Week 3: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was the master of the epigram: short, pithy, wittily-phrased, truisms. Most of these epigrams have been absorbed into pop-culture. His recent “appearance” on The Simpsons is a clear example of this.  The ghostly form of Wilde visits Homer in a dream and spouts such timeless phrases as “Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes”.

Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is full of similar witty epigrams. Many of these are espoused by Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry plays the part of the tempter, a devil-like figure, who shows Dorian Gray a path towards a “new hedonism”, where pleasure is valued above all other pursuits.

Wotton describes his ideology to Gray:

I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream – I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism […]. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.

Gray throws himself into the pursuit of pleasure in all its forms. The effect of this wild hedonism is represented by the novel’s titular metaphor. While outwardly, Gray shows no sign of corruption, or even aging over the course of twenty years of hedonistic living, a picture of Gray, painted by frustrated admirer Basil Hallward, has supernaturally started to age and decay, representing the hidden monster that Gray has truly become.

The painting is imbued with Gray’s inner life because it was created at the same moment that Lord Henry indoctrinated Gray into the cause of new hedonism.

Wilde’s novel was considered controversial at the time. So much so, that Wilde felt compelled to add the following preface: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all”.

Interestingly, I feel that this is a supremely moral book. The corruption and decay represented in the painting of Gray functions as an indictment on his way of life. Although on the surface, it seems to uphold Lord Henry’s ideals, the novel’s conclusion delivers justice and punishment for Gray’s way of life.

A modern day incarnation of Dorian Gray is Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. This is another novel which, on the surface, seems to uphold a particularly amoral way of life, but whose depths reveal a similarly strong indictment of its protagonist’s actions.

However, I’d recommend Wilde’s novel above Ellis’, which should only be read by those willing to stomach its lengthy passages of gruesome violence. The only lengthy passages in need of endurance in Wilde’s text are the lengthy descriptions of the decadence and wealth and conspicuous consumption of Grey’s hedonism. But the rewards are worthwhile. Where else will you read such gems as “[the picture] had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?”.


The Penguin Australia page for The Picture of Dorian Gray is here.