The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's
"The Picture of Dorian Gray"
By : Havok
An essay examining the use of aestheticism ideas in Oscar Wilde's novel.
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booksie.com/Havok
Copyright © Havok, 2015
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The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" 1
The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture
of Dorian Gray"
The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wildeâ s
â The Picture of Dorian Grayâ
Around the time of the later 1800â s, in the Victorian Era during which Oscar Wilde was at the peak
of his career, the aestheticism movement was a popular social attitude formed in opposition to traditional
Victorian values. With the influence of his poetry and plays, Oscar Wilde was a major proponent of this
movement, and its philosophies are a dominant theme in his novel â The Picture of Dorian Grayâ . In the
novel, the charactersâ revelations about the soul, their pursuit of pleasure, and their treatment of art all
reflect the ideas supported by the aesthetesâ philosophy on life. When it was first published in 1890 in
Lippincottâ s Monthly Magazine, â The Picture of Dorian Grayâ was purported to be immoral, so
Wilde revised his novel and had it published again a year later with the preface that clearly outlines the
aesthetic approach he intended. In this preface he states that â There is no such thing as a moral or immoral
book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.â Thusly does Oscar Wilde state his opinion that
the only purpose of art is to be beautiful, and leads his readers into the decadent world of Dorian Gray.
The belief of the aesthetes of the Victorian Era was that purity of soul could only be achieved through
the â wholeness of beingâ and oneâ s sense-perception of oneâ s own being (Terpening;
â Epicurus and Victorian Aestheticsâ ). Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who influenced the birth of the
aestheticism movement, wrote that â There exists nothing in addiction to the totality.â (Terpening;
â Epicurus and Victorian Aestheticsâ ). In â The Picture of Dorian Grayâ , Dorianâ s internal
moral decay is concealed by his stunning good looks to every person who does not thoroughly contemplate
his personality, and therefore, by aesthetic belief, not one person ever truly knows him, except for Basil
Hallward, who pays for that knowledge with his life. Wilde creates Dorianâ s character this way to illustrate
the feeling that an â object must be studied in its entirety, or else it is not the object that is being considered,
but a fragment that has no meaningful relationship with the whole.â (Terpening; â Epicurus and
Victorian Aestheticsâ ). Without an understanding of Dorianâ s soul, his superficial charm and good
looks are meaningless pleasures; like art in the aesthetic ideal, Dorian serves no purpose but to be beautiful, as
Lord Henry Wotton says on page 180 of the novel: â â Åš[Y]ou have never done anything, never carved a
statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your artâ Åš Your days
have been your sonnets.â Basil Hallwardâ s portrait of Dorian, as it ages and withers with the effects of
Dorianâ s sins, evolves in Dorianâ s mind as a separate entity from himself that he come to
loathe. Despite his hatred of the portrait, Dorian keeps it and continues to check on it as it changes, because it
has become his only perception of his own true nature, and of his own soul. Dorianâ s being ceases to be
whole when he prays that the portrait, rather than his own face, might age to reflect his sins. By making that
prayer, he splits his soul and his body apart and consequently loses his ability to sense the decrepitude of his
own moral nature. In observing the detriment of his soul portrayed on the portraitâ s canvas, Dorian is
overcome by self-loathing, which he perceives as hatred for the painting, and so decides to destroy the
painting in a desperate attempt to separate himself from his own corrupt soul. â Dorian never approaches
the Epicurean [aesthetic] goal of being free from disturbance; rather, he is continually troubledâ Åš [and
eventually] becomes hideous in death.â (Terpening; â Epicurus and Victorian Aestheticsâ ). The final
sentences of the novel show the ugly, real fate that Dorian finally meets as a result of his actions: â Lying
on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and
loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.â (Wilde,
pg 186). Dorianâ s failure to come to terms with his entire self is the cause of his demise, and the aesthetic
lesson that â â Åša handsome aspect does not constitute a beautiful creature,â regardless of the pleasures
The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" 2
The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
that they may give or enjoy (Terpening; â Epicurus and Victorian Aestheticsâ ).
