The Picture Of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde English Literature Essay

The Picture of Dorian Gray is called as a masterpiece and the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. Wilde later revised this edition, making several alterations, and adding new chapters; the amended version was published by Ward, Lock, and Company in April 1891.

The title is sometimes rendered incorrectly as The Portrait of Dorian Gray. (GradeSaver 1999-2011 )

The novel tells a story of a young guy named Dorian Gray, who was the subject of a painting by painter Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian’s beauty and becomes infatuated with him; Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil’s, and becomes ravished by Lord Henry’s world view. Lord Henry suggests the only things worth tracing in life are beauty and appliance of the senses. He inspires him with the vision of life in which the pursuit of beauty through sensual pleasure is valued above ethical or moral concerns. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses a desire to give his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian gets his wish, heading him into promiscuous acts. The portrait gets old and he remains young.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray begins in London, in the Basil Hallward studio, he was talking with his friend Henry Wotton about the latest picture of a very handsome guy named Dorian Gray, Basil explained to his friend how fascinated he has been by Dorian since the first time he met him at his aunts’ couple of months earlier. He also said to Henry that he will not exhibit the painting because he has put too much of himself in it.

The portrait of Dorian Gray displays all the ugliness and age of sin while Dorian himself remains young and beautiful no matter what he does. The picture even holds Dorian’s guilty conscience, at least until he kills Basil Hallward in the end.

The writer has used tree characters to describe the whole story, how the world thinks that he is, how he is and how he wishes to be!

“If I could stay young and the picture grow old! – For that- I would give everything! I would give my soul for that”! This is Dorian’s wish when he sees the picture of him painted by Basil Hallward, which means that he would like to be always young and charming, during the reading I have seen that he also called Dorian Gray as Prince Charming which means that everything was related to his beauty.

Dorian Gray kept his portrait to his library but after the death of his beloved Sibyl Vane he realized that that the portrait was getting old and he was remaining the same, his wish was fulfilled and now he decided to cover the portrait and put it into a dark room that no one will notice what was going on time after time, which means that his state of mind was changing too.

Homoerotic love is an underlying theme of the novel, although it is never stated directly. Both Lord Henry and Basil Hallward are deeply attracted to Dorian Gray on account of his great physical beauty. Basil insists that his love for Dorian is noble and intellectual, and there is no reason to doubt him. But he also speaks about Dorian in terms that a man would normally speak about a lover and about falling in love. “I worshipped you,” he says to Dorian. “I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. Basil sublimates any erotic dimension to his feelings about Dorian by pouring them into his art.

Lord Henry prefers the company of Dorian to that of his wife, and he consistently expresses misogynist views. He worships youthful male beauty as embodied in Dorian, and he encourages Dorian to give full rein all his secret desires. When he says the following to Dorian, he may well be suggesting that Dorian has a previously unacknowledged sexual attraction to men: “You have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame-” The language here, and the use of the word “shame,” suggests that Dorian’s “sins,” although they are never explicitly described, may be of a sexual nature. One has to remember that in the Victorian age, attitudes to homosexuality are very different from what they are today. (NovelGuide-1999-2011)

As I have read this part of analysis and according to the other analysis the author seem to be a homosexual but never stated directly and just when I thought it was clearly said that he was attracted by a man which means that he was homosexual the theme changed completely and the story was being more interesting to go through it trying to find out whether he was more attracted by a woman or men because in the beginning of the book Dorian Gray seem to be in love with Sibyl Wane while Lord Henry was married and Basil Hallward was attracted by Dorian’s beauty that which he uses as an inspiration for his work.

Dorian Gray became a murderer in the beginning he didn’t do it intentionally but after he realizes that he cannot run away from the truth he start killing, and now why he became a killer?. He became a killer because everything started to come up, people were looking him in a strange way, he became 38 years old and his appearance was remained the same from the day that Basill Hallward an artist painted a picture of him, Sibyl Wane killed her self by swallowing something horrible after the night that Dorian told her that he will not marry her just because she didn’t play good in the theatre Dorian didn’t even let her explain why she was acting like that, he was rude to her and left her and didn’t care at all, he made her suffer and made her committed suicide. At the end he became so heartless so he killed the artist that painted his picture because he told him about the rumors he is hearing about Dorian.

My conclusion about the book is that the author used this character as e sample to show how a man can be attracted to his own beauty and not caring about the rest of the people he was able to make people suffer and also to kill people just for his pleasure wanting to stay young forever.

But in the end he took a mirror and looked at himself, he hates his own beauty and grabs a knife and put it in his heart. The servant heard a terribly cry, finally, they went upstairs and saw a beautiful portrait of their master and a dead man lying on the floor. So in the end Dorian committed a suicide.

The others say that Dorian Gray was one of the 3 characters the writer uses to describe him self and everything regarding his own life because he lived in 19th century where attitudes to homosexuality are very different from what they are today.

Somehow I agree as long as homosexuals were not allowed to be with the same sex the author uses Dorian as someone mysterious, someone who thought he was in love but in fact he wasn’t. It was mentioned the other men were attracted by his beauty, what makes you believe that Dorian was not shown as homosexual but still everything has to do with it.