Aestheticism was a popular dogma in the late 1800s that centered on the belief that art should exist for beauty alone. This doctrine is defined as an “exaggerated devotion to art, music, or poetry, with indifference to practical matters” and “the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary” (“Aestheticism,” def. 1 and 2). In Oscar Wilde’s sole novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, aestheticism is a fashionable belief accepted by society at the time. Oscar Wilde uses the moral deterioration and ultimate destruction of Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray to emphasize the negative effects of society’s preoccupation with aesthetics and offer a moral for the reader.
In this novel, Oscar Wilde displays Dorian’s moral corrosion negatively in order to convince his audience of the detrimental effects of aestheticism. As Dorian descends deeper into the depths of his depravity, the audience loses faith in him. His innocent, childlike and charitable qualities, seen in his philanthropy and petulance when he is first introduced, are lost, and he acts cruelly and selfishly. For example, when his lover, Sibyl Vane, performs on stage and fails to meet Dorian’s expectations, Wilde fashions Dorian’s reaction to be callous and bitter to her so that the reader sympathizes with Sibyl.
The juxtaposition of Dorian’s incredible devotion and his sudden hatred of Sibyl Vane creates shock and makes the reader realize Dorian’s injustice to his lover. When he first meets Sibyl, Dorian is enamored by her beauty and talent. “‘Sibyl Vane is sacred!’” he exclaims when describing the actress to his friend Lord Henry (Wilde 51). Dorian worships her because she encompasses every aspect o...
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...te ugliness somewhere in ourselves” (139). Dorian Gray employed evil in his endeavor to become the aesthetic ideal, and in doing so created an ugliness in his soul that murdered him.
Works Cited
"Aestheticism." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 15 Mar. 2008. .
Beckson, Karl E. Oscar Wilde. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970. Google Book Search. 2 Mar. 2008 .
McGlinn, Colin. Ethics, Evil and Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1997.
Pearson, Hesketh. Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit. 3rd ed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Norman Page. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1998.
---. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings. Ed. Richard Ellman. New York: Bantam Dell, 1982.
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a novel written by Oscar Wilde. The story takes place in England, where the artist Basil Hallward paints a portrait of the young and beautiful Dorian Gray. During his stay at the artist’s studio, he gets introduced to Lord Henry who later becomes one of the most influential people in his life. Dorian Gray becomes aware of his amazing beauty and youthfulness due to the portrait and wishes that the portrait ages instead of him. His wish comes true, Dorian remains beautiful and youthful while the portrait changes. Lord Henry becomes his best friend and motivates him to live in abundance, to sin and always strive for beauty. After a while, Dorian discovers that his portrait doesn’t only age, but also changes face expression as a result of all his sins and evil deeds. Dorian gets anxious by the fact that the portrait shows his evil soul and is scared that somebody will see it, therefore he hides it. The portrait haunts Dorian although it’s hidden. As Dorian’s sins gets worse, he feels that he can’t handle the pressure anymore and decides to destroy the portrait that shows his true self.
Within The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde depicts two characters that follow the philosophy of Walter Pater. These two characters are Dorian Gray and Henry Wotton. They both embody Pater’s ideal of placing as much enjoyment in one’s short life as possible. While Dorian learns of Pater’s philosophy from Henry he soon exceeds his teacher and becomes invested within the philosophy of living life to the fullest. Dorian exceeds Henry in Pater’s philosophy through his active experimentation and desire for beauty, but Dorian fails to live up to all of Pater’s expectations due to his inability to separate morality for art.
The gothic literature is only a prime example of how our work reflects us in life, or in this instance the case of Oscar Wilde. In this case, whether conscience of the decision, Wilde has placed himself into the novel as Dorian Gray, and replicated the same decisions as he took in life that led each to the same fate. The use of gothic also portrays the same idealistic rules presented, if not spoken in those who create work for the gothic. Although many artists and authors grow in different background and learn different styles, what is presented in their works will always show similar
In "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, we see a beautiful young man who makes tremendous efforts to transform the actual world into the idealistic world of art, dreams and sensations. Dorian's quest, however, culminates in his ultimate tragic destruction. Given that Dorian lives a corrupt life, one is likely to focus on the negative aspects of his character. In spite of his significant character flaws, Dorian Gray may still be considered a hero. This essay will examine Dorian's degradation from the innocent world to the vicious, sensation-oriented world. The elements contributing to Dorian’s status of tragic hero will then be discussed.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
Ruddick, Nicholas. "'The Peculiar Quality of My Genius': Degeneration, Decadence, and Dorian Gray in 1890-91." Oscar Wilde: The Man, His Writings, and His World. New York: AMS, 2003. 125-37. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 164. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
In this novel, we see the corruption of Dorian’s unscathed innocence and his beauty by various outside sources. Dorian first meets Basil, who values Dorian’s beauty so much that he is Basil’s muse for art, his way of living. Basil wants to cherish Dorian forever, and wants to keep him for himself. Additionally, at first, he cherishes Dorian’s beauty more than he does his personality. As an artist, Basil is completely enamored by Dorian’s beauty, and he says, “what the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me” (Wilde 12).
