When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 20. These are the last lines of one of literature’s greatest Gothic novels. It is only in destroying the portrait that Dorian is able to negate its supernatural powers. The picture reverts to its original state: a portrait of a beautiful young man. Dorian loses his youth and beauty and falls dead on the floor, old and disfigured, with a knife in his chest. All the years that Dorian lived and the sins he committed had been absorbed in the painting. But when he stabbed it, these were all transferred back to him. There is an irony in the painting being the instrument of his death, when it was supposed to bring him endless youth and beauty. But such are the consequences of vanity and bartering of his soul in return for eternal youth in Wilde’s version of the Faust legend.