Lexical Repetition as a Stylistic Device in Oscar Wilde's. 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'

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1 Lexical Repetition as a Stylistic Device in Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' Irfan Said Department of English, Cihan University-Erbil E Mail: irfan1_43@yahoo.com Abstract Oscar Wilde's novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is characterized by lexical repetition. The paper investigates the purpose behind the frequent use of certain words in the work. Since the author relies heavily on dialogues in developing the plot, the novel is analyzed as consisting of two parts: the conversational scenes and the nonconversational scenes. Twenty key words are identified statistically with their frequency rates in the two scenes. Out of these twenty words five have attracted attention: art, love, beauty, cry, and influence. It is found that, in addition to its emphatic function, Wilde uses repetition as a stylistic device for: characterization, symbolic meaning, indicating dominance, and criticizing the Victorian society of the Late 19 th century England. Keywords: Lexical Repetition, Stylistic Device, Oscar Wilde,Dorian Gray 1. Introduction Being one of the masters of the English language, Oscar Wilde's style 1 is described as impressive and witty (see Miller, 1987 and Wright, 2009).Wilde uses repetition noticeably in his novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'(henceforth: PDG). Leech and Short (1981:244) state that repetition is a "repeated use of an expression (morpheme, lexical item, proper name, phrase, etc) which has already occurred in the context". Wales (1991:402) refers to repetition as a means of emphasis or when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion. For instance, Sibyl Vane, the main female character in PDG addresses her mother wondering "Why does he (Dorian) love me so DOI: /cuesj.v1n1a11 227

2 much? I know why I love him. I love him because he is like what love himself should be"(p.60).here we observe the inner state of Sibyl, her emotions, her great feeling of love shown through the repetition of the word 'love'. Besides its emphatic function Wilde uses repetition for other purposes in PDG. Throughout the novel he tries to attract the attention of the reader by frequent use of certain words and sometimes phrases).in this study I am concerned with the repetition of content words (a word and its related forms,e.g.art,artist,artistic,etc).function words, together with character and place names are excluded 2. The research question of this study is: why does Wilde repeat certain words so widely in PDG? It is hypothesized that repetition in PDG is used mainly for: Characterization, symbolic meaning, indicating dominance, and criticizing the Victorian society of the late 19 th century England. 2. Method The study is conducted according to the following steps: a) Statistically identifying the key words and their frequency, b) Showing how certain words are related to the different purposes of repetition stated above. 3. Key words in PDG The key words in the novel are calculated by counting the frequency of each content word. A word which is found to be unusually repeated is considered a key word. For example, the word 'man' occurs 233 times at the frequency of 0.29% while the word 'bite' is used only 7 times at the frequency of zero. The novel is an open-ended book; more than one reading of it is possible (see Leibman, 1999:296).In my view, since Wilde depends mainly on dialogues in developing the plot of the novel, it is advisable to look at PDG as consisting of two parts: the conversational scenes (dialogue scenes) and the non-conversational (descriptive, narrative, and reflective) scenes. Some words occur at a high frequency in 228

3 conversational scenes,e.g. 'think','love','art', 'wonderful', 'bad' ; and others in nonconversational scenes, e.g., 'answer', 'face', 'passion', 'cry'. In Table (1) the key words in PDG are presented according to their highest numeric values. Table (1) : Key words in PDG The Picture of Dorian Gray Approximately 78,381 words No Key words Frequency % 1 man life thing think love answer face death painter beauty art passion cry wonderful lad youth influence terror ugly Bite A look at Table (2) shows that the words used to refer to the subject matter of the novel are at the top of the list,e.g.,the words 'man','life','love', 'death', 'beauty',and 'art' are related mainly to Dorian Gray. 229

