The role of French traditions in the formation of English culture through literature

The role of French traditions in the formation of English culture through literature

Исследовательская работа

Автор: Трегубова Мария Валерьевна

10 класс

ГБОУ Гимназия №1552

Кафедра иностранных языков

Телефон: 8-(909)-990-33-10

E-mail: tregubova.marya10@yandex.ru

Gota-maria@mail.ru

Научный руководитель: Александрова Ирина Юрьевна

The contents.

1. Introduction
2. The 1st Part.

1. The culture of England of the 19th century.
2. The culture of England of the 19th century.
3. Guy de Maupassant.

1. The Biography of writer.
2. “The life”. The history of creation.
3. Summary.

4. Oscar Wilde.

            a)   The Biography of writer.

            b)   “The picture of Dorian Grey”.

            c)    The history of creation. Summary.

 III.       The 2nd Part. My research.

1. Salient features of every work. Analysis.
2. Lines of comparison.
3. Comparison. Results.
4. Implication.

3. Conclusion.

Introduction.

“The last word is still in arms of descendants. It is up to them to decide who is awarded with the immortality in centuries”

Balzac

When we read books, we don’t often understand, how many important details they include, how many styles they can describe and how exactly they can show historical events and situation in the country and in the world of a period of time.

The 19th century was the “Golden” century for art of every country. It is connected with the development of languages and the formation of own cultures and traditions of all countries.

This period is characterized by the development of national self-consciousness and by the understanding of the importance of personality and human soul. All artists tried to participate in the life of their country, talking to people through their works.

The 19th century was also a “Golden century” for literature. The most famous and important books were written during this time.

Literature is one of the ways to study the customs, traditions and the characters of native population. Authors can show us pictures of past, they let us imagine the most significant historical events. That is why classical literature is so interesting for modern people.

Of course, the 19th century is the rise of romanticism, naturalism and classicism, but all countries had their own individual circumstances, distinctive features distinguishing the culture of each country.

There is an opinion that France had a great influence on formation of the culture of many European countries, because France is the native country of practically all styles and directions of the chosen period. I do not agree with this statement, when we speak about the influence of French traditions on the formation of English culture, because English culture had many significant differences.

The main aim of my work is to prove that England had its own way of development. But I will do it through the comparison of two great literary works of the 19th century, through the comparison of styles, of the authors ' attitudes to problems of their literary works, of ways of living of people.

But it is not enough only to read books and to analyze the plot. I will learn some facts about peculiarities of cultures of two different countries, about popular genres of literature of the chosen period to avoid mistakes during the process of analyzing works. Historical events play an important role for writers and they often can be a reason for writing.

Starting to study a new book at our literature lessons we always study the biography of a writer and that is why I decided to use them in my work. The biography of writer is one of the keys in understanding the reasons why they had written their books. Living conditions, relationships in the family, work, dating, historical events, political situation and other points of biographies of writers play an important role for readers.

The main task of my research is to draw a line of comparison between two books, “Life” of French author Guy de Maupassant and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” of an English writer Oscar Wilde. I have chosen these books in order to compare similar problems.

During my work I will try to prove that England had and have its own way of development. Of course, because of some significant historical events, there can be similarities but I am sure that authors use different ways to show us their points of view, different opinions according to this or that problem. Different country means different people and different culture.

The 1st Part.

The culture of England of the 19th century.

During the 19th century Britain was transformed by the industrial revolution. In 1801, at the time of the first census, only about 20% of the population lived in towns. By 1851 the figure had risen to over 50%. By 1881 about two thirds of the population lived in towns.

Furthermore in 1801 the majority of the population still worked in agriculture or related industries. Most goods were made by hand and very many craftsmen worked on their own with perhaps a labourer and an apprentice. By the late 19th century factories were common and most goods were made by machine.

The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel-realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes. William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair (1848), which wickedly satirizes hypocrisy and greed.

Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Heights, is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine novels of Emily's sister Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane Eyre and Villette, are more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways. The novels of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) appeared during the 1860s and 70s. A woman of great erudition and moral fervor, Eliot was concerned with ethical conflicts and social problems. George Meredith produced comic novels noted for their psychological perception. Another novelist of the late 19th century was the prolific Anthony Trollope, famous for sequences of related novels that explore social, ecclesiastical, and political life in England.

