section 1: how is identity presented?

• dorian gray:

  • P1: as something formulated from appearance and presentation, differentiated by how one chooses to live outside society, where expectations are imposed: “Through the image he obtains from the portrait, Dorian acquires an identity and begins to sense and interprets the outer world as an independent individual” | “He enjoys the self image forming through the portrait and he wants to keep his newly-formed perfect image.” » https://www.academypublication.com/issues2/jltr/vol0702/18.pdf

    • roots identity in his appearance esp youth n beauty » he only ever becomes distraught with his actions when he can visibly see the impact they have ie on the portrait eg he is driven to murder basil after showing him the portrait, thus displaying his moral decay » pg105: “but here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls.” | pg 116: “what did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? he would be safe. that was everything.”

    • decisions then made based on upkeep of physical appearance, which he perceives to be remaining youthful, yet this exchanges his ‘internal’ appearance, beginning the drastic degradation of his soul » eventually he comes to hate this depiction of himself, attempting to dispose of it, yet failing to realise that it is he and he is it

    • “he grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.” (pg139)

    • “the life that was to make his soul would mar his body.” (pg30)

    • “if it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old…I would give my soul for that!” (pg30)

    • “sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life” (pg33)

      • “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul.” (pg21)

      • to have an ‘identity’ is to have the liberty to do whatever

      • pg314 (Cannon Schmitt): “Like Jekyll, Dorian Gray embraces a split between a public and a private or an outer and an inner self; unlike Jekyll, however, he never imagines the former as anything but a cynical necessity, a ruse to allow him to pursue his unspecified crimes or sins without fear of suffering the consequences.” » A Companion to “The Victorian Novel” » edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B Thesing

    • pg285-6 (John R Maynard): “his identity exists as the desired of others, first of the loving painter Basil Hallward, who worships his beauty but also creates it for Dorian, gives him this identity by objectifying, even commodifying it on the canvas; then of Lord Wotton, who shows Dorian how to fashion himself by demonstrating how easily he can remake and manipulate his identity…. Identity, to use the term that Judith Butler has explored so well, seems to be not a heritage that one owns but an act one learns to perform. In this formulation, identity comes last, its manifestations first; it comes last as a conceptualisation of a set of practices…Identity is always a fiction…” » A Companion to “The Victorian Novel” » edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B Thesing

    • pg207 (Lyn Pykett): “Dorian Gray makes a kind of Faustian bargain: he gambles on the possibility of self-splitting, of separating the ego from the id and letting them go their independent ways” | "Lord Henry Wotton argues that if we repress our desires in conformity with social mores ‘we degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid’ » The Cambridge Companion to The Victorian Novel

    P2: identity therefore lacks the need for emotional attachment, as Dorian values other aspects over his soul

    • “you said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears.” (pg56)

    • “why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? he kept his youth - that was enough.” (pg 132)

    • “they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty” (pg242) - is identity about how others see you and how you present yourself? because this is all they can see at this point » ‘societal expectation’ (“society, civilised society at least, is never ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating” - pg154) or what you see inside to be true » self-perception

    • Individuals differ in the level of importance they place on a specific identity; thus, each individual's hierarchy of important identities is different. » https://www.jstor.org/stable/41318089?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

• fleche:

  • P1: as something also able to be manipulated, and more obviously (than The PoDG) having an emotional toll

    • Practice

      • “…all the girls swapping one uniform for another before practice”

      • “Hours later, I would transform”

    • Dress

      • “each time you wore it, you shut your body up.”

    • The Window

      • “an encumbered body/let loose from its cage”

    • //

      • “I have stopped believing that secrets are a beautiful way/to die.”

    • Notes Towards an Understanding

      • “My mind was turned to/two frequencies: mother’s Cantonese rage,/your soothing English, inviting me to choose.”