4 Table (2): Frequency of the key words in the two scenes Key words No Non-conversational Total Conversational scenes scenes frequency % Frequency % Frequency Man Life thing think love answer face death painter beauty art passion cry wonderful lad youth influence terror ugly Bite Out of the twenty key words in the list five have attracted my attention: 'art', 'beauty','love','cry', and 'influence'. The word 'influence' is used only 28 times,but is frequently repeated in a particular context, and achieves an important role as an indication of the main events in PDG.Statistically, the unusually frequent use of the five words may be said to be an example of the lexical properties which distinguish the novel understudy. 4. Repetition for characterization 4.1 Repetition of 'art' The key word 'art' occurs 86 times throughout the novel. Sixty-four of these instances are found in the conversational scenes: Henry uses it 24 times (37.50%), Basil 23 times (35.93% ),and Dorian 13 times (20.31%). These percentages indicate that there is a link between these characters and art. 230

5 4.1.1 'art' in Henry's speech The high frequency of 'art' in Henry's speech reveals one side of his character as an aristocrat who attends high class parties, theatre performances and enthralled by the beauty of Dorian Gray because it reminds him of ancient Greek works of art. His reference to 'Adonis' and 'Narcissus' (p.6 ) shows that he is an intellect interested in art. Henry encourages Dorian to treat his own life as if it were a work of art. He must experience it fully, as one would a piece of art, but at the same time remains detached from it, in the way that one might appreciate a great painting or a play (pp ).Through Henry Wilde advocates the idea of 'art for art's sake' which was fashionable in the late 19 th century (see Gillespie,1994:138 and Olaussen, 2004:5).For Henry art is unable to bear a message. He says "As for being poisoned by a book (the yellow book), there is no such thing as that.art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act.it is superbly sterile" (p. 205 ).According to Kalscheuer (p.9) Henry wants to say that art can give people joy, but it should never inspire a person to act or reflect. Art, Henry says, is " a matter of procuring extraordinary sensations" (p. 200). It seems that he uses art not to learn from it, but to make his life richer 'art' in Basil's speech Basil is a gifted painter and as such his life is strongly related to art. He says " every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter"(p. 9 ).His love for Dorian changes the way he looks at art. He tells Dorian that the picture is an expression of his own aesthetic vision rather than an attempt to show Dorian's personality. He says "You became to me that visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us arts like an exquisite dream" (p. 109). Basil's relation to Dorian,which at the end leads to his death, shows how true is his love for his art.he asks Henry not to exert his bad influence upon Dorian " Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him"(p.17). When Basil objects to a remark concerning Dorian's wish to remain young, Dorian tells Basil,"you like your art better than your friends" (p.28 ). Once Basil has painted Dorian as he truly is, he fears that he has put too much of himself into the picture. He worries that his love, is quite obvious, and that it betrays 231

6 too much of himself (p.14 ).Even when he changes his mind to believe that art is always more abstract than one thinks and that the painting thus betrays nothing except form and colour, his emotional commitment to Dorian remains unchanged.earlier he tells Henry how he met Dorian in a party at lady Brandon's:,I suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me.i turned half way round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul,my very art itself. (p. 10 ) Later Basil adds " Harry, Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him.i see everything in him" (p. 14 ) Dorian and 'art' Unlike Henry and Basil the frequency of 'art' in Dorian's speech is low; he uses it only 13 times.though he is a musician and has interest in painting and theatre, his hedonistic life and evil behaviour show that he is not a true artist. His relationship with the actress Sibyl Vane tests his commitment to Henry's philosophy of hedonism:the love of Sibyl nearly leads him to stop following Henry's views but his love proves to be as shallow as he is.when he breaks Sibyl's heart and drives her to commit suicide, he views her death as the achievement of an artistic ideal rather than a tragedy for which he is responsible," my dear oldbasil, if you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened,or to see it from a proper artistic point of view" (p.105). Even when he devotes himself to the study of jewels, music, rare tapestries (chapter 11), this is only to distance himself from the horror of his deeds.thus, his interest in art seems to be a surface one. 232

