The Picture of Dorian Gray. A Comparison of the two Versions

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2,0, University of Paderborn (Institut für Angelistik und Amerikanistik), course: A survey of British Queer Fiction, language: English, abstract: Since I was always interested in ¿famous¿ writers such as Shakespeare etc., I decided to write about Oscar Wilde¿s ¿The Picture of Dorian Gray¿, for he is one of the best known writers and the title ¿The Picture of Dorian Gray¿ is nearly known by everyone.

In this essay I will compare the two different versions of his novel, the censored version from 1891 and the uncensored version from 1890 in terms of the theme of homosexuality. I will try to show that there are big differences between these two versions and that they are significant enough to be even noticed by our generation which is fairly open about the topic of homosexuality.

In order to do so I will first give a short account about homosexuality in England in the 19th century in the first chapter of the main part and then in the second and third chapter I will compare directly two chapters of the novel and show the changes that are made and analyse their effect on the mood of the scene and therefore on the novel. Lastly I will show that also the adding of a chapter changes a lot of the intention of the novel. After that I will, of course, draw a conclusion. To be able to draw my own conclusion I will only use a few sources about homosexuality in England for the first chapter of the main part such as Jeffrey Weeks ¿Sex, Politics & Society¿, but for the comparison I will only use the Norton Critical Edition of ¿The Picture of Dorian Gray¿ and my own interpretations and analyses of the scenes.

As I said my thesis is, that there are significant changes between the two versions, which may not change the intention of the book completely to the sophisticated reader, but which make the intentions a lot clearer and more obvious even to the unsophisticated reader.