The Vane Sisters Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word. Sybil Vane is also a character in Oscar Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. She is an actress who commits suicide when Dorian rejects her, first causing the portrait to change and Dorian to notice the connection between him and the portrait. The apparent uniqueness of this narrative approach has created fame for this story, and Nabokov himself described this device as something that 'can only be tried once in a thousand years of fiction'. The trick
The Picture of Dorian Gray (opera) has changed, with a cruel expression around the mouth. He muses that the painting has become 'the visible emblem of my conscience'. He pledges to reform his life and marry Sibyl to make amends. However, Lord Henry arrives with the news that Sibyl Vane has committed suicide. He calms Dorian by assuring him that she was less real than Shakespeare's heroines that she portrayed. Dorian agrees to go to the opera with him that night. Looking again at the altered portrait, he resolves to let it represent the life he shall now lead, in search of 'pleasures secret and subtle,