. He

falls in love with the pleasure she brings him, with the imaginary world she creates in her art.

When she falls in love with him, she condemns the imaginary constructs of her life: “‘You taught

me what reality really is! . . . You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is

but a reflection’” (Wilde 84). Sybil awakens from her own imaginary world, but in doing so

removes herself from Dorian’s. The all-too-realistic version of Sybil is rejected by him, leading

to her suicide.

As Dorian’s destructive behavior becomes apparent, Basil Hallward, in contrast to Lord

Henry, becomes the embodiment of the Symbolic order, disseminating the moral doctrines of

society and warning Dorian against his self-conscious degradation. Basil’s portrait of Dorian,

too, becomes a reminder of the laws within the Symbolic order; it “trades places” with Dorian

and becomes a visual manifestation of Dorian’s soul as he falls into a life of sin. Dorian willingly

welcomes this contract: “Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys

and wilder sins---he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his

shame: that was all” (Wilde 102).

Detesting his marred image, Dorian conceals the portrait; it is left in hiding to suffer the

ramifications his actions have in the Symbolic order as Dorian continues to lead his life as he

sees fit within the Imaginary order. Like Basil, the portrait serves as a constant reminder of his

fallacies, eliciting anger and guilt within Dorian. These emotions come to a head when Dorian

reveals the marred portrait to Basil, who is horrified: “You have done enough evil in your life.

My God! don’t you see that accursed thing leering at us!” (Wilde 151). Dorian is unable to stand

Basil’s attack upon the image with which he truly identifies and murders his friend, silencing the
 5

only moral, societal influence of the Symbolic order present in his life. His desperate act,

however, does not erase his slowly gnawing guilt.

Dorian Gray’s doomed social relationships reveal the immobility of his psychological

development; with his gaze still fixed upon his idealized image he cannot properly relate to

others. Indeed, Lacan cites the conclusion of the mirror stage as crucial to integration into the

society: “This moment in which the mirror-stage comes to an end inaugurates, by the

identification with the imago of the counterpart and the drama of primordial jealousy, the

dialectic that will henceforth link the I to socially elaborated situations.” (5).

In the end, he cannot stand the guilt that his own depravity has caused him and

desperately seeks to destroy it: “As it had killed the painter, so would it kill the painter’s work,

and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead he would be free. It would

kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace” (Wilde

212). The “it” here being his knife, he displaces the blame for Basil’s murder from himself onto

the knife, as though the knife committed the crime---and suggests that it may also clean himself

of his own guilt by slashing the portrait. However, as he plunges the knife into the painting---

which is, in essence, a part of himself---he destroys his physical body in the act.

For me, this transference of destruction symbolizes the notion that, although Dorian

rejected the ideals of the Imaginary order, one cannot reject it entirely as a psychological

construct embedded into each human’s development. Destroying this aspect of his soul destroyed

him. Indeed, despite Dorian’s indulgence in sin, he could not escape the inevitable guilt that the

moral laws of society elicit in such a person. By the conclusion of the novel, he feels quite

incongruous and longs to destroy all evidence that he had not lived his life according to standards
 6

set in the Symbolic Order. The tragedy of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray draws

attention to the importance Lacan’s orders, particularly to how the mastery of language enables

one to understand oneself in the context of others. Without this proper manifestation of mental

constructs, one simply cannot survive.

 7

Works Cited

Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On Psychosexual Development." Introductory Guide to

Critical Theory. Nov. 28 2003. Purdue U. Nov. 26 2009. <http://www.purdue.edu/

guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html>.

Lacan, Jacques. “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in

psychoanalytic experience.” Ecrits: A Selection. Ed. Jacques Lacan. New York: Norton,

1977. 1-7.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin, 2003.