Beauty isn’t subjective. It’s one of the only things in the world that cannot be denied. Things are either beautiful or they are not. Art is beautiful. Art is not always meant to be interpreted, sometimes you just need to admire it for its beauty, not for what it means. Oscar Wilde, an Irish writer best known for his book The Picture of Dorian Gray and for writing plays like The Importance of Being Earnest, wrote this and almost based the book earlier mentioned on the whole ideal that beauty doesn’t have to mean more than just beauty. I feel like Oscar Wilde’s greatest strength is his play on words and often use of caricature that really livens up what he writes. He lived during the Victorian era, when art was meant to be used to teach and to influence the minds of society, so as he wrote the book The Picture of Dorian Gray, he strived to prove a great point and contradiction to the era he was living in, as well as the way he uses Dorian’s two best friends to show the hideousness of the bigotry he was living in, as he was arrested and imprisoned for being gay. Oscar Wilde’s use of irony, foil, and symbolism really portray his total disgust towards the age he was living in by rebelling and contradicting the use of art as a tool and the intolerance he was surrounded with during this Victorian age.
...y others to be a devoted aesthetic due to his concerns to consumerism and fashion, but not a feminist (Mintler 139). Thus, the neglect of women in Dorian Gray is evident and Oscar Wilde had more pursuit over aesthetics than the feminist movement, which is reflected by Dorian’s means of aesthetic pursue over the care of women.
In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray slowly becomes more influenced by things and people around him. Eventually, Lord Henry gifts him with a book describing a wealthy man’s pursuit of aesthetically and sensually pleasing items. “The yellow book” has a much stronger effect on Dorian Gray’s perception of beauty than Lord Henry Wotton does. Although it can be argued that Lord Henry introduced Dorian to the idea of aestheticism, the “yellow book” drives Dorian to live a life full of it, and changes his focus. Dorian shows the fact that he is not strongly influenced by Lord Henry through his interactions with Sibyl. Contrary to this, Oscar Wilde illustrates the substantial influence the yellow book has on Dorian by one, the
In Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, beauty is depicted as the driving force in the lives of the three main characters, Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry. Dorian, the main character, believes in seizing the day. Basil, the artist, admires all that is beautiful in life. Lord Henry, accredited ones physical appearance to the ability of achieving accomplishments in life. Beauty ordains the fate of Dorian, Basil, and Lord Henry. The novel embodies the relationship of beauty and morality. Beauty is not based on how attractive an object is to everyone, but how attractive it is to one.
He also blames all the misery of his life on the hideous painting of him (152). Dorian 's hatred towards the two pieces of art mirror how Victorian society looks upon art created by people like Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde 's plays, essays and other works of art are looked poorly upon by some in the Victorian era as his work was considered by some to be corrupting. Oscar Wilde, however uses the book The Picture of Dorian Gray to subtly counter these points. “All art us at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril” (4). Oscar Wilde criticizes Victorian culture as he implies that too many people read and analyze the surface or read the symbol, but not both. In order to properly understand a piece of literature the reader must interpret both surface and symbol. Dorian Gray fails to do this as he interprets merely the surface of the portrait and also of the yellow book, but he fails to investigate the symbol of each piece of art. By failing to completely analyze the text he draws terrible conclusions of what the purpose of the book is and as he begins to formulate horrible ideas based off these incomplete conclusions he has drawn from the book. He then proceeds to blame all his corruptness on the book, when in reality it is his poor analysis of the book
Oscar Wilde`s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is written primarily out of the aesthetic movement of the Nineteenth Century. Therefore, the text contains a profuse amount of imagery which reflects the concepts of beauty and sensory experiences. By taking the aesthetic approach, Wilde was able to revive the gothic style through grotesque imagery of the portrait and the character whose soul it represents. Wilde is not using gothic elements to shock his audiences; rather he uses the gothic to capture the hideousness of Gray`s corruptness which leaks out of the painting and into the tone of the entire text.
In analyzing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, concepts such as influence and the origin of evil in Dorian Gray play an exceptionally valuable role in understanding the motives of the characters. Although some critics argue characters such as Lord Kelso significantly influence Dorian’s corruption, Lord Henry Wotton’s toxic personality undeniably impacts Dorian the most. Throughout the course of the novel, Lord Henry remains the ultimate source of evil and uses deception and persuasion to poison Dorian from a naïve boy to a destructive monster.
To avoid getting hurt, he pretended to be Lord Henry: decadent, cynical, eloquent, rebellious, and a bit evil in the eyes of bluenoses. Dorian Gray is what he would like to be: be loved, taste all the beauties and exquisite in life and die for what he wants to defend. In this novel, Wilde portrays his philosophy of "aesthetic idealism." He favored nature when it was explained as an internal individualistic impulse, just like Lord Henry who suggests that beauty is the greatest good and doing so diminishes the role of the soul. He does this out of a half-facetious, half-earnest pursuit of that which is more genuine, less socially constructed and therefore less hypocritical.