By Kelly Yang, Class of 2023

The Transformative Symbolism of White Flowers: Innocence or Guilt?

Editor’s Note: The Coleman Prize in English is awarded to the student, who, in the judgment of the English Department, has submitted the most outstanding essay during the academic year.

If Dorian Gray were a flower, what kind of flower would he be? In the “Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde uses the Victorian language of flowers to comment implicitly on aestheticism and moral corruption. He reveals the corrupting influence of purely aesthetic lives through the symbol of white flowers. From daisy to narcissus, orchid, and rose, the transformative symbolism of white flowers charts Dorian Gray’s trajectory from a figure of innocence to one of degradation. 

Before Dorian Gray is corrupted by a purely aesthetic life, Wilde chooses the symbol of the white daisy to represent Dorian’s innocence and youth. Even before Dorian Gray enters the story, Wilde uses the white daisy to foreshadow Dorian’s loss of innocence. The symbol of the white daisy first appears in a garden, alluding to the Garden of Eden. Just as the Devil corrupts Adam and Eve, Wilde implies that Dorian Gray is doomed to be corrupted by the aesthetic philosophy that Lord Henry inculcates in him. In the grass of the religiously symbolic garden, “white daisies [are] tremulous” (Wilde 6). Daisies are drought-resistant wildflowers that thrive without needing much cultivation (Southern Living Editors). Intentionally placing the wild daisies in the “Garden of Eden,” Wilde suggests the unaffected nature of Dorian Gray, who has not yet been exposed to Lord Henry’s corrupting influence. By using the word “tremulous,” Wilde personifies the daisy, implying that Dorian Gray’s ethical principles are unstable and impressionable, and his understanding of his beauty will be easily subverted by Lord Henry. The symbolism of the white daisy reappears when Lord Henry preaches the significance of vanity and beauty. When Lord Henry mocks Mrs. Hallward as “a peacock in everything but beauty,” he symbolically “pulls the daisies to bits” with his fingers (Wilde 8). By comparing women to peacocks in this simile, Lord Henry dehumanizes women as vain animals that flaunt their tails. His word choice “but” in the phrase “everything but beauty” also disdainfully expresses that he only sees aesthetic values in the external beauty of women and nothing else (Wilde 8; emphasis added). When Lord Henry expresses his philosophy of aestheticism, the daisies, which represent innocence and a lack of worldliness, are torn into pieces, foreshadowing Dorian’s self-destruction due to his indulgent pursuit of beauty (Kirkby 43).

As Dorian pursues an aesthetic lifestyle and falls in love with Sybil Vane for her artistic performance, Wilde uses the white narcissus to foreshadow the omen of the death of Sybil and Dorian’s increasing obsession with his appearance and moral decay. When Dorian falls in love with Sybil for her artistic acting in plays like Romeo and Juliet and kisses her, Sybil “[trembles] all over and [shakes] like a white narcissus” (Wilde 68). The white narcissus in Ancient Greek culture refers to an early death. Similar to Echo, a nymph who is rejected by Narcissus and later dies of grief because of her immense love for him, Sibyl takes her own life when Dorian abandons her (Brenkman 298). Wilde deliberately uses the morbid symbol of the white narcissus in what should be an ecstatic kissing scene to suggest an impending doom. The white narcissus foreshadows Sybil’s suicide caused by Dorian’s immoral obsession with aestheticism – once Sybil fails to show artistic talent in drama, he abandons her heartlessly. The narcissus also suggests a secondary symbolism of narcissism and egotism, as the flower is named after the Ancient Greek figure obsessed with his own appearance. Instead of saying Dorian loves Sybil, the trembling narcissus implicitly suggests that Dorian is a narcissist who loves himself more – he exploits Sybil’s sacrificial love to satisfy his egotism and pursuit of aestheticism. Dorian views Sybil’s death as merely “a sacrament” and Sybil as just a “wonderful, tragic figure sent on to the world’s stage to show the supreme reality of love” (Wilde 93). Dorian loses his morality when he succumbs to this aesthetic way of looking at love and life – he sees life as nothing more than a fictional character or a drama that satisfies his egotistic pursuit of aestheticism. The symbol of the narcissus appears again when Dorian decides to replace moral values with aesthetic pursuits, further reinforcing its symbolism of obsession with appearance and egotism. Dorian is terrified to see the painted lips of his portrait, which he has kissed “in boyish mockery of Narcissus,” now smile mockingly at him (Wilde 93). The Ancient Greek god Narcissus echoes the symbolism of the flower narcissus, revealing the corrupting effect of vanity. In the myth of Narcissus, Narcissus is smitten when he sees himself in the River Styx and eventually fades away, transfixed and unable to move from his image (Bergmann, 390). Similar to Narcissus, Dorian worships his own eternal beauty and youth, even in exchange for moral consciousness. He accepts moral decay as long as his appearance remains undamaged. 