Thomas Hardy's profoundly pessimistic novels are all set in the harsh, punishing midland county he called Wessex. Samuel Butler produced novels satirizing the Victorian ethos, and Robert Louis Stevenson, a master of his craft, wrote arresting adventure fiction and children's verse. The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis Carroll, produced the complex and sophisticated children's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). Lesser novelists of considerable merit include Benjamin Disraeli, George Gissing, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins. By the end of the period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.

During the 1890s the most conspicuous figures on the English literary scene were the decadents. The principal figures in the group were Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and, first among them in both notoriety and talent, Oscar Wilde. The Decadents' disgust with bourgeois complacency led them to extremes of behavior and expression. However limited their accomplishments, they pointed out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. The sparkling, witty comedies of Oscar Wilde and the comic operettas of W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan were perhaps the brightest achievements of 19th-century British drama.

By the end of the period, the novel was considered not only the main form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.

The culture of France of the 19th century.

The 19th century was to be a turning point for French art, and for art around the world, especially during the latter part of the century. From the emergence of Delacroix in the early 19th century to the surrealists 100 years later, France was to dominate the art scene.

The established art school in France at the beginning of the 19th century was represented by Jacques-Louis David and Jean Ingres and had two main characteristics:

- great attention to fine detail and exact shading in the art produced

- focus on painting 'proper' subjects, such as portraits of the great and good, ruined buildings in idyllic settings etc

The focus of the middle of the 19th century was in questioning whether this was the correct approach to painting. As it turned out neither of these characteristics would bear close scrutiny, or stand the test of time

Ferdinand Delacroix and Theodore Gericault, leaders of the romantic art movement in France, were among the first to question the priorities of the art being painted at that time, and adopted a style that was more interested in catching the spirit of the subject rather than every fine detail, and more interested in painting 'real' subjects than classical ruins and subjects.

The second characteristic - what should or should not be painted - was challenged by Jean Francois Millet, who painted peasants working in the fields rather than nobles sat by a window. These trends continued with Gustave Courbet, who was adamant that he would paint what he wanted, in the way he wanted.

This period of art was a very important step forward. Painting could now represent the spirit of an occasion or event, rather than simply being a 'photographic record', although it was to take a long time for traditional admirers of art to appreciate the leap in progress that had been made.

The 50 years between 1830 and 1880 witnessed enormous changes in the shape of the novel as it was molded by a succession of innovators. Madame George Sand, exemplifying romanticism in its most individualistic form, in Lelia (1833; Eng. trans., 1978) championed the ultimate moral claim of passion over convention, though her novels of country life, such as The Country Waif and Fanchon the Cricket, have endured better. Stendhal, who also portrayed the dominant role of passion as a motivating force in life, nevertheless injected into his two great novels, The Red and the Black (1830; Eng. trans., 1916) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839; Eng. trans., 1901), an ironic tone and analytical power that foreshadowed the 20th-century psychological novel. Victor Hugo, in his evocation of medieval Parisian life, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831; Eng. trans., 1833), and AlexandreDumas père, in a whole series of adventures covering high points of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in France, made the historical novel a genre to be reckoned with. Hugo's later work, Les Misérables (1862; Eng. trans., 1862), recounting the redemption of a convict emerging from the lower depths, successfully merged high drama with questions of social morality.

The colossus of 19th-century French novelists, however, was Honoré de Balzac, whose prodigious, multivolume Human Comedy, encompassing more than 2,000 characters drawn from every rank and walk of life and sweeping imaginatively over 40 years of French history, brilliantly delineated a major society in flux. His genius for realistic detail, together with his emphasis on material gain as the engine of human behavior, directly links Balzac with the novelistic realism that won the day in the second half of the century.

This was most triumphantly realized in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the story of a provincial adulteress whose bleak life ends in tragedy--a novel as notable for its perfection of style as for its unerring observation. A disciple of Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, excelled in the sparely told, realistic, often ironic short story, as in such collections as La Maison Tellier and Mademoiselle Fifi. Influenced by contemporary determinist thought, Émile Zola sought to make the novel a more scientific reflection of reality. His 20-volume fictional examination of every level of social life during the Second Empire, Les Rougon-Macquart, with its emphasis on the sordid and the depressing, remains the outstanding exemplar of naturalizm whose influence as a movement it spanned.

