THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated at
Trinity College in Dublin and at Magdalen College, Oxford, and settled in London, where
he married Constance Lloyd in 1884. In the literary world of Victorian London, Wilde fell
in with an artistic crowd that included W. B. Yeats, the great Irish poet, and Lillie
Langtry, mistress to the Prince of Wales. A great conversationalist and a famous wit,
Wilde began by publishing mediocre poetry but soon achieved widespread fame for his
comic plays. The first, Vera; or, The Nihilists, was published in 1880. Wilde followed this
work with Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal
Husband (1895), and his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
Although these plays relied upon relatively simple and familiar plots, they rose well
above convention with their brilliant dialogue and biting satire.
Wilde published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, before he reached the
height of his fame. The first edition appeared in the summer of 1890 in Lippincott’s
Monthly Magazine. It was criticized as scandalous and immoral. Disappointed with its
reception, Wilde revised the novel in 1891, adding a preface and six new chapters. The
Preface (as Wilde calls it) anticipates some of the criticism that might be leveled at the
novel and answers critics who charge The Picture of Dorian Gray with being an immoral
tale. It also succinctly sets forth the tenets of Wilde’s philosophy of art. Devoted to a
school of thought and a mode of sensibility known as aestheticism, Wilde believed that
art possesses an intrinsic value—that it is beautiful and therefore has worth, and thus
needs serve no other purpose, be it moral or political. This attitude was revolutionary in
Victorian England, where popular belief held that art was not only a function of morality
but also a means of enforcing it. In the Preface, Wilde also cautioned readers against
finding meanings “beneath the surface” of art. Part gothic novel, part comedy of
manners, part treatise on the relationship between art and morality, The Picture of
Dorian Gray continues to present its readers with a puzzle to sort out. There is as likely
to be as much disagreement over its meaning now as there was among its Victorian
audience, but, as Wilde notes near the end of the Preface, “Diversity of opinion about a
work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.”
,In 1891, the same year that the second edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray was
published, Wilde began a homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, an aspiring
but rather untalented poet. The affair caused a good deal of scandal, and Douglas’s
father, the marquess of Queensberry, eventually criticized it publicly. When Wilde sued
the marquess for libel, he himself was convicted under English sodomy laws for acts of
“gross indecency.” In 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor, during
which time he wrote a long, heartbreaking letter to Lord Alfred titled De Profundis (Latin
for “Out of the Depths”). After his release, Wilde left England and divided his time
between France and Italy, living in poverty. He never published under his own name
again, but, in 1898, he did publish under a pseudonym The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a
lengthy poem about a prisoner’s feelings toward another prisoner about to be executed.
Wilde died in Paris on November 30, 1900, having converted to Roman Catholicism on
his deathbed.
HOW THE AESTHETIC LITERARY AND ARTITISTIC MOVEMENT INFLUENCED
OSCAR
WILDE’S LIFE AND DORIAN’S LIFE
Oscar Wilde preached aestheticism and wanted to construct his life like an art work,
without obeying to any other criterions except pleasure and beauty instead Dorian
breaks the common moral laws and doesn't hesitate in front of vice and crime, outside
he was like an art work, but inside he had negative vices like drugs, sex and murder.
The Preface to the novel is a series of epigrams, or concise, witty sayings, that express
the major points of Oscar Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy. In short, the epigrams praise
beauty and repudiate the notion that art serves a moral purpose.
The Aesthetic Movement is a European 19th century movement that emphasized
aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts,
and interior design. Generally speaking, it represents the same tendencies that
symbolism or decadence stood for in France, or decadentismo stood for in Italy, and
may be considered the British branch of the same movement. It belongs to the anti-
Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates modernism. It
took place in the late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally
considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (which occurred in 1895).
Aestheticism was inspired by the principle of 'art for art's sake (art for the love for art)
...it had to simply create beauty. The Aesthete believed that Form was the essence of
Beauty and Beauty was the highest perfection of human endeavours. The Aesthetic
writers broke away from the confining conventions of their time and led very
,unconventional lives, pursuing pleasure and new sensations and devoting themselves
to the cult of beauty and art.
