“Those who descend beneath the surface do so at their own risk.” If a person's aesthetic exterior is the "surface", it is assumed that beneath that surface lies sensitivity and emotion. Wilde warns against probing consciousness too deeply, if at all; the threat that one may not experience pleasure with the same intensity once the moral consequences have been considered haunts the novel. The expression “terrible pleasure” is therefore both antithetical and associated. Dorian is only able to lead a life of “pleasure” by remaining blind to the “terrible” sacrifice of others; the pleasure is almost intensified when we know that it is born from the suffering of others. Yet the mythic nature dictates that this separation between morality and unaccounted pleasure is untenable and, as wet paint does, the consequences of sin begin to seep into the repressed conscience. It is a self-afflicted “peril” that Dorian submerges, albeit temporarily, “below the surface” and realizes that he cannot live a soulless life. Once immersed in his consciousness, he can no longer reach this perfect surface and inevitably drowns. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay To avoid degeneration is to live a life based on the balance of two elements. The very phrase “double life” is associated with the Gothic doppelganger, a balance achieved through each double human being, or human-like form. Wilde complicates this by choosing an inanimate object as his doppelganger, presenting an imbalance between two and three dimensions; Dorian exists in a reality whereas the painting, as art, can only be a representation of life. While the human and the painting are studied simultaneously as if both were art, the two doppelgangers are temporarily two-dimensional: sometimes looking at the wicked, aging face on the canvas, sometimes at the young blond face that has been mocking him since polished glass. (Wilde, p.117). Despite the third-person narration, this perspective is temporarily that of the mirror's reflection. The description given then goes from a detached story to a story with altered perception; Dorian's mirror image is arguably not a true reflection, but a constructed image of how he perceives himself. The reader must also be subjected to this altered vision that disfigures the truth, seeing the narrative through a “thin blue [crown] of smoke” (Wilde, p. 6). Another layer of doubling is suggested in the reflection, another two-dimensional version of Dorian who cannot physically engage in any action but who will witness the inevitable "terror" that follows as a theater audience would. Halberstam comments that "art serves to spatially separate Dorian from his hideous other"[1], demanding a focus "spatially". Morality lacks physical substance and is instead part of the soul. Yet the painting acts as a physical representation of the effects of sin on Dorian's soul, which consequently allows for this constant reprieve of morality. By almost anthropomorphizing the painting, it is brought to a half-life; able to imitate the physical, but biologically there remains a lack of cognitive thinking. As a "beautiful young face", a beautifully aesthetic exterior is also what Dorian strives to align with more in painting than a fully human character. He therefore perceives this state of imbalance between “surface” and substance as the perfect state, with the bodily form of one double and the moral blindness of the other. Death remains almost an inevitable natural act, because the balancemust be restored. In the context of a double life, secrecy is invariably a necessity for each life to function separately as society expects. A feminine naivety is perhaps implicit in Sibyl Vane, the innocent actress, as she regularly exposes herself to the public in a theatrical manner. As is the case with many characters in Wilde's novel, the "double life" divides the character into the original character, undoubtedly "real" and the double, a representation or imitation. In Dorian's choice of what is supposed to be the secondary "double", love is both aestheticized and devalued; he desires the characters she plays, the performative layer of her identity: “I left her in the forest of Arden, I will find her in an orchard in Verona” (Wilde, p. 71). The action of "leaving [her]" not only foreshadows inevitable abandonment, but suggests how Dorian imagines Sibyl in a world of Shakespearean romance. By referencing Arcadian spaces – the “forest” and the orchard – Wilde constructs a pseudo-romance with a time limit; an arcadia is in harmony with nature, while Dorian's love lacks authenticity and is unworthy of this literary elevation. By refusing to disentangle a constructed, imaginary vision of her from reality, Dorian only loves, to the extent that he emotionally can, what Sibyl constructs externally. Apparently, Sibyl as a character lacks even the simplest emotional depth to have enough substance to split her identity in two. This may be exactly the effect Wilde intended; the narrative follows Sibyl beyond the theater, but always notes only her virtuous beauty and theatrical manners. So she appears to us exactly as she appears to Dorian. However, Sibyl's doubling may not be as obvious as Dorian's, which occurs physically. Rather, she is divided by Dorian's perception, with both versions of her occupying reality or his imagination. Perhaps introducing Basil and Harry, who encourage a compulsion for beauty, to his imaginative landscape also introduces a sense of reality. This sudden interjection of reality and transition from Sibyl's ethereal double to the "charming" but "absurdly artificial" (Wilde, p. 77) rejects the reliability Dorian seeks in the constancy of ornamental beauty. The "terrible" in Sibyl's "double life" therefore lies in her tragic blindness: she is unaware that her secondary identity, the double life, is a construction, and she does not need this substance of emotion to accomplish her decorative predominance. Max Nordau's Degeneration argues that there is a fundamental need for biological and social boundaries. By “unleashing the human beast” and “trampling underfoot […] all the barriers which confine brutal greed […] and the thirst for pleasure”[1], society becomes an anarchy of base and animal tendencies which are generally repressed by imposed borders. . Dorian, without realizing the consequences, unleashes the beast within him by declaring himself immune to moral consequences. Once one set of boundaries has been destroyed, another set of physical boundaries is desperately installed in an attempt to maintain orderly control. This is attempted through the Gothic motif of the locked door. Yet while the old classroom seems to act as the heart of his home, the blackboard acts as the central organ of Dorian's body. Outside the room, Dorian can temporarily claim physical, mental and moral freedom. Inside the room, this “double life” is reduced again to one, and he becomes one with the painting. When Dorian kills Basil Hallward, the blood that appears in the painting parallels physical blood, then metaphorical,, 2008)