Guy de Maupassant.

Biography.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer and considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. 
A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He also wrote six short novels. 
Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. His stories about real or fake jewels ("La Parure", "Les Bijoux") are imitated with a twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads") and Henry James. 
Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and Bel-Ami aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla", cited as an inspiration for H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", and "Qui sait ?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena. 
The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886. This interest is reflected in his fiction.

The history of creation.

“Life, after all, is not as good or as bad as we believe it to be.”

It was hard for biographers of Maupassant to investigate the creative history of "The Life". When, in January of 1878, Maupassant told Flaubert about his plan, the strict teacher was fascinated by this idea. The first variation of the 1877 consisted of seven chapters or more. Author wrote his book very slowly and there were several reasons why:

-Maupassant wanted to follow the compositional techniques of Flaubert

-Exactingness of writer

-the necessity to alter the style of writing of the first seven chapters

In 1877 Maupassant, in the letter to his mother, companied about the difficulties because of "the necessity to put everything on the right place". He attached great importance to the "transitions". They represented the generic descriptive narrative, created a picture of a continuous flow of life process.

Maupassant had a habit to print in the newspaper some episodes of the novel as a finished novel. He tried to give the first sketch, even in General terms. He re-did them two, three, or even four times.

We don't know anything about the events formed the basis of this novel. According to some French biographers, Maupassant wrote about the relationships in his family and show readers the failed marriage of his parents. But the writer told his servant: "Facts, outlined in the book, occurred in Fontainebleau and the printed report about them is lying on my Desk". That is why the question of reasons is still open for readers.

"Life was published as satirical articles in "Gil Blass" in 1883. In the same year the novel came out as a separate edition. The French criticism changed tone when it saw that the author's ambition was to move away from the influence of naturalism.

Summary.

“Is it beautiful now, my castle?”

“You shall see, my little girl.”

In 1819 a 17-year-old girl named Jeanne eagerly awaits her departure from the convent where she has been educated for the last five years. Her father, the Baron Le Perthuis de Vauds, has kept his beloved only child in peaceful and virginal seclusion as part of his plan to keep Jeanne innocent of the sins and cares of the world. He is now taking her to the family's estate on the Norman coast which is destined to be her home as soon as she marries.
Life on the coast of Normandy with her idle and free-spending parents continues to be a fairy tale dream for Jeanne. Almost on cue, she is introduced to a dashing young man, the Vicomte Julien de Lamare. After a story-book courtship, the two are married and and installed as master and mistress of the estate. But on Jeanne's wedding night, the fairy tale comes to an end. She is as innocent as possible of conjugal matters, and is shocked into tears at what Julien does to her. It is rather shocking for readers as well that the author of this heretofore chaste and idyllic tale takes us, not only into the bedroom, but between the sheets. 
Jeanne eventually overcomes her sexual inhibitions, but also realizes "that there was nothing left for her to do, ever. Her whole childhood at the convent had been taken up with the future, and she had busied herself with fantasies." Her focus had always been on becoming, not on being, and once the honeymoon was over "...there was nothing left to do, today, tomorrow, ever again. And she sensed all this in some way as a kind of disillusion, as the collapse of her dreams."
But much more disillusionment is in store for Jeanne. Those whom she has idolized and idealized begin, one by one, to disappoint her. Her fairy-tale pure world begins to crumble, and she comes to rage and despair "at the cravenness of human beings, slaves to the foul procedures of carnal love that makes cowards of the heart as well as the body. Mankind seemed to her unclean when she thought of all the dirty secrets of the senses, the degrading caresses, and the dimly discerned mysteries of inseparable couplings." Religion ceases to be a consolation when even the parish priest nonchalantly advises her to accept the infidelities she sees around her with a "boys will be boys" attitude. In response, Jeanne "cursed God, whom she hitherto had considered just. She railed against the culpable favouritism of destiny, and the criminal lies of those who preach goodness and the straight path of virtue."
A Life is a very insular story, as the focus stays on Jeanne in her relative seclusion in rural Normandy. Almost thirty years of tumultuous French history go by without notice, even while the passages of the seasons of nature are closely followed. While many might view Jeanne as representative of the idle aristocracy living in its world of self-delusion, there is no overt social agenda to the novel. Nonetheless, one can't help but notice that the lower classes all seem to have happier, healthier and more balanced lives than the gentry who themselves serve no useful role in society. And when Jeanne is sunk deep in self-pity, her maid does finally lose her temper and exclaim: "And what would you say if you had to earn your daily bread, if you had to get up as six o'clock every morning and go and do a full day's work! Yet lots of women have to, and when they get too old, they die of poverty."
A Life was Maupassant's first novel. He started it when he was only 27, but took several years to complete and refine it. When it came out in 1883 it was an immediate and controversial bestseller and established Maupassant as a worthy compatriot of Flaubert and Zola. Though it's a bit uneven at times and circumscribed by the narrow horizons of Jeanne's little world, it is a captivating story, briskly told, and full of beautiful descriptions of the Norman landscape and people.

