Psycoanalytic Criticism

Okay, here is something that finally makes sense to me! All of the other stuff contradicts itself and, at least to me, is a little confusing. The Freudian complex, I understand, and there is a set procedure to look for things.

The Black Cat Workshop

This tutorial was so much help, and gave me some new insight to the writings of Poe. When I read works, I have a hard time not taking it for face value. But now I know that when things don't look quite right, I should read those passages over again and try to connect them to other things that are "against the grain." With Poe, I just always had assumed that he was a morbid, scary writer, which he is in his own right. However, there is always much more. As in The Black Cat, when I read through it the first time, I recognized some things; the oddities of the narrator's character, lynching of the cat, and a wall that didn't burn down. Through discussion, my group understood the interpretation of the work. That the black cat represented black slaves in an uprising, and all the events in the story give support to it. It was fun to be able to discuss and work through the piece together!

Additionally, I thought this workshop was helpful because I now understand the step-by-step process of creating a thesis. It was a little muddled before.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Now that I have finished the novel, I am still trying to grasp some things that occurred in the book..
What I don't understand though is why Dorian Gray was so susceptible to everyone else's opinions, especially that of Lord Henry. Lord Henry is obviously a mean, selfish person. He even says so himself with the new Hedonism point of view. Even Dorian says that he would be unable to bear it if his soul looked hideous. But he is so seduced by Lord Henry, and when the picture starts to change, and thus the disintegration of his soul, it doesn't even seem that he even looks to Basil who could "save" him. He totally embraces sin and destruction of his life and others. This just seems like that what he says at the beginning of the story won't add up.

The other things that didn't quite seem right to me was that throughout the novel, Wilde seems to be in agreement with beauty, especially outward beauty and aestheticism, but all of the characters become corrupted or their downfall is because of it. How can he have such descriptive, romantic notions throughout the novel, supporting art, but then says something about people ad that they will do anything for beauty.

Also, about the "all art is useless" quote. Wilde obviously doesn't believe this because he himself was an artist of sorts, depicting pictures through writing. Is he trying to say that art is what is made for true beauty, because people are not expecting anything else from it. With people, if they are beautiful, others expect them to be a good, moral person, such as an angel. Beauty is connected to angels and heaven, while ugliness is connected to demons and hell. This shows the split of Dorian, because since he is beautiful, people forgive him for all of his atrocities. Maybe Wilde is commenting on the flaws of society to be obsessed with beauty. Even today, society reads gossip magazines and worships celebrities.