The Homosexuality In The Picture Of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde

“A picture is worth a thousand words”. The true personality of a person can be revealed through their character and actions unlike their words. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray focuses on the corruption that envelops Dorian when he exchanges his soul for everlasting youth and beauty. Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, thoroughly demonstrates Dorian’s narcissism as it grows throughout the book and the struggle between good and evil as Lord Henry Wotton, one of his friends, negatively influences Dorian causing the downfall of his soul.

Everyone in the world lives their lives following a set of personal morals. However, as every individual person decides what their morals are, arises moral ambiguity. Moral ambiguity is defined as a lack of ethical decision making. Everyone defines what is morally correct and incorrect, but there comes a point where most people cannot decipher if a decision is truly correct. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray’s morals are ambiguous. Dorian Gray’s moral ambiguity stems from his actions only benefiting himself due to the influence of Lord Henry and Basil and parallels the dangers of engrossing yourself in Aesthetics.

Furthermore, Dorian’s moral principles get progressively worse, eventually leading to the murder of Dorian’s longtime friend, Basil Hallward. Dorian acts impulsively and erratically while showing Basil the mutilated portrait, “and suddenly an uncontrollable hatred for Basil Hallward came over him” (115) spurring Dorian to stab Basil repeatedly. Due to his impulsive nature and devotion to seeking pleasure, the moment his anger took over, Dorian chose to ignore his conscience. He retains his childish behavior because he never

Some of these themes - such as the extravagant lifestyle of the high class, may have left a stronger impression back in the author’s time, but manages to remain a theme that is still seen in modern day literature. Classic novels always succeed in creating timeless themes, which is something Wilde also succeeds in with Dorian Gray. Within the tale of the downwards spiral of Dorian Gray’s life, readers can see how much influence one man can bring to another, the fragility of beauty, and the questioning of the meaning of “art”. These themes are still applicable to society and its problems today, despite the novel itself being 127 years old as of this year. There is no reason why these themes should not be relevant 50 years later, as the nature of man and society fundamentally have remained the same since the beginning of

The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel laced with sin, treachery, and raging battles of inner conflict, is Oscar Wilde’s sole novel. Considered immoral and scandalous upon publication, the book centers around a young man named Dorian Gray, who does not age or reflect the darkness of his heart outwardly, and instead a portrait of him bears the damage his destructive life wreaks on his soul. However, the meaning of the story extends past the simple fact that Dorian lives a life of immorality—he walks the path that takes him there with his two friends, Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotten. The two attempt to guide and influence Dorian throughout the novel in their own ways, and are a vital piece of Dorian’s tale. Basil and Henry act as character foils as well as a symbolic angel and devil for Dorian Gray’s character, and also contribute themes of choosing one’s own fate.

         The novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde originally appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890.  It was then published in 1891, in book form, containing six additional chapters with revisions. The first reviews of Dorian Gray were mostly unfavorable.  It was condemned for its speculative treatment  of immoral or at least uncomfortable subjects. A review in the St. James’s Gazette by Samuel Henry Jeyes, journalist and biographer was titled "‘A Study in Puppydom."   Jeyes refers to Wilde’s idle, “effeminate” characters in the book and writes: “The puppies appear to fill up the intervals of talk by plucking daisies and playing with them, and

While the undertones of the novel were disgraceful when researched, this was only due to the Victorian people’s religious countenance. A similar situation still occurs in the 20th and 21st centuries. There is a struggle to understand and normalize homosexuality while still understanding that it is something that is an integral part of society. In this dissonance, The Picture of Dorian Gray became a middle ground for the community by walking that fine line between being the pinnacle of a sexually fluid revolution and having

When Basil paints the portrait of Dorian Gray, Dorian becomes angry and curses the picture. The idea of the picture will retain the youthful and beauty, that Dorain now has, for all of time, while Dorian is strictened with the curse of having to endure all the signs of aging, is too much for him to bare. In jealousy and anger Dorian wishes that it be the portrait that bare the signs of aging and sin and he be the one that retains his beauty forever. In this moment of jealousy and anger, shows a Dorian that too bares the emotion of vulnerability and insecurity. From this point of the book onward, these emotions are now who this character becomes.