Oscar Wilde.

Biography.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write.

O. Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane. Oscar's mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, was a successful poet and journalist. She wrote patriotic Irish verse under the pseudonym "Speranza". Oscar's father, Sir William Wilde, was a leading ear and eye surgeon, a renowned philanthropist and gifted writer, who wrote books on archaeology and folklore. Oscar had an elder brother, Willie, and a younger sister, Isola Francesca, who died at the early age of 10. 
He was educated at Portora Royal School, Trinity College, Dubli, and Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he became involved in the aesthetic movement and became an advocate for 'Art for Art's Sake' (L'art pour l'art). Whilst at Magdalen, he won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna. 
After he graduated, he moved to Chelsea in London to establish a literary career. In 1881, he published his first collection of poetry - Poems that received mixed reviews by critics. He worked as an art reviewer, lectured in the United States and Canada (1882), and lived in Paris. He also lectured in Britain and Ireland (1883 - 1884). 
On May 29, 1884, Oscar married Constance Lloyd, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. They had two sons, Cyri and Vyvyan. To support his family, Oscar accepted a job as the editor of Woman's World magazine, where he worked from 1887-1889. 
In 1888, he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, fairy-stories written for his two sons. His first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in 1891 and received quite a negative response. This had much to do with the novel's homoerotic overtones, which caused something of a sensation amongst Victorian critics. In 1891, Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed 'Bosie', who became both the love of his life and his downfall. Wilde's marriage ended in 1893. 
Wilde's greatest talent was for writing plays. His first successful play, Lady Windermere's Fan, opened in February 1892. He produced a string of extremely popular comedies including A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. These plays were all highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar as a playwright. 
In April 1895, Oscar sued Bosie's father for libel as the Marquis of Queensberry had accused him of homosexuality. Oscar's case was unsuccessful and he was himself arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor for the crime of sodomy. During his time in prison he wrote De Profundis, a dramatic monologue and autobiography, which was addressed to Bosie. 
He spent the rest of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. He died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900, penniless, in a cheap Paris hotel. 

“The Picture of Dorian Grey”

“The academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine.[1] The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters and including an aphoristic Preface which has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward Lock & Co in April 1891.[2] Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The novel begins on a beautiful summer day with Lord Henry Wotton, a strongly-opinionated man, observing the sensitive artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome young man named Dorian Gray, who is Basil's ultimate muse. After hearing Lord Henry's world view, Dorian begins to think beauty is the only worthwhile aspect of life. He wishes that the portrait Basil painted would grow old in his place. Under the influence of Lord Henry (who relishes the hedonic lifestyle and is a major exponent thereof), Dorian begins to explore his senses. He discovers amazing actress Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare plays in a dingy theatre. Dorian approaches her and soon proposes marriage. Sibyl, who refers to him as "Prince Charming", swoons with happiness, but her protective brother James tells her that if "Prince Charming" harms her, he will certainly kill him.

