Juxtaposition Of Aestheticism And Ethical Considerations

The Juxtaposition of Aestheticism and Ethical Considerations in The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde asserts both the ideals and aberrations of Victorian society through the philosophies embodied in his characters and the duality of themes —appearance versus reality, art versus life, or pleasure versus virtue— presented in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel hones in on the ethics of a hedonistic lifestyle as embodied by the eponymous protagonist, Dorian Gray, after moving to London and meeting and being influenced by Basil Hallward and, more importantly, Lord Henry Wotton. Hedonism is the theory that all pleasure is intrinsically valuable and is concerned only with maximizing pleasure, rejecting any pain as that is the only

Writer Oscar Wilde brought to light “the nineteenth century dislike of realism…[and] romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in the glass” (1). Wilde alludes to Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, and refers to Caliban, who is illiterate until a colonizer named Prospero comes and “civilized” Caliban and his community which leads to Caliban being taught a language, ironically, giving him the facilities to curse his fate. Wilde’s antithesis highlights the contrast between realism and romanticism, logic and reason, during the Victorian era’s literary periods of the Romantic era (18th to 19th century) and Realism (19th to 20th century). He mocks both types of thinkers as both would not like reflecting on themselves in the mirror, outraged by the ugliness staring back at

Once Dorian kills Basil, he adds to the heinous crime by blackmailing his friend, Alan Campbell, into disposing of his body. Conversely, for levity from the terrible horrors he commits and to relive his soul, Dorian buys flowers symbolizing ephemeral beauty and the purity that comes with it, comparative to Dorian’s lasting beauty and ugliness of his soul due to the atrocities he has committed. Moreover, Dorian, the epitome of hedonism and aestheticism, kills Basil, the pinnacle of Victorian ideals and norms, stressing the novel's (and Wilde’s) defiance of standard views and