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Group 1, Year 2,
Victorian Literature Seminar
Seminar Instructor Alina Bottez
16.01.2015
mere sensation and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at that moment kills himself. (St. Jamess
Gazette, Wilde).
Dorian lives a purely aesthetic life, he disregards all social moral codes, and creates his own, he
is a representative character for the absolute aesthetic lifestyle, but his behavior ultimately kills
him and others, and he dies unhappier than ever. Rather than an advocate for pure aestheticism,
then, Dorian Gray is a cautionary tale in which Wilde illustrates the dangers of the aesthetic
philosophy when not practiced with prudence. (Duggan 62). As the writer himself states the
novel was intended to be understood by the readers to describe the relations, intimacies and
passions of certain persons guilty of unnatural practices (Mason), that are in the end without
exception punished or victims of their own fate.
In Chapter two Lord Henry talks to Dorian about the return of the Hellenic Ideal of life
where, the main focus is on beauty, but which implies a denial of self-denial. This ideal
disregards the idea of sin, and sin is seen only as a superficial image created by humans. Sin is
seen only as a product of the human mind, it should not have any effect on the body, but as the
novel follows, Dorians portrait changes proportionally with the sins he commits, so this would
lead to the idea that Dorian is a prisoner of his consciousness, and cannot renounce the sickness
his soul bears.
In my opinion Lord Henry is the one that creates the monster that Dorian has become. He
pushes the young Dorian to follow his philosophy and seduces him with the sweetest words, but
he never shows any proof that he follows his own beliefs. Dorian is for him merely an object of
study, although he is sustainer of sin, he is not a sinner, but he forces Dorian to become one in
order for him to observe what effect they have. He is strongly against modern morality and is in
favor of a self-determined morality, but he never applies any of his deranged beliefs.
In conclusion Oscar Wildes The Portrait of Dorian Gray is even today a controversial
novel, because it still contradicts many religious and moral codes. The writer states in the preface
of the book that: In writing a play or a book I am concerned entirely with literature, that is, with
art. I aim not at doing good or evil, but in trying to make a thing that will have some quality of
beauty.(Wilde). So it is clear that the morality described in the book is not to offend the public
and the reader, but to create art and send a powerful message. Men are to be consumed by their
own excessive desires; desires that are impossible to bear, because humans are limited, thus they
cannot defy the laws of nature and in the end they will suffer the consequences of their actions.
Works Cited
1. Craft, Christopher. Come See About Me: Enchantment of the Double in The Picture
of Dorian Gray. Representations 91 (2005)
2. Duggan, Patrick. "Journal of the CAS Writing Program." Ed. Deborah Breen.The
Conflict Between Aestheticism and Morality in Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian
Gray (2009): 61-68. Www.bu.edu. Web. 14 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/files/2009/11/wrjournal1duggan.pdf>.
3. Mason, Stuart. "THE MORALITY OF "DORIAN GRAY." Art and Morality; a
Defence of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" London: Jacobs, 1908. N. pag. Print.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33689/33689-h/33689h.htm#THE_MORALITY_OF_DORIAN_GRAY
4. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.