The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This post contains spoilers.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's fantastical tale of a man who stops aging. This famous novel is a philosophical and character-driven narrative.

Dorian is a young man who is described over and over again as beautiful and youthful looking.  He is also charismatic.   Basil Hallward is his artist friend who becomes obsessed with him. The artist creates a magnificent portrait of Dorian. Over the course of the book, as Dorian descends into immorality and malevolence, the portrait begins to slowly change as it manifests ugliness in Dorian’s image. Likewise, Dorian stops aging as the portrait takes on the toll of his passing years.

Lord Henry Wotton, another friend of Dorian and Basil, is a key to this story. Much of the book is filled with Henry’s observations on life and his philosophizing. Henry is a cynic. He rejects conventional morality. He values experience for experience’s sake and advocates for the seeking of sensation and pleasure, regardless of ethics or any consideration of others.

Early in the story, Dorian is portrayed as innocent and naïve. As the narrative proceeds, Henry begins to corrupt him. When the two first meet, they are in an idyllic garden. I do not think that I am stretching it to suggest that there may be an analogy a between this meeting and the Serpent’s encounter with Eve in The Garden of Eden.

At one point, Henry muses,

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.”

Henry’s belief system is a key component to this story. His philosophy seems to be a sort of twisted form of Romanticism. He believes that one can only live through experience and feeling. He rejects the intellect at several points. He champions the seeking of experiences without regard to morals, however. At times he revels in experiences that involve great cruelty to others. When Sibyl Vane, a young woman engaged to Dorian, commits suicide as a result of Dorian’s cruelties, Henry only sees the great drama in her death.

He observes,

“There is something to me quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love." 

Henry’s musings, ghastly as they are, take all sorts of turns as he relates them to art, literature, philosophy, etc. Both his pontificating and the words and actions of other characters allow Wilde to explore many facets of art, aesthetics and morality, as well as other topics. In contrast, Basil, who becomes highly critical of Dorian’s descent into wickedness, provides a morally based counterpoint to all this.

Wilde was accused of a lack of morals upon the publication of this book. In his preface that was included in later editions of the book, Wilde even famously wrote

"there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book"

However, it seems clear that this book is a scathing indictment of the moral vacuity that Henry preaches and that Dorian practices. In the above quotation, I think that Wilde was defending the need for an author to portray pernicious behavior and to ask questions about the nature of morality. This fits in with the revolting way that Henry and Dorian are portrayed. Dorian’s depravity, violence, drug use, corruption of others, etc. is described in a series of ugly passages. Furthermore, Dorian is punished in the end.

There are a lot of aspects to this book that I have not touched on above. There are all sorts of themes at play. The character of Dorian is fascinating, and I could write a lot about him. The story is interesting. The writing and descriptions are often dark but brilliant.

Thus, this book is a philosophical feast for readers so inclined. It also has much else to recommend it. I highly recommend it for those who like philosophical tales, fantastic tales and nineteenth century English literature.