7 5. Repetition used for conveying symbolic meaning There are many repeated imageries and symbolic patterns in PDG.For instance, words like ' art ', ' beauty ', ' charm ', ' youth ', ' sin ', are frequently exploited to achieve linguistic and stylistic effects related to the theme of the novel. In this section I refer to the repetition of the key word ' beauty ' and the related words ' charm', ' youth ', ' flower ', and ' graceful '. These words co-occur with one another, and convey additional and different meanings as well as their own specific meanings, in accordance with the scenes or contexts.the word ' beauty ' occurs 92 times, ' charm ' 84 times, ' youth ' 38 times, ' graceful ' 27 times, and ' flower' 22 times in total. The importance of 'beauty' is evident right from the very beginning of the novel : the elegant description of Basil's studio, the detailed observations about the characters, and the appreciation they express for beautiful things indicate that 'beauty' has a meaningful role in PDG. In fact, the burden of beauty is in the heart of the plot developments. Beautiful Dorian Gray was born after a series of disastrous events (p. 34), but in order for this beauty to persist, more terrible events have to happen. Dorian's beautiful good looks hide an evil man, and his moral decay depicts the theme of how beauty corrupts the soul. Beauty in PDG is portrayed both positively and negatively. In the Victorian society youth and attractive appearances were considered valuable assets. What is important in such a society is not whether a man is good at heart, but rather whether he is handsome (see Sherman, 2011). The related word ' flower ' is also significant here. Using it as a symbol for Dorian implies that flowers last only for a short time,just as beauty does. This link between beauty and flowers is seen in the way Lord Henry talks to Basil, " He (Dorian) is some brainless beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence" (p. 7 ). 233

8 6. Repetition for showing dominance The concept of dominance is pivotal in PDG. It can help us to understand what Wilde really wants to say. The word ' influence ' stands for dominance in the novel. It is used 28 times, divided equally between the two scenes. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines ' influence ' as " The capacity of producing effects by insensible or invisible means " (1069 ). When the novel was published in 1895, and also for the most part of the twentieth century, it was considered by many as an immoral work (see Liebman,1999 : 269 ). However, my reading of the novel shows that there is a sense of morality in it 3, and in this context it seems that Wilde deliberately uses ' influence ' to show the consequences of dominance. It is true that bad dominance prevails in PDG, but positive dominance is also there. 6.1 The positive influence The first mention of ' influence ' is a positive one. Basil tells Lord Henry about a man who has had a profound effect on his art, " I didn't want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray " (p. 10 ). Basil further adds,"while I was painting it [the landscape] Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed"(p.14). Sibyl Vane also represents positive influence. Dorian considers Sibyl's influence on him entirely different from Henry's corruptive influence. Dorian tells Henry : Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you taught me. I become different from that you have known me to be. I am changed,and the touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget you and your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.(p. 75 ) 234

9 6.2 The negative influence Henry Wotton is the symbol of negative influence in the novel. Basil warns Henry not to try to influence Dorian ; he tells him " Your influence would be bad" (p. 17 ). Basil also warns Dorian, "He [Henry ] has a bad influence over all his friends,with the single exception of myself"(p. 19). These statements demonstrate the corruptive role Henry plays in the novel, though he dispels the notion that influence is a good thing, saying that it is immoral and against self-development which is the aim of life (p. 20 ). When Dorian asks Henry whether he really has a very bad influence, Henry replies, " There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr Gray. All influence is immoral immoral from the scientific point of view (p. 20 ). Through his philosophy of self development, Henry says that anyone who is strongly influenced loses his ability to make his own decisions. Similarly, one who influences someone else acquires a way of self-expression, a real joy : " There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence " (p. 37). Thus, influence Henry also describes it as dominance is the perfect creative act; since, on the one hand, it needs extraordinary skill,the one who is influenced must not know the source of the influence and believes it is coming from himself,just like Dorian does (p.21) and, on the other hand, it leads to a real sense of achievement : To project one's soul into some gracious form and let it tarry there for a moment ; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth ; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume ;there was a real joy in that.(p.37) 7. Repetition in the two scenes Some words mostly appear in either the conversational scenes or the nonconversational scenes. Particularly, we notice the frequent use of the key words 'love' in the conversational scenes, and 'cry' in the non- conversational scenes. 'Love' is used 157 times in total,113 times in the conversational scenes and 44 times in the non- 235

