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The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Seduction of the Reader
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“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim,” writes Oscar Wilde in the famous preface of his classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. One might find it a bit ironic the fact that posterity always has looked upon this book as being more or less an autobiography.
Wilde was surrounded by scandals until his death, stirring the strict, Victorian society he lived in with his homosexual bent and libertine views on life. The Picture of Dorian Gray was therefore also regarded by many people as “highly immoral” and has probably earned the title “classic” years after the author’s death.
With rarely less than two cogent aphorisms per page, it is hard not finding myriads of subtle meanings in the text, why I am only focusing on the main themes I found interesting.
The obsession of aestheticism and beauty runs all through the story in a kind of contradictory way. Oscar Wilde states in the preface:
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.”
With this he means that one should not, for example, judge a piece of art on a moral basis; the art is only there for being aesthetically admired and one should only be enchanted with its beauty, not let oneself be misled by a deeper idea behind it.
At the same time, he lets his protagonist Dorian Gray suffer the penalty for his narcissistic behaviour by killing him off at the end of the book, giving the reader the opposite message – that beauty after all is nothing to strive for. Also, Wilde lets the painting of Dorian become a symbol of the young man’s degeneration, showing very well the immorality of his life through a work of art. It is like Wilde means to tell us that art indeed has its important place among people, and beauty is seducing to the viewer. However it is temporary, dangerous, and powerful enough to spoil the life of a man. One must know how to look upon beauty to be able to love it without succumbing to it. As Oscar Wilde was a confirmed aesthete himself, this conclusion may appear paradoxical, but it should be mentioned that not much in this book is not.
