Oscar Wilde’s novel, Picture of Dorian Gray, portrays the dichotomy of the double life led by Dorian Gray.1 The contrast between the portrait and Dorian personifies the universal battle of sin versus morale and ultimately serves as a moral compass for society.2 Dorian’s development of a double life identifies with the results of sociological oppression leading to confinement.3 The development of this contrasting Lifestyle inevitably influences a fatal deterioration of his soul and heart.4 Oscar Wilde’s exaggeration of the effects of the double life of Dorian Gray within his novel Picture of Dorian Gray ultimately conveys the degradation due to a confinement of the soul, and personifies the dualism between private and public lives.5
The development of Dorian’s double life discreetly implicates the confinement of homosexuality due to a lack of liberation.1 Before his confrontation with sin, Dorian leads a lifestyle of spiritual freedom and aesthetic oblivion.2 Dorian’s moral corruption does not arise until the forcible fragmentation of his identity when Basil asserts his desire to “stay with the real Dorian,” while referring to the portrait of Dorian.3 His corruption emerges when he begins to feel a “passion for sensations,” which results in a constant fluctuation of emotional stability and discontinuity of his puerile innocense.4 Wilde finalizes Dorian’s breakaway from realism through his proclamation that the portrait was to “bear the burden of his shame,” which foreshadows his shameful future and the degradation of his image.5 The implementation of a double life reflects the beginning of his battle with sin versus morale, and even more intuitively his expression of homosexuality versus traditional relations.6
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Dorian’s acceptan…
…enation of the portrait and withering of the corpse, which directly references the implicated sexuality of Dorian. 1The restored wonder of youth reflects an idealized homosexual spirit before such labels of homosexuality existed.2 Dorian’s corpse, decayed and withered, acts as evidence of his false public life.3 Wilde reveals the true sin of Dorian’s nature as the shutting away of himself, which erases when he frees himself of the constraints of social obligations.4 Furthermore, Wilde’s identification with the character and double life of Dorian Gray reveals the irony of Dorian’s need to hide himself due to the constraints and uptight morale of society.5 The devastating effects of Dorian Gray’s double life reflect the confinement of his soul, and Oscar Wilde uses this duplicitous life of Dorian to ultimately scrutinize society for a lack of societal acceptance.6