10 conversational scenes. ' Cry ' is used 70 times throughout the novel, 67 times in the non conversational scenes and only 3 times in the conversational scenes. 7.1 Repetition of 'love' and 'cry' Repetition of 'love' in the conversational scenes 'Love ' is repeated 70 times in the speech of Henry and Dorian. Henry uses it 36 times and Dorian 34 times 'Love' in Henry's speech Following are the instances of 'love' in Henry's speech which have attracted my attention : 1) Henry addresses Basil in the studio, " Those who are faithfulknow only the trivial side of love : it is the faithless who know love's tragedies" (p.16). 2) Addressing Dorian, " You will always be loved, and you will be in love with love" (p. 49). 3) Talking to Dorian, 4) To Dorian, " When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others"(p. 51). " Don't talk like that about anyone you love,dorian. Love is a more wonderful thing than art."(p. 81). 5) Again to Dorian, " Someone has killed herself for love of you. I wish I have ever such an experience.it would have made me In love with love for the rest of my life." (p.97) 6) Addressing Lady Narborough, " If he [ Lady Narborough's husband ] had been perfect, you would not have loved him, my dear Lady " Women love us for our defects." (p.69) 236

11 7) Talking to Lady Narborough and Dorian, " A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."(p.169) 8) Talking to Gladys, ", each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved."(p. 185) In 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8 the repetition of 'love' shows the sarcastic tone of Henry and his paradoxical views concerning life.it indicates that he is not serious, not sincere and that his only concern is Dorian's beauty. His conversations and behaviour with Dorian lack the real meaning of Love. His unsuccessful love affairs are reflected in his speech with Dorian concerning Sibyl's true love for the latter (see 5,above ). He adds,"they [women] make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with,such as romance,passion,and love "(p. 98).In 2 the repetition of 'love' three times reveals his state of mind at that moment: how far he is enthralled by Dorian's beauty 'Love' in Dorian's speech Dorian and Henry use 'love' almost equally. However, what distinguishes Dorian is that, unlike Henry, he does not philosophise. The first occurrence of 'love' in Dorian's speech is in Basil's studio when he prevents Basil from destroying the painting. Basil tells Dorian, "I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian." Dorian replies," Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of my-self.i feel that"(p.29). Here Dorian shows his narcissistic tendency 4, his self-love.wilde writes," It [ the picture] had taught him to love his own beauty"(p.88). After Dorian talks about Sibyl Vane's charm and her acting ability, he asks Henry," Harry, why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?(p.51).this view shows Dorian's true feeling.he is interested in Sibyl's acting, not in true love of her.what confirms this is the scene after Sibyl commits suicide. We see Dorian enjoys himself by going to theatre.and although earlier he tells Henry,"I cannot understand how any one can wish to shame the thing he loves, I love Sibyl Vane" (p. 75), we find that later he lets Sibyl down and causes her death.in the following scene Dorian addresses Sibyl and the repetitive use of 'love' reveals that he is 237

12 interested in her art not in herself: "You have killed my love! Yes, you have killed my love.my God! how mad I was to love you! How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!"(p.84).also Dorian's trivial concept of love is clear in his conversation with Lady Narborough, "I have not been in love for a whole week not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town"(p. 167). Love for him just means having a romance with a woman.and when Henry remarks that," A woman will flirt with any body in the world as long as other people are looking on"(p. 192); Dorian replies,"how fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the present instance you are quite astray. I like the Duchess[ Gladys ] very much, but I don't love her"(p. 192). Wilde also emphasises Dorian's developing self-love through Basil when the latter compares Dorian to some famous mythical characters," I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour," and " as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polishes spear"(p. 109). Basil further tells Dorian, that in his paintings," You had leant over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the marvel of your own face"(p. 109). 7.2 ' Cry ' in the non- conversational scenes The word 'cry' occurs 70 times: 3 times in the conversational scenes and 67 times in the non conversational scenes.' Cry', in the sense it is used in the novel, is defined in the shorter(oed) as " shout loudly". At first glance it might seem that the reason behind the high frequency of 'cry' in the non- conversational scenes lies in the nature of the word itself,since it is related to others like : answer, say, reply, inquire..etc; however, the question that arises here is : Why does Wilde choose 'cry' instead of one of the above words, in contexts where this is possible? In his narration of the story Wilde uses 'cry' 45 times (out of 67 times) to describe the way members of the high class talk and respond to others. The word ' answer ' is used 120 times but since it carries a positive sense it does not attract attention ; while ' cry ' does because of its negative sense in situations where one of the response 238