    • ALT INTERPRETATION: “More recently, however, scholars have begun examining the many ways in which identities do change, and a growing body of theoretical and empirical work on identity within organization studies has focused on identity's dynamism”

      (e.g., Ashforth, 2001; Ibarra, 1999; Markus & Wurf,1987). In short, to maintain a sense of continuity over time and yet adapt to shifting personal and social conditions, individuals need to balance their need to preserve identity stability with their need to sustain identity dynamism. » https://www.jstor.org/stable/41318089?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

section 2: identity in relation to self-perception

• dorian gray:

  • P1: becomes jealous of a perfect yet fully intangible notion of an ideal figure » ambition can affect self-perception and the ‘rating’ given to oneself

    • “Youth is the only thing worth having.” (pg 30)

    • “I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.” (pg31)

    • “I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.” (pg161)

    • “More recently, however, scholars have begun examining the many ways in which identities do change, and a growing body of theoretical and empirical work on identity within organization studies has focused on identity's dynamism”

      (e.g., Ashforth, 2001; Ibarra, 1999; Markus & Wurf,1987) » https://www.jstor.org/stable/41318089?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

• fleche:

  • P1: to fully perceive oneself is to understand the multiple facets of one’s being and fully step into them » optimism

    • A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far

      • “I am writing in the voice of my most hopeful self”

      • “One day, it becomes a choice to walk out of this life, or to begin living mine/I left half of my language behind to escape my impeccable persona”

      • “Most nights, I dream of my mother’s face, by turns harsh and tender/In a nightmare, I shouted at her: Neither you nor I are the enemy!”

    • At the Castro (Orlando Shooting - context)

      • “they start to steer/the shipwreck of your body”

      • “the girl who thought/she had to sit down/for the rest of her life/broke all the rules/became the wind”

    • //

      • “Tonight, I forget that I am/bilingual”

    • Vigilance

      • “I am the result/of my convictions/some of them weak/some of them ashamed”

    • Names (II)

      • “i am the prodigal son my grandmother wanted/but never got/I am the wayward daughter/my mother never deserved”

      • “when I am met/at the threshold/of each bathroom/with the frightened jerk of a woman/pushing the door open/I say nothing/insist on my body’s relevance to conditional spaces”

    • Wish

      • “if you looked within me now, you’d see/that my languages are like roots/gnarled in soil, one and indivisible”

    • “Social identity theory focuses on adults and self-esteem issues related to ethnic identity…” » https://www.jstor.org/stable/27765751?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

section 3: in relation to societal expectations:

• dorian gray:

  • P1: the society of the time was much more focused on appearance and status and the exterior of one’s life, choosing to hone in on this, willing to ignore the truth of what was really happening and how ie childhood?

    • “You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of Genius—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.” - pg 26 » Lord Henry

    • “behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” - pg41

    • “i don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. i want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” - pg 118

    • “they wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and sensual.” - pg139

    • “society, civilised society at least, is never ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. it feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals” - pg154

    • “is insincerity such a terrible thing? i think not. it is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.” (pg154)

    • “they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty” (pg242)

    • https://hyacinthreview.org/terri-pinyerd-the-picture-of-dorian-gray-and-the-symbolism-of-the-self/ : “Wilde himself once stated that:

      [Dorian Gray] contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry, what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be – in other ages perhaps….In this sense, the back-and-forth of Wotton and Hallward symbolizes something greater: Wilde’s use of his public persona to distract from his reality and the first facet of Wilde’s self.”

    • pg285-6 (John R Maynard): “his identity exists as the desired of others, first of the loving painter Basil Hallward, who worships his beauty but also creates it for Dorian, gives him this identity by objectifying, even commodifying it on the canvas; then of Lord Wotton, who shows Doria how to fashion himself by demonstrating how easily he can remake and manipulate his identity…. Identity, to use the term that Judith Butler has explored so well, seems to be not a heritage that one owns but an act one learns to perform. In this formulation, identity comes last, its manifestations first; it comes last as a conceptualisation of a set of practices…Identity is always a fiction…” » A Companion to “The Victorian Novel” » edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B Thesing

    • pg437 (Audrey Jaffe): Critics have produced numerous readings of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’… Much of this work outlines the relationship between economic structures and ideologies of gender and sexuality, and serves to demonstrate the particular relevance of Victorian fiction to an understanding of homosocial structures in Victorian society. Even as critics underscore the way in which constructions of subjectivity and structures of interpellation in Victorian novels tend to support cultural models of normative sexuality, the readings they offer also render visible other forms of sexuality embedded in the novels’ language and imagery. These critics decode and unravel the dominant ideological structures that Victorian novels have long been assumed to support.” » A Companion to “The Victorian Novel” » edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B Thesing

• fleche:

  • P1: identity is heavily affected by upbringing and the often prominent societal expectation of heeding parental instruction, sometimes meaning genuine identity is hidden » identity within the tightly-bound parameters of society

    • Always

      • “Do you ever write about me?/ Mother, what do you think?/ You are always where I begin.”