Whenever Dorian’s painting started to get older as he rejected Sybil’s love, he becomes insane at the fact that his beauty is degrading. Dorian’s obsession with beauty and youth is what serves as the main theme of the novel. The power of appearance can cause someone to go insane as they can’t preserve the image that used to be beautiful. His ambiguity signifies this because even though he’s trying to redeem himself for the better, he’s still influenced by his own degrading image. All of his actions, such as murder and manipulation, is the effect of him wanting to change the old and hideous portrait that Basil painted.

Wilde would have been familiar with this story and some have even said that the Greek version of the myth, in which a man falls in love with Narcissus, influenced some of the homoerotic qualities in Wilde’s novel too. Homosexuality and sodomy were punishable offences in Victorian England, and it was under these charges that Wilde was brought to trial in 1895. During the trial, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was used as evidence to condemn Wilde as was a letter to his supposed younger lover Bosie in which he wrote “a note of doom that like a purple thread runs through the cold cloth of Dorian Gray”. In this letter Wilde not only admits to his own homosexual tendencies, but also the sexual affection between his three male characters, Basil, Lord Henry and of course, Dorian Gray. Due to the result of the trial and Wilde’s imprisonment some critics have labelled his novel as the “story of a man’s struggle with his socially unacceptable proclivities” and thus feel that Wilde was working through his own homosexuality and contemporary indecent sexual desires through the character of Dorian Gray and the

The narrator enforces the notion that it was the book that taught Dorian to see beautiful in evil things, shaping the reader’s mindset of how they perceive Dorian to be easily influenced. “He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.” restates Dorian’s newly found obsession with committing sins without letting it affect his exterior persona. Dorian’s intense emotions contribute to the novel’s darkness, and serve as an element of gothicism, and this is emphasised during the description of his now grotesque portrait, “... The hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible,

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first published in the July 1890 issue of “Lippincott's Monthly Magazine”. Soon, after publication the story was widely regarded as perverse and immoral with the Daily Chronicle claiming it was “a poisonous book…heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction”. The Scots Observer suggested that the book was “false to morality”. The conservative paper also claimed the book was fitted “for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys.” This was a reference to the ‘Cleveland Street Affair’ in which a male brothel was discovered to be used by aristocrats to pay telegraph boys for sex.

Moreover, as Dorian’s affection towards Basil lessens, so does his patience. It began with not sitting still anymore for sessions but then takes a darker turn. Furthermore, when Dorian kills Basil after forcing him to witness his aged and hideous portrait, Dorian has no remorse. So little remorse that aside for the cleanup, he rarely thinks of it again. The full reversal of Dorian’s character from a young, loving boy to a narcissistic criminal shows the power of cruelty to take over a

The book was, in part, a reflection of Oscar’s life. Filled with scandal, pain, love, and despair, it could be a mirror. What Wilde wrote was never just a story, but instead a reflection of his soul. It reflects what you think and feels, as was the case with Dorian Gray. The book has had a lasting influence for this reason and several more. The subtext is one of these. Everything Wilde Wrote had another story inside of it. Dorian Gray was no exception, and that is part of what makes it so influential and so very fascinating. It starts with the title. It was the first clue into the story behind the book. Wilde excelled in Greek and Roman studies, and it was no accident that the main character was to be named Dorian. The Dorians were a part of the Greek people long

Dorian is a very impressionable Character and this is made very obvious through the novel because he uses many of Lord Henry’s ideas. His change of character is what ultimately leads to his downfall as well as Basil. In the beginning Basil showed no remorse in informing us of how much he cherished Dorian Gray. Between chapter 12 and 13 we are able to notice the drastic changes in the painting as well as within Dorian.