Two Rooms, One Face
At Lady Narborough's, Dorian is the most at ease person in the room. Wilde's narrator is exact: perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part. No one looking at him that night could have believed he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of the age. The public room is now a performance so complete it feels like rest. It is not rest. It is the other job.
Key Insight
The more complete the performance, the more it can be mistaken for peace. Ease at a dinner the night after a crime is not proof of innocence. It is proof that the second self has become professional.
“Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.”Explore full theme analysis
