Dorian Gray’s Perverted Portraits and Mirrors

ABSTRACT Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray draws us into a narcissistic maze rife with phenomena of transitivism and imaginary confusion, such as Lacan described with respect to the mirror stage. Phenomena of reversal into the opposite and turning around are also very present in the story, causing an endless rotation of places, giving a paradoxical impression; these are indications of a perverse way of functioning in which the characters, swept up into this narcissistic universe, will sometimes take comfort in the illusion of being in the position of the “always-and-forever-irresistible-child,” and sometimes find themselves banished from that position and relegated to that of the “child-who-is-always-and-forever-shamed, humiliated, nullified.” This kind of overdeveloped specular ego is rooted in the “mirror function” of an idealized and complicit maternal gaze, which nevertheless alternates with a horrifying maternal gaze, the violence of sight being linked here with the eruption of a deadly maternal gaze.