A dominating motive behind the actions of the characters in â The Picture of Dorian Grayâ is the
pursuit of pleasure. The originator of the aesthetic ideal, Epicurus, declared that pleasure was manâ s
greatest good, and rejected pain, deeming it to be evil. However, he understood that often in order to achieve
pleasure, some amount of pain would be necessary (Terpening; â Epicurus and Victorian
Aestheticsâ ). The main character in the novel, Dorian, is a man who â has a passion for â the colour,
the beauty, the joy of life,â but avoids becoming involved with any experience for fear of it causing him
possible pain.â (Dawson, Dorian Gray as Symbolic Representation of Wildeâ s Personality). Rather than
enjoying life with what the Victorians advocated as â refinementâ or â taste,â Dorian indulges in
hedonistic pleasures and devotes himself to the study of perfumes, embroideries, and other benign aspects of
fine art (Terpening; â Epicurus and Victorian Aestheticsâ ). â [T]his passion for objets dâ art, so
lengthily described in chapter XI, is simply a way â by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear
that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne.â â (Dawson, Dorian Gray as Symbolic
Representation of Wildeâ s Personality). In a paradoxical manner, Dorian is afraid of life, even though he
has been blessed with the means and the ability with which to enjoy life and all its pleasures to the fullest
(Dawson, Dorian Gray as Symbolic Representation of Wildeâ s Personality). In his book, â A Book of
Words,â Rudyard Kipling wrote: â [T]he Black Thoughtâ Åš is the one emotion that all men of
imagination have in common. It is a horror of great darkness that drops upon a man unbidden, and drives him
to think lucidly, connectedly.â (Kipling, A Book of Words). It is this fear, this â Black Thought,â as
Kipling calls it, which drives Dorian to seek refuge in pseudo-aestheticism, the utopia of â art for artâ s
sake,â and surround himself with beautiful things that foster pleasure and nothing else (Dawson, Dorian
Gray as Symbolic Representation of Wildeâ s Personality). â [T]here was to be, as Lord Henry had
prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life, andâ Åš to teach man to concentrate himself upon the
moments of a life that is itself but a moment.â (Wilde, pg 109). So Dorian seeks pleasure in jewels and
â ecclesiastical vestments,â and, when consumed by his passion for music, performs his â curious
concerts.â However, he remains detached from these experiences, seeing things solely from an aesthetic
point of view (pleasure as the supreme â goodâ ), and never really becomes involved in his own life;
rather, he watches events unfold in the way a spectator would (Dawson, Dorian Gray as Symbolic
Representation of Wildeâ s Personality): â [Dorian] was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching with
that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is
acting.â (Wilde, pg 130). Dorianâ s pursuit of pleasurable things leads to his emotional detachment from
humanity, but surrounding himself with those objects of exquisite beauty is not his greatest sin, because those
objects promote pleasure, which is the greatest good, according to the aestheticism belief. Dorianâ s
greatest sin is that he grows to depend upon those things to maintain an interested in life (Terpening;
â Epicurus and Victorian Aestheticsâ ). According to the aesthetes, it is not materialism in itself, but
rather â materialism that substitutes for spiritualism that is undesirable.â (Terpening; â Epicurus and
Victorian Aestheticsâ ).
At the heart of the aestheticism movement was the belief that art should not have any purpose other
than to be beautiful. Oscar Wilde stood by this view very strongly. In his play â The Decay of Lying,â a
character named Vivian states that â Literature should frankly accept that it is fiction, a form of lying, and
that the telling of beautiful untrue things is the proper aim of art.â (Faulkner, â The Picture of Dorian
Gray: Introductionâ ). In the preface to â The Picture of Dorian Gray,â Wilde elaborates even further
on this stance by saying â No artist desires to prove anything,â and â No artist has ethical
sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. Not artist is ever
morbid. The artist can express everything.â (Wilde, pg 1). With this preface, Wilde wastes no time in
making his view very clear to readers, and his view continues to be seen throughout the novel in the words
and actions of the characters. When Dorian first discovers, quite by chance, the beautiful actress Sibyl Vane,
he returns to the theatre nightly just to watch her stunning performances, and she never disappoints him. For
as long as Dorian simply enjoys Sibylâ s art he loves her because she is beautiful to observe, but once he is
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The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
given the opportunity to speak with Sibyl and get to know her, Dorian associates his love with her acting,
thereby giving the art of performance a purpose besides entertainment. When Sibyl decides to exchange her
acting for Dorianâ s love, Dorian rejects her, saying, â Without your art you are nothing.â (Wilde, pg
74). Dorian gives Sibylâ s acting, her art, the purpose of maintaining his love for her, and when she
disregarding her art as a thing without purpose, abandons it, Dorian callously abandons her (Gates, â Oscar
Wildeâ s Picture of Dorian Grayâ ). Sibyl becomes a victim of art, and commits suicide by swallowing
prussic acid: her death is an example of the terrible consequences that the aesthetes believed could occur as a
result of saddling art with responsibility (Gates, â Oscar Wildeâ s Picture of Dorian Grayâ ). Later in
the novel, years after Sibyl Vaneâ s death, Dorian accuses Lord Henry of â poisoningâ him with the
unnamed yellow book that Henry lent to Dorian when they were young. Dorian claims that it was the book
that led him astray and caused him to behave deplorably: â You poisoned me with a book once. I should not
forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm.â (Wilde, pg
181). This claim is in direct opposition to the beliefs of the aesthetes of the era, and Lord Henry, in defense of
his actions, takes a wholly aesthetic stance on the situation. He says to Dorian: â My dear boy, you are
really beginning to moralizeâ Åš As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no
influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile.â (Wilde, pg 181). This statement
purports the purity or â sterilityâ of art: as something created without an intention behind it, art cannot
influence the intents of people. Rudyard Kipling shared this aesthetic opinion that art is a creation without
direction, and in â A Book of Words,â he writes: â No one embraces the career of Art, any more than
one enters Science or the Services, with the direct idea of making money. The material rewards of art are so
small that men may be forgiven if they sacrifice themselves and their belongings to make an appeal to the next
generation, while they neglect their own.â He also describes artists as â men who devote their skill to
producing things and expressing ideas for which the public has no present need.â (Kipling, â A Book of
Wordsâ ). These descriptions of a career in art as totally non-profitable and of artists as people who create
things that are not necessary falls directly in line with the aesthetic motto, â art for artâ s sake.â It also
compliments the preface to â The Picture of Dorian Gray,â because, as Oscar Wilde says, â We can
forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless
thing is that one admires it intensely.â (Wilde, pg 2).
Art in the Victorian Era was considered to be a tool for education, social interaction, and moral
enlightenment, but not a thing that was to be enjoyed merely for the sake of enjoyment (Sparknotes, â The
Picture of Dorian Grayâ ). In the late 19th century, a group of people formed what came to be known as the
Aestheticism Movement, which sought to release art from the responsibilities of having to be an educational
and moral tool. Prominent among these aesthetes was Oscar Wilde, and in his novel â The Picture of Dorian
Gray,â he exemplifies the beliefs of the aesthetic ideal through his charactersâ experiences with the soul,
their various pursuits of pleasure, and their opinions of art. It could be said that â The Picture of Dorian
Grayâ is a cautionary tale to warn of the dangers that may result from placing a functional purpose on
works of art; ironically, for the message is delivered via a piece of literature, which, as it falls under the
category of art, should have no purpose according to aesthetic principles. In the preface to the novel, Wilde
writes: â Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their
peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.â Readers may interpret the story in any way
they wish and draw what conclusions they may, but as the final word on the subject, Oscar Wilde states:
â All art is quite useless.â
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The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
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The Role of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
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