I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Dorian vows control, not virtue. The repeated “I want” drums up resolve but centers appetite, not responsibility. It’s a pivot: grief turns into a plan to manage feeling as a luxury, not a teacher. The phrasing borrows Henry’s cool tone—master the self by indulging it elegantly. Yet the more he “uses” emotion, the less he can feel plainly; the portrait keeps the score. What reads as freedom is a new kind of bondage to sensation. The reader feels the chill of willpower without a compass.