As the only novel Oscar Wilde ever wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a chillingly effective gothic horror story of obsession and vanity in 19th century English society. Here we look at extravagance and immorality in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Dorian Gray’s natural beauty is crucial motivator in the book, inspiring awe from those who see him and not least of all Basil Hallward, the artist for whom his greatest muse Dorian is the subject for a full-length portrait. Through Basil Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, an aristocrat who boasts proudly of his hedonistic lifestyle that is to become Dorian’s inspiration.
Wotton’s influence and unrelenting praise for the pursuit of pleasure and beauty for their own sake lead the naïve Dorian to wish his portrait would age instead of himself, to allow him a lifetime of sensualism without consequence. The social circle Dorian and Henry keep allows Dorian to become his version of a perfect ‘type’, a socialite and scholar rolled into one that is allowed to act without morals and without fear of being castigated.
Yet while society is aware of Dorian’s depravity, it is his youthful beauty that allows him to continue his life without recourse, such is the enamouring purity of his face. As his picture becomes ever more cruel, sinister and decrepit, the most typical horror element of the story, it is Dorian’s behaviour that is most horrifying, more so when he realises that he is the architect of his own moral downfall. His murder of Basil, blaming his creation of the portrait as the root, seals Dorian’s fate as wicked in both body and mind. When he moves to destroy the picture once and for all, Dorian’s malice is turned back on him by the terrifying entity imbued in the portrait.
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