Symbolists believed that art should aim to capture more absolute truths which could
only be accessed by indirect methods. Thus, they wrote in a highly metaphorical and
suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning.
Symbolism was hostile to "plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and
matter-of-fact description", and that its goal instead was to "clothe (present) the Ideal in
a perceptible form" whose "goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to
express the Ideal".
A 'DANDY'
Oscar Wilde was considered a 'dandy', a very elegant man who gave great importance
to his appearance, refined and eccentric lifestyle and brilliant conversation.
THE VICTORIAN AGE
The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria’s reign, from 20 June 1837 until her
death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, “ refined
sensibilities’ and national confidence for the United Kingdom. Victorian society is like a
theatre. Outside, the streets smell of horse manure and the air is full of soot, while
inside, the society is rigidly stratified: the queen and aristocracy sit in sumptuous
comfort in the royal box, the upper classes next to them. In the dress circle and front
stalls are the solid middle classes, while the lower middle classes of aspiring clerks and
traders sit at the back of the stalls or second circle. To complete the segregation, the
working class, who enter by a separate entrance, sit in the gallery and have the worst
view of the show.
In the 1850, London was developing its business, by building new industries, new docks
along the river Thames, new railways, streets and buildings but, at the same time, it was
destroying the same city. In fact, the new industries used to run with coal as
combustible, and it upgraded the level of pollution. The smog blackened the houses and
the lungs of the people causing a lot of disease. Rich people did not have this problem.
They used to solve it by taking holidays in the countryside, far away from the smog and
the illness of industrial London, but the problem was unsolvable for poor people. They
could not leave the city, because of their work, so they had to live in a city where
the air was black, and as they had no money, they had to live in very small houses in
cramped streets, in the suburbs of the city. These homes would share toilet facilities
and there were always smell of manure. Disease as cholera and typhoid was spread
through contaminated water supply, causing a large amount of deaths.
Social classes
The aristocracy
In the 19th-century the aristocracy had an amazing power and was reinforced by the
new aristocrats who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions.
, The aristocrats also head Britain's social life. On their country estates, they go hunting,
shooting and fishing.
The middle class
The middle class was a fairly small group of professionals, factory owners,
businessmen, merchants and bankers.
In those years it expanded very rapidly and split into two different groups:
• The upper middle class which was divided between professionals (doctors, lawyers)
and industrialists
• The lower middle class (professional managers). As government passed more and
more laws, civil servants – working in both central and local government – multiplied.
London became a city full of clerks.
The working classes
This class was composed by men and women who performed physical labour, paid
daily or weekly wages. These were the people who benefited most from the booming
Victorian economy – their wages rose.
The lowest class
The 'lowest class' comprised about a quarter of urban populations. People were in deep
poverty and living in squalid, even deadly slum conditions.
Some of these people were unemployed, some were criminals, all lived a precarious
existence. Rural poverty was even worse. Child labour and poverty were common.
Women were forced to give their children opium so they wouldn't make any noise while
their mothers were in the fields. When times were bad and work ran out, these people
had no choice. They had to leave the land and migrate to the booming cities or starve.
By 1901, the number of men working on farms had dropped by a third.
Victorian society did not recognize that there was a lower class. The prevailing attitude
was that the poor deserved the way they lived. If good moral choices had been made,
the poor wouldn't be living the way they did. 'Their life was the life of savages.' Many
ended up in the workhouse (institutions where homeless poor were lodged, but the
living was horrendous and it was almost better to be back on the street).
The majority of the population was employed in mining and steel industry. The poorer
classes had no rights. They had to work 60 hours per week on average, without any
Sundays or holidays. They earned practically nothing, but if they stopped, they were
dismissed. All the family had to work to survive, even women and children, who began
to work at the age of 3 or 5. They were employed as chimney sweeps errand boys,
crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, selling matches, flowers, and other cheap goods, or, if
they were lucky, as domestic servants. In 1840 only about 20 percent of the children in
London had no schooling. Charles Dickens, for example, worked at the age of 12 in a
blacking factory. Instead, prostitution offered a “good earning”, in fact many prostitutes
were independent women, they were aged between 15 and 22. They visited pubs,
which were off limits for respectable women. They were so numerous that in the 19th