13 words is quite natural. The following examples of the use of ' cry ' - with their contextsconfirm this view: 1) When Henry tells Dorian that he must not allow himself to become sunburnt, otherwise Basil will never paint him, Wilde writes :" What can it matter? Cried Dorian Gray,laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden.(p. 23) 2) The Duchess of Harley,launching at Lady Agatha's house: " We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry, cried the Duchess, nodding to him across the table." Do you think he will marry this fascinating young person?"(p. 38) 3) Lady Agatha wondering why Henry tries to persuade Dorian to give up playing music at the East End of London: " I want him to play to me " cried Lord Henry,smiling,and he looked down the table and caught a bright answering glance.(p. 40) 4) When Henry asks Dorian at a dinner party in Lady Narborough's house, why he is out of sorts :" I believe he is In love" cried Lady Narborough. 5) Gladys and Dorian are in the conservatory at latter's house: " Let me get you some orchids, Duchess " cried Dorian, 239

14 starting to his feet, and walking down the conservatory. The above examples clearly show that Wilde intentionally uses this particular word 'cry' in order to attack the behaviour of the aristocrats of his time. 8. Conclusion The present study has shown that lexical repetition is a striking feature in Oscar Wilde's novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. Wilde's reference to repetition through Lord Henry,which reads: "Romance lives by repetition,and repetition converts an appetite into an art"(p.185),hints that repetition has a role in the organizational structure of PDG.Since Wilde depends heavily on dialogues in developing the plot, the novel is analysed as consisting of two parts: the conversational scenes and the nonconversational scenes.after statistically sorting out the key words and their frequency,five words have attracted my attention,they are: art,beauty,love,cry and influence.the investigation of these words has indicated that Wilde deliberately and skillfully exploits repetition as a stylistic technique not only to show its emphatic and emotive functions but also to draw the features of his characters, to convey the symbolic meaning, to refer to the consequences of bad influence, and finally to criticize the way members of high class behave in the Victorian society. Endnotes 1- In defending his style in PDG,Wilde had the following to say: In prose correctness should always be subordinated to artistic effect and musical cadence, and any peculiarities of syntax that may occur in Dorian Gray are deliberately intended,and are introduced to show the value of the artistic theory in question(qtd. in Miller, 39-40). 2- They need a separate study. 3- Modern critics are as divided about the novel's meaning as the early reviewers were concerned with its morality(see Clausson,2003). 4- On Narcissism in PDG see Mendelssohn 2007 ; Robbins

15 References Clausson, N. (2003). Culture and Corruption: Paterian Self-DevelopmentVersus Gothic Degeneration in Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray. Papers on Language and Literature, 39 (4), pp Gillespie, M. P. (1994). Ethics and Aesthetics in the Picture of Dorian Gray. In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde.Ed.C. George Sandulescu.Gerrards Cross : Colin Smythe. Kalscheuer,B. (2004). The Influence of John Ruskin's and Walter Pater's Art Theories on Oscar Wilde's Novel'The Picture of Dorian Gray. Available from: analyse Gray. Leech,G. & Short, M. (1981). Style in Fiction. Harlow:Longman.. Leibman,S. W. (1999). Character Design in the Picture of Dorian Gray. Studies in the Novel, 31(3), pp Mendelssohn, M. (2007) Henry James,Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Miller,R.K.(1987) Oscar Wilde. London: Penguin Books Olaussen, M. (2004) A Study of Art and Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray Available from: portal./org/smash/get/diva2 Robbins, R. (2011) Oscar Wilde.Continuum International Group. Retrieved from Amazon.com. Sherman, J. (2011) Dorian Gray the Escapist Artist. Boston University Writing Program. Available from: program/journal/ The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.Oxford : Oxford University Press. Wales, K. (1991) A Dictionary of Stylistics.Harlow : Longman. Wilde, O. (2005) The Picture of Dorian Gray. Eds. D. Bevington & D.Scott Kanstan. New York: Bantam Dell. Wright, T. (2009) Built of Books : How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde. New York:Henry Holt. 241