Dark & Twisty

By today's standards, The Picture of Dorian Gray seems tame in the horror genre.  It leads to some asking whether or not it is actually horror. I think that people who would ask this may not truly understand horror beyond its slasher movie and torture porn status. 

One of the main issues of horror is to make people uncomfortable or even anxious.  Being scared isn't even part of horror.  There are many nonfiction books that are scarier than anything written in the horror genre. (Mein Kampf, Night) Dorian Gray does leave reader (or at least should) with a feeling of discomfort.  It is the story of a man who doesn't reap any of the evil he sows.  His potrait absorbs all his evil.  The man goes out and does very nasty things and never gets caught. This drives him to further and further heights of depravity and narcissism.  He gets to the point that he will do anything he wants to anyone.

In a way, Dorian Gray is a serial killer.  Because he has no need for guilt, Dorian's personality becomes such that evil means nothing to him.  He can go about his life doing good or evil and feeling nothing for it.  This is the same as any serial killer's personality trait in history.  The only difference is that serial killers have a personality flaw that makes them unremorseful.  Dorian transfers all of his to his picture.

Dorian is a pretty poison, and is there little scarier than this.  None of us like the idea that pretty people are evil, but Wilde in this story takes that away from us.  In the old days and even some now, the villians are grotesque and ugly.  Dorian is gorgeous in the eyes of men and women.  Yet, he moves about them spreading evil everywhere.  The character reminds us that the person standing beside us may be the one who will kill us.   Isn't that the way of the serial killer?

So, without  knowing it, Oscar Wilde may have written the first serial killer novel.  Although, Dorian doesn't engage in the activities of a normal serial killer novel villian, he matches the profile. 

So The Picture of Dorian Gray is a horror novel. It was ahead of its time in the fact that it takes the serial killer approach to things.  It explains this personality disorder or flaw supernaturally, having the picture take on the evil of the man, but for the most part, science (psychology or otherwise) couldn't explain such a personality.  This isn't a normal scare 'em silly horror novel.  It isn't bloody, gory, or disturbing in that way, but it is startling because it shows the evil that can be beside us.  Dorian Gray is the prototype of Patrick Bateman, or even in some ways Hannible Lector.  Think about it.