How Is Dorian Gray A Morally Ambiguous Character

“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone” (Oscar Wilde). One can grow old in age, but still never achieve maturity in wisdom. This is the case for Dorian Gray. He is an alluring young boy who Wilde develops throughout the novel. Dorian wishes to maintain his youth and beauty as he ages. His wish becomes true, but just as wilde’s quote states, he does not gain the precise wisdom and experiences that are necessary to mature as he ages. Dorian Gray is the primary morally ambiguous character of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a fact displayed through his subservience to Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton. Both characters impose opposite influences on Dorian in the novel, it is for this reason that he cannot be completely resolved as a purely evil or purely good character.

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Basil begs Henry to not impose any influence on his golden subject, Dorian Gray, because he is aware of Henry’s malicious influence, especially on those so innocent and pure. The first time that the reader is able to observe these influences is when Dorian falls in love with the actor, Sybil Vane. “But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life” (Wilde 48-49). Wilde is able to display Basil’s influence on Dorian through his description of the lovely Sybil Vane. The passionate love of Sybil and her performance art that Dorian is entranced by reveals Basil’s positive influence of life in Dorian.