But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy…The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare’s plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare’s music sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don’t waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 8. In his attempt to comfort Dorian after Sibyl’s death, Lord Henry creates an alternative reality. Sibyl only existed in plays and the dramatic art of theater, he says. She never really lived and so she hasn’t really died, he rationalizes in his replacement of reality. Henry portrays Sibyl as too innocent for real life, for when she touched it, it marred and she died. Henry is not emotionally moved by Sibyl’s death and there is a callous tone when he speaks about it here.