Dorian invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl, whose only knowledge of love was love of theatre, casts aside her acting abilities through the experience of true love with Dorian. Disheartened, Dorian rejects her, saying her beauty was in her acting, and he is no longer interested in her. When he returns home, he notices that his portrait has changed. Dorian realises his wish has come true – the portrait now bears a subtle sneer and will age with each sin he commits, while his own appearance remains unchanged.

He decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Lord Henry later informs him that she has killed herself by swallowing prussic acid. Dorian realises that lust and looks are where his life is headed and he needs nothing else. Over the next 18 years, he experiments with every vice, mostly under the influence of a "poisonous" French decadence novel, a present from Lord Henry. The title is never revealed in the novel, but at Oscar Wilde's trial he admitted that he had 'had in mind' Joris-Karl Huysmans's À Rebours ('Against Nature').[6]

One night, before he leaves for Paris, Basil arrives to question Dorian about rumours of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny his debauchery. He takes Basil to the portrait, which is as hideous as Dorian's sins. In anger, Dorian blames Basil for his fate and stabs Basil to death. He then blackmails an old friend named Alan Campbell, a chemist, into destroying Basil's body. Wishing to escape the guilt of his crime, Dorian travels to an opium den. James Vane is present there and attempts to shoot Dorian after he hears someone refer to Dorian as "Prince Charming". However, Dorian fools James into thinking he is too young to have been involved with Sibyl 18 years earlier. James releases Dorian but is approached by a woman from the opium den who chastises him for not killing Dorian, revealing Dorian has not aged for 18 years. James attempts to run after him, only to find Dorian long gone.

While at dinner, Dorian sees James stalking the grounds and fears for his life. However, during a game-shooting party a few days later, a lurking James is accidentally shot and killed by one of the hunters. After returning to London, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not breaking the heart of his latest innocent conquest named Hetty Merton. Dorian wonders if the portrait has begun to change back, now that he has given up his immoral ways. He unveils the portrait to find it has become worse. Seeing this, he realises that the motives behind his "self-sacrifice" were merely vanity, curiosity, and the quest for new emotional experiences.

Deciding that only full confession will absolve him, he decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience. In a rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil Hallward and plunges it into the painting. His servants wake hearing a cry from inside the locked room, and passers by on the street fetch the police. The servants find Dorian's body, stabbed in the heart and suddenly aged, withered and horrible. It is only through the rings on his hand that the corpse can be identified. Beside him, however, the portrait has reverted to its original form.

The 2nd Part

My research

Analysis

To choose the books for a research is the first and the most important point of the whole work. My task was to find literary works with similar problems. It was hard because books with similar storyline do not always have the same problem. First of all, let me explain, what the problem is.

A problem is an important question which can be caused for different reasons, and, if solvable, can usually be solved in a number of different ways, is defined in a number of different ways. 

The problems I tried to choose are very actual nowadays. There is the problem of the existence of real love, the problem of happiness, of marriages of convenience, of the strength of human soul and mind, of the influence of someone else in our own life.

All these problems and the opinions of authors according them we can find in their books.

The most commonly used themes of creativity of Guy de Maupassant reflected in his first novel “The Life” which is the first book I have chosen for my work. They are:

• The theme of children and family
• The theme of death and devastation
• Pessimism and paranoia
• The theme of woman as the victim of violence
• The theme of poverty and penury

We all know that the family of writer bankrupted and it was the reason of the occurrence of this theme in his works.

The book describes the ordinary life of Jeanne Le Perthuis de Vauds. She is the main character of “The Life” and she has to face all problems that many people face during their life.

De Maupassant never shows us his opinion directly. We can read it in the descriptions of places, which consist mostly of the emotional sense, in the thoughts of characters and in their words and dialogs.

Author regrets about the fate of heroine, but he doesn’t want to find easy solutions and to make her life incredibly happy and carefree, though it has been her dream since childhood. The walls of convent were something like a cage for Jeanne, but soon it turned out to be a safe area without any problems which couldn’t prepare her for hard life where your clean soul and dreams don’t matter.

But the life of Jeanne is not a Prime example of how to live but an attempt to show how difficult it is to live in the world that is not like you and your comprehension.

