At the end of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Dorian Gray goes to his attic to view his portrait, which has changed over time to show all the signs of his corruption, while the flesh-and-blood Dorian remains eternally youthful and handsome. He stabs his portrait in an attempt to destroy it, resulting in his own death. His servants find him as a loathsome old man with a knife in his chest, while the portrait returns to its original form of a painting of a beautiful young man.
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