I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me… If it were I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old!
Dorian names the fear that rules him—loss of beauty. The wish is emotional before it’s supernatural; envy of the portrait’s permanence triggers everything. Foreshadowing darkens the moment: the bargain he imagines becomes the novel’s engine. His jealousy isn’t petty; it’s existential panic at time itself. Wilde shows how fear can make us barter away what we can’t afford to lose. The contrast between the living boy and the “dead” canvas reverses life and art. In the end, the price for freezing a face is the thawing of a soul.