The readers understand the horror of situation, but it is so elevated, that they even don’t notice that the book ends. Our emotions help us to read up to the end, the hope help us to wait for the best and we feel something like disappointment when we see the final phrase, which contains all great sense of the whole work: our thoughts about life are not real, whatever they are. It is not so real and no as awful as we use to think.

All deformities are shown in “The Life” as parts of our world, as something natural for people. The soul of the main character tries to struggle with injustice, with the whole alien to her world. She doesn’t want to listen to any advice, though she is afraid of condemnation and also tries to do her best.

In her life her child is the only happiness. She is ready to do everything for her son. Her love and humbleness raise an egoist in him. He is as dissolute as his dead father was and as wasteful as her father is. His needs do not match with guests but he can’t understand it and nobody explains it to him.

-Oh, I had no happiness! All turned against me. Fate was attracted me.

-You shouldn't say this, madam. You fail married, that's all. It's not allowed to get married, when you don't know your fiancé.

Jeanne is too weak to solve her finance problems but the life gives her another chance. Her old maid returns to her house and helps her to manage with all her troubles even if her lady is not ready to too fast movements. She gives Jeanne the hope and the desire to live.

"If only it were the other way! If only it were I who was to be always young, and the picture was to grow old! For that...I would give my soul for that!"

The worldview of Oscar Wilde formatted in Oxford, where he has listened to the lections of John Reskin who thought that beauty is goodness and his disciple Walter Peyter who allowed admixture of evil in beauty. That is why the problem of beauty is one of the most important problem of his only novel.
     Dorian Gray had as clean soul as Jeanne Le Perthuis de Vauds has. But he came under the influence of his friend Lord Henry, who has always tried to make Dorian think about how to get the best from his life.

Lord Henry is a very difficult character. He doesn’t live the life he idolizes because he afraid of it, but it is interesting for him to watch how Dorian spoils himself.

Lord Henry remarks that "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances", and Wilde offers the reader no choice but to do so in this instance. Like Basil, who seems more smitten with Dorian as a model than as a person, like Lord Henry, who claims to value beauty above all else, and like Victorian society in general, the book itself seems more concerned with the image of the protagonist than with the man himself.

“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral - immoral from the scientific point of view”

We think it is awful, we think, that hero has to stop listening this wrong advice, but we can’t stop it and reconcile it until the end of the book.

All book is riddled with great sense. Author shows us it, he writes about it. His manner of writing makes us hate, regret, sometimes smile, wait for the best. Wilde clearly shares his heroes on “good”, “bad” and “crowd”. He teaches us to hate and to shun people like Lord Henry, not to betray people like Sibyl Wane and to find real friends and do not change them on high society.

The title of the book is “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, suggesting that the novel is about the image of the man, rather than about the man himself. It means that the soul of Dorian is a clean sheet of paper; he is ready to learn, open for wonderful life and experience. He inherited a fortune and now he has the possibility to become someone for the world. He is happy to be accepted in society, but he can’t understand that money play the most important role for rich people with empty souls. He can not wear masks and thinks that no one can, that all his “friends” are sincere and friendly.

When he understands the he is beautiful and that people like his beauty, the main fear for him is to become old and to lose it because of imposed value. Dorian's initial response to the portrait recalls the statement made in the preface that "Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming." The painting is a masterpiece, certainly a "beautiful thing," but the image sparks jealousy and hatred in Dorian because it reminds him of the fleeting nature of his own youth. He is already "corrupt without being charming," but this marks the starting point of his steady fall from grace. Basil's attempt to destroy the painting with a knife and Dorian's exclamation that "It would be murder" shows us the thing that soul can become.

The end of the book is the predictable result of life like this. His life was short, but full of impressions. He understood his mistakes but it was too late to correct them. Sin, iniquity, wickedness, depravity are the most awful things in the world. They exist but they shouldn’t become the way of living. We must stop until it is too late to stop.

“The one charm of the past is that it is the past”.

Comparison.

After analyzing literary works, I tried to identify the main lines of comparison.  

Comparison is identification of similar and different in different things, events and etc. I compared two books to show you that works of art have many really important differences though there are similarities. Comparison was the main my task

In order you to understand my point of view and not to tangle in text, I decided to make a table of differences.