The Power of Love
After reading about the suicide of Sybil Vane I could find some similarities between today´s society. Her action is probably a consequence of the way she was treated by Dorian Gray after the night´s show of Romeo and Julia. Dorian Gray had preened about Sybil’s talented acting and felt real embarrassed in front of his friends Lord Henry and Basil Hallward as Sybil poor acting. Sybil’s acting this particular evening, is described in the book as if she totally lacked talent. In his embarrassment Dorian Gray turns out to be very angry with her. After the show, from which both Lord Henry and Basil Hallward had left early due to Sybil´s poor acting, Sybil and Dorian share a conversation where Dorian announces that he will reject marrying her as she had proved to be such a bad actress. Dorian also announces that her talent for acting was the true reason why he loved her. Sybil tries to make Dorian change his mind by explaining to him why she performed badly. According to Sybil she had experienced the real, true love with Dorian and could no longer play the role of Juliet or any other loving character because of the love she felt for and from Dorian was too intense. Sybil simply had a hard time to act loving someone else. Dorian does not really listen to the declaration of love he had just been given and still refuses to marry her and walks away from the theater without even saying goodbye. Later that evening Sybil kills herself probably because the lack of love from her greatest love, Dorian Gray.
I believe that Sybil´s main reason for taking her life was, as said, lack of love. In every literary era you can find the theme of suicide, which the authors use as a hyperbole to portray love and despair. Unfortunately it is not only in different literature-eras the characters kill themselves because of love, this also happens in real life. One of today´s society’s greatest problems is suicide among children and young adults. According to Magnus Hellberg, every year 30 to 50 children and young adults decided to take their life. Bullying, lack of love from the fellow humans are the main reasons for this tragic statistics. In March 2013 a thirteen-year-old girl took her life by jumping in front of a train in the Swedish city Kumla This girl had been bullied during a long time in school and later when her story was investigated it was also disclosed that she had been both bullied and sexually harassed on the internet by an elderly man. It is here I start to feel vibes from the novel Dorian Gray. Dorian did as well stalk Sybil before the two of them were introduced. Sybil also fell for his appearance.
On the internet we can be whoever we want but also today’s society´s norms had made many of us trying to be somebody we are not. We can hide our identity, but we also try to build up a perfect appearance; our profile pictures show our best sides, our comments and status-updates often tells the world of our perfect lives – or rather what we think others will perceive as perfect, fun and glamorous. Later on, if and when you get to know somebody you “met” on internet you might realize it was a false picture. Hopefully you have not, uncontrollably fallen in love with the image, falsely created on social media. I clearly see the parallel to Dorian Grey here, he fell in love with the actress, not the true Sybil, the Kumla-girl may have been impressed and overwhelmed by the super-nice guy she thought she had met. Maybe, when she realized she had been wrong, she was just too embarrassed to tell, felt stupid and humiliated. Maybe she could not find the way out from the relationship without losing too much face and also that the love she might thought she had felt, never existed, thus killed herself.
This young girl with the entire future ahead of her – just like Sybil, took her own life. Maybe because of lack of love or at least lack of compassion and care (being abused by) from the man or maybe she couldn’t manage to match the perfect image that she felt was society´s and the guy’s expectation. Trying to escape her real life via internet – just like Sybil on stage, the acting clearly was just an act, lacking connection to the real world; the lack of real love was something she wasn’t able to handle.
Either way, the story-line is similar; affection or love to an imaginary person or character can be truly devastating.
//Hedwig Pettersson (May 15, 2013)