When the color white reappears again in the orchids in the Yellow Book, and after Dorian brutally kills Basil, it transforms from the color of innocence to the color of guilt and cowardice. The poisonous Yellow Book that Lord Henry gives to Dorian contains “metaphors as monstrous as orchids” (Wilde 111). Even though orchids are often associated with refined beauty, Wilde intentionally subverts their original connotation in the Yellow Book, giving them an opposite meaning of “grotesque.” By flipping the meaning of the orchids,  Wilde reveals that the Yellow Book has the corrupting power of transforming beauty into “monsters,” poisoning Dorian’s ignorant mind and hastening his downfall (Kirkby 112). In addition to revealing the acceleration of Dorian’s moral corruption, the orchids eventually indicate the complete loss of innocence after Dorian commits the murder. After killing Basil, Dorian tells Francis not to order “any white [orchids]” (Wilde 152). The absence of white orchids, traditionally symbolic of innocence, metaphorically symbolizes the removal of the last of Dorian’s humanity. Now he has fallen into the realm of a lower-class criminal with the act of murder, destroying his refinement, and his dark and monstrous crime constantly haunts his life. Like the propaganda symbol of white feathers, the white in orchids represents cowardice. In Britain, during the First World War, women often gave males out-of-uniform white feathers to shame them publicly into signing up (Kingsbury 80). The white orchids convey a similar connotation of cowardice as the white feathers. Dorian ultimately gives up on having moral consciousness and cowardly indulges himself in immoral misdeeds. He gutlessly chooses to escape his moral responsibility for murdering his friend Basil and blackmails Alan Campbell to dispose of and destroy Basil’s body. After the murder of Basil, Wilde makes the symbolism of orchids as a representation of evil even more apparent through Lord Henry’s commentary on the flower’s name: “Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvelous spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins” (Wilde 171). Just as he tears the daisy, Lord Henry symbolically cuts the orchid again to imply a loss of innocence. In the simile, Henry compares the orchid to the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Dorian Gray possesses the majority of the seven sins: he takes pride in his everlasting youth, can not control his temper, even commits a crime, is gluttonous in his sexual and physical indulgences, including opium, and is greedy for aesthetic satisfaction without moral limits. Even though Harry is only discussing the naming of flowers, not commenting on Dorian Gray directly, the orchid charts the trajectory of Dorian Gray’s moral decay. The orchids, hothouse flowers that need delicate cultivation, contrast sharply with the symbolism of the wildflower daisies. The transformation from daisies to orchids metaphorically represents Dorian Gray’s decay from an innocent, natural, unaffected young aristocrat to an artificial, unscrupulous person indulged in aesthetic pursuits. 

Even though Dorian longs, at the novel’s end, for his rose-white boyhood, representing his lost innocence, the hope is in vain, and he proves unable to wash away the stains of his sins. As Dorian Gray replaces moral conscience with aesthetics, the connotation of white flowers shifts from innocence to corruption. Wilde metaphorically critiques the inherent immorality of purely aesthetic lives through the transformative symbol of white flowers. Dorian Gray’s hedonistic lifestyle and pursuit of empty pleasure and beauty have resulted in his moral deterioration, leaving him a shell of his former self. Unlike the visible corruption of Dorian Gray’s portrait, the degrading connotation of white flowers and Dorian’s moral decay are invisible and subtle. The white flower symbolism reminds us to constantly reflect on the invisible influence of an unrestrained lifestyle on our morality. 

Kelly Yang is a graduate of the class of 2023.

References Bergmann, Martin S. “The Legend of Narcissus.” American Imago, vol. 41, no. 4, 1984. Brenkman, John. “Narcissus In the Text.” The Georgia Review, vol. 30, no. 2, 1976. Kingsbury, Celia Malone. For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front. University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Kirkby, Mandy. The Language of Flowers Companion. Random House Publishing Group, 2011. Southern Living Editors. “Everything You Need to Know About Growing Daisies.” Southern Living. 19 April. 2022. https://www.southernliving.com/garden/flowers/daisy-flower-plant. Accessed 6 Dec. 2022. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. SeaWolf Press, 2019.