Quotation, Lord Henry to Dorian: “My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect-simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must analyze it someday. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up” (p. 58).

Comments:

Lord Henry is a very unique character in that he takes the common literary role of mentor, not because he really cares for his pupil as many teachers do, but because he finds the idea of being a mentor entertaining, and views his student Dorian as the subject of an experiment.  Lord Henry does appear to have some care for Dorian in that he wants Dorian to be happy, but usually the goal of the mentor is to put a life on track, not cause it to veer off into dangerous territory, as he has done with encouraging sin in Dorian so he can live his life to the fullest.  This quote is one example of this. 

The quote also gives an insight into Lord Henry’s own experience.  He may be so cynical because he’s been cheated on in the past.  Or he may believe that faithfulness shows a weakness in character with its restriction of independence, which was illustrated in his story of being disgusted at an old flame who wouldn’t let him go and who said she’d “sacrifice the world” for him.  I’m actually inclined to think the former because Basil repeatedly tells Lord Henry that he’s not as bad as he pretends to be and asserts that Henry doesn’t believe anything he himself says.  This brings up the question of whether the author follows Henry’s philosophies; based on the amount of detail that Wilde puts into Henry’s statements, Henry is certainly the form in which the author has decided to put himself into his work as a character.  The author certainly values independence and loathes the stern Victorian lifestyle, looking at Henry’s “sage” words, but based on the decay of Dorian’s soul with every sin that becomes apparent in his portrait, it appears that Wilde is urging his readers to have fun, but be cautious.  Or he may simply have written the portrait in as something to make his book acceptable and more likely to be published while truly intending the book to encourage people to recognize having a bit of fun is a good thing.

Questions: What experiences did the author have that prompted him to come up with these ideas? Did his writing encourage any of his readers to act more freely in their lives or scare them away from such thoughts even more? And which one of these was his intent?