      • “Always the lips wishing/they could kiss those mouths/you would approve of.”

    • Conversation with Fantasy Mother

      • “Dear fantasy mother, thank you/for taking my coming out as calmly/as a pond accepts a stone/flung into its depths”

      • “Afterwards/I returned to my room and touched/all the forbidden parts of myself”

    • Rules for a Chinese Child Buying Stationery in a London Bookshop

      • “you are a tiny machine/being oiled for the day you must face the world”

    • Magnolias

      • “the girl dreams that the words sprouting like weeds from her mouth are not/weeds, but magnolias: her mother’s favourites.”

    • The Window

      • “You will refuse/your mother’s rage, her spit, her tongue/heavy like the heaviest of stones”

      • “tell the one who/detests the queerness in you that dead daughters do not disappoint”

    • Tea Ceremony

      • “As a child, I dreaded/her desperate need, my hand resting/on her forehead, unable to let go.”

    • “Ethnic self-identities can be understood as ‘definitions of the situation of the self’ (Rumbaut 2005). For children of immigrants, they can be conceptualized to emerge from the interplay of racial and ethnic labels and categories imposed by the external society and the ancestral attachments asserted by the newcomers.” » Varieties of Ethnic Self-Identities: Children of Immigrants in Middle Adulthood by Cynthia Feliciano and Ruben G Rumbaut

    P2: morphing into a foreign identity is not only down to culture n parental pressure, but general societal norms

    • A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far

      • “Do you know what camouflage looks like on a day-to-day basis?/Checking the coast is clear before opening a single tab (and multiple decoys) on a screen…Watching my parents’ faces for a sign to hold a tidal wave back”

      • “How I wanted to perform a heroic act to gain acceptance into the kingdom of ordinary people"/To love a city and to not have it love you back is its own form of torture”

    • Vigilance

      • “being queer was ultimately/a nurturing of vigilance/tip-toeing around words/as if each one could kill”

    • Names (II)

      • “so when I am greeted with/Sir/Sir/Sir/ on the streets/of London/in the cafe/of the British Library/I blame myself/blame the clothes I chose/thought camouflage/was a fashion label/I could hide behind/can hear my mother’s voice/it’s your fault/they've mistaken you/for a boy”

Bibliography and References: 

Primary Texts: 

Chan, Mary Jean (2019) Flèche, London: Faber & Faber 

Wilde, Oscar. (2010) The Picture of Dorian Gray, London: Penguin 

Secondary Sources: 

Chan, Mary Jean

Maynard, John R. (2005). In: P. Brantlinger, W. B. Thesing, ed., A Companion to The Victorian Novel, 1^st ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 

Petriglieri, Jennifer Louise. (2011) UNDER THREAT: RESPONSES TO AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF THREATS TO INDIVIDUALS’ IDENTITIES The Academy of Management Review, vol. 36, no. 4, 2011, pp. 641–62. Available at: JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41318089. [Accessed 16 Sept. 2024] 

Pinyerd, Terri (2024). The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Symbolism of the Self. [online]. Hyacinth Review. Available at: https://hyacinthreview.org/terri-pinyerd-the-picture-of-dorian-gray-and-the-symbolism-of-the-self/ [Accessed 5 Sept. 2024] 

Pykett, Lyn. (2001). In: D. David, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, 1^st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 

Schmitt, Cannon. (2005). In: P. Brantlinger, W. B. Thesing, ed., A Companion to The Victorian Novel, 1^st ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 

Stevenson, Robert Louis. (1974) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, London: New English Library 

Zhang, Yan. (2016) From Self-identification to Self-destruction—A Mirror Image Interpretation of Dorian Gray’s Psychic Transformation. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, [online] Volume 7 (2), pp377-391.  Available at: https://www.academypublication.com/issues2/jltr/vol07/02/18.pdf [Accessed 5 Sept. 2024] 

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NEA PLAN VERSION 2 - essentially simplified:

• redo exemplar section + AO3 n AO5

• re-establish AO1s

• rewrite sections based around exemplar paragraph

• proofread

• check over bibliography n refs

extra sec sources:

https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/queerness-as-translation-from-linear-time-to-playtime/

possible quotation questions:

Sokefeld argues that “identity

SECTION 3:

fleche: