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Homoeroticism In The Picture Of Dorian Gray

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Recommended: Wilde and the influences

Wilde’s imprisonment for homosexuality in 1895 ended a spectacularly successful career. Although he lived for a few more years in exile in France after his release and produced some moving poetry, his life was effectively over.

He had been a remarkably talented and prize‑winning student at university in Dublin and Oxford, and embarked on lengthy lecture tours of America, Britain and Ireland. In a society that was suspicious of art, he lived life as an aesthete.

He began to write stories for children and produced his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1890. Its homoerotic elements were controversial and were used by the prosecution during Wilde’s trial to help prove his guilt.

Between 1892 and 1895 Wilde wrote hugely successful comedies
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The researcher decides Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned to be the objects of the study on inferiority and superiority complex causing hedonistic lifestyle in main character. The first reason, both of literary works cover the changing of each life of the main character, society and ultimately the individual. Second, they both share the same social background of the main character in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian, displays a well-respected young man. He doesn’t recognize his own beauty until he sees it reflected in Basil’s portrait, and, once he does, it’s all too late. While Anthony in The Beautiful and Damned is illustrates reaching pleasure as the lifestyle and it becomes a habit.

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The relationships focused on in the novel are very unstable and based on almost no connection other than money. Although there are many different views about different romances. One type of romance that has long been under fire are LGBTQ romances. While many live happily being who they are, others face the scrutiny of others throwing what they believe to be true onto them. That is the case with Oscar Wilde himself.

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Later that year, Douglas’ father found out and left a calling card for Wilde addressed to “Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite”- a misspelling of sodomite. Although Wilde’s homosexuality was something of an open secret, he was so outraged that he sued him for libel, a decision that would ruin Wilde’s life. The trial came to a quick close when Douglas’ father, the Marquis of Queensberry, presented evidence of Wilde’s homosexuality including passages from his literary works, as well as his letters to Douglas. Wilde’s case was dismissed and he was arrested for charges of “gross indecency.” On May 25th, 1895 Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison, and once he emerged in 1897, he was physically depleted, emotionally exhausted, and flat broke.

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“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). The protagonist in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde suffers from bad company. The sway of people and objects causes impressionable Dorian to descend into corruption. Little by little, he makes choices influenced by the thoughts put in his head.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray shocked the moral judgments of British book critics. Some of them said Oscar Wilde deserved to be pursuance for breaking the laws guarding the common morality because the uses of homosexuality were in that time banned. This book was for that time unusual because it had a pretty serious criticism on the society from that time. The novel is about a young and extraordinarily beautiful youngster, named Dorian Gray that have promised to his soul in order to live a life of eternal youth, he must try to adapt himself to the bodily decay and dissipation that are shown in his portrait.

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Wilde is greatly influenced by the societal movements in the Victorian Era, therefore the theme of hedonism is prominent displaying the influence of Aestheticism in The Picture of Dorian Gray and further explaining the consequences of selfishness and self-pleasure. The Aestheticism movement shockingly challenged all past standards of love, pleasure, and sexuality. Specifically this Victorian movement “promotes sexual… experimentation. ”(Burdett)

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All actions have an inverse action that can be acquired. The novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, significantly portrays the inverse options in life. Superficial happiness is the leading cause for double standards. The main character preservers through an abundance of difficult situations, while retaining his beauty. This is all due to his double life that he has come accustomed to living.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of Oscar Wilde’s masterpieces, portrays one of the most important values and principles for him: aestheticism. As a criticism to the life lived during the Victorian era in England, Wilde exposed a world of beauty a freedom in contradiction to the lack of tolerance a limitation of that era; of course inspired due to Wilde’s personal life. All the restrictions of the Victorian England lead him to a sort of anarchism against what he found to be incoherent rules, and he expressed all this to his art. His literature is a strong, political and social criticism. He gave a different point of view to controversial topics such as life, morality, values, art, sexuality, marriage, and many others, and epigrams, for what he is very well known, where the main source to the exposure of his interpretations of this topic.

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The theme of appearance extends further in Dorian’s life. Dorian’s outer beauty allows him to get away with almost anything, due to the fact that people equals his outer beauty to him being a good person. In reality, Wilde makes it very clear that Dorian Gray is not a good person. The theme of appearance is illustrated through underlying criticism within Wilde’s use of motifs and symbols. A main motif used by Wilde is the painting done by Basil Hallward.

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