Of Dorian Gray, Jane Austen, and Sherlock Holmes

It was on a warm, fuzzy, Wednesday afternoon amidst a communion of Varsity Christian Fellowship law schoolmates. We had gathered for a time of lunch at a table outside the bookshop.

There was a girl on my right who began a conversation to the girl opposite her about a book that a friend had been recommending her to read. She mentioned the words Dorian Gray when talking about the book. The name sounded familiar to me, and then I recalled that I had come across it when I watched that romance film titled 500 days of Summer during the school term holidays. It was at the scene towards the end of the film when the girl, Summer, was talking to Tom, the guy, about how there was something unpredictable about the way life brings people together, and she related about how she was sitting by a deli and reading the book Dorian Gray when a guy came up to her and ask her about it, and before she could make sense of how it came together, he was her husband. I asked the girl who was talking about Dorian Gray to tell me more about what the book was about. She said it was a book written by the famous writer Oscar Wilde, and it is a story of a man living in extremes. Why, I thought, if anything else, Dorian Gray must be a portrait of the man himself. From what I have heard and read, Oscar Wilde was a man whose life was one of sensuality and decadence. He indulged in all the vices such as promiscuity, buggering, absinthe drinking, and the like. You know how it is with playwrights, they derive their inspiration from their quixotic lifestyle.

I have read a synopsis of what the novel is about. It features a rather dark plot of a man who makes a pact with the devil to exchange his soul for eternal youth, and of a haunting mysterious picture of the man which age in place of him. I think I would give a movie adaptation of the book a watch, although the girl who had been talking about the book earlier tell me that it is not a book that Christians should be reading. I concur. I believe that there is something unhallowed about a book with such dark themes to have the potential to cause a person who reads it to become depressed, morose, or overly-introspective. Still, I am curious to know what the story is about.

There is something about girls and their love for reading literature. I had one such female friend from the arts stream during my junior college days. She was the kind of girl who had her head embedded with every socialised ideals of a relationship that is brought about by reading one too many pieces of classical literature. There was a time during a conversation when she said without too much thought that girls would only want to marry guys who became officers during their national service. She must have realized she made her assertion too unthinkingly when I told her I was going in to the army as a clerk. "Well", she said, trying to soften her stance, "At least, all proper girls from proper families would." I think I suffered from a heartache hearing those words. Anyway, she recommended me to read the book Pride and Prejudice. I found the prose version of the book rather dry, and so I borrowed a comic book adaptation of the novel from the library. It was a pleasant read. It painted an intimate picture of 19th Century Victorian England, with all the quaint english mannerisms, formal conventions, and social class-consciousness. I thought that the idea of paired ballroom dancing was quite a good way young men and women in society can get to know one another. The characters of the story were fairly interesting. There were five daughters of the Bennett family. The oldest was beautiful but not too bright, blissfully sanguine and a believer in the goodness of all human beings. The youngest was an idealist. She was the kind of girl who would have sung "soldier, soldier, will you marry me" and had her minds on eloping with one against the conformity of the aristocratic class. The third and fourth played relatively quiet parts in the novel, but they pretty much took on the role of the story comedic elements. The protagonist was the second daughter, Emily Bennett, who was, in my opinion, quite a shrew. The level-headed one in the family, she was intelligent, witty, and judgmental. And then there was Mr Darcy, the male protagonist, a wealthy man of the landed gentry, he was aloof and lacked social skills, and was not fond of dances and small talks. I identify somewhat with his social awkwardness.

As the name of the story goes, the story was about Mr Darcy overcoming his pride to marry Ms Bennett who was of a lower social class, and Ms Benett overcoming her negative prejudices she had formed on her first impression of Mr Darcy. Perhaps the genius of Jane Austen lies with her identification of these two chief elements that hinder a genuine love relationship from developing between two compatible persons, and it is a message that remains relevant for the current times. I think that pride and prejudice are somewhat conjugate traits of each other. The former bears out from a self-consciousness of the external perception from people around us, while the latter from the internal misconception of the other within us. We judge presumptuously of another person based on the class, income level, education qualification, and appearance of the other person, and we deny ourselves the love that we may have for another person because we think the other not worthy of ourselves. But I don't discount that intelligence level, cultural background, and physical appearance goes some way to ensuring a smooth relationship between two individuals.

Another girl on the opposite of the table to my left began talking about her love of the character of Sherlock Holmes from her reading of the detective novel. She was full of praise of the intelligence and wits of Sherlock, about his ability to make inference about a person's background from the minute details of a person's habits and accessories. I have watched other detective dramas like the Japanese series Furuhata Ninzaburo, and the American series Monk where the main detective characters also spot such a flair for deductive sleuthing as well. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes was the genesis of the archetype. And I must say I quite like the rendition of Sherlock Holmes given by Robert Downey Jr in the film released last year. I couldn't help but interject the monologue that the girl was giving about Sherlock Holmes by suggesting that these behaviors of Sherlock Holmes was symptomatic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It provided some chuckle amongst the group. How far from perfect the ideal man is isn't it?