I absolutely loved this read, and I'm finding it quite hard to narrow this post down to one singular topic.
For me one of the fascinating pieces were the repeating motifs of paint, makeup, and color.
For paint, obviously this is where the story begins and ends, but this and makeup come up much more philosophically throughout, such as when Henry is describing his 'recent study of women',(70) in which he explains that they "paint" their faces to appear younger, and in the previous generation to appear smarter. No one is who they are, not really, and this is often described as being for the best. (Much like when we talked about Jekyll and Hyde, it is the appearances that make a gentleman, or a lady. And in this story we add that it is the art that makes something valuable, more so than the soul behind it).
Instead they play a new role every night, as is described of Sybil Vane. "Tonight she is Imogen, and tomorrow night she will be Juliet."
"And when is she Sibyl Vane?"
She is painted, and never herself, and it is this painting, this acting, this art that Gray loves, not Sibyl Vane. This same playing of roles also applies to how Basil saw Gray, painting him as "Paris...and as Adonis" but it is only when he paints Gray as himself that he becomes afraid that it is idolatry, and he feels as though he cannot share it anymore, as though hes has gone too far somehow. We cannot have reality here. Either way, this painting, whether of canvas or of faces, proves to be deadly in the end.
This appears of course when Gray kills Basil, while briefly absolving himself by pointing to the painting's influence "as though it had been suggested to him by the canvas" (235). And again, when he kills himself at the end. But the painting's fatal draw also appears in Sibyl's death.
According to Henry, Sibyl died after ingesting something with, "I don't know what it was, but it had either Prussic Acid or White Lead in it." (145). I thought these two weapons were absolutely fascinating, and immediately had to do some research. The second, Lead, was often used in makeup to make one pale (a trait Gray often praises in Sibyl), so there we connect to the "painted faces" mentioned earlier. But the first compound, the one Henry deems more likely, is Prussic acid, which is derived from the pigments used for Prussian Blue paint. She is our story's first victim of the mask painted by Victorian Society, and even that only matters when it comes to appearances. Her death is ignored by the gentlemen, with their only worries being that of Gray having a scandal too young.
I would also love to dive into the use of color, such as how Henry says "Sin is the only real color element left in modern life" (I couldn't find the page, sorry) and how the colors of red, green, yellow, and white show so prominently in most of the pointed descriptions throughout the novel (especially the mental breakdown Grey seems to have around the color red in chapter 11 (216). I have neither the time nor the knowledge to dig into that here, but it is something I find extremely interesting.
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