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Sexual Euphemism In The Picture Of Dorian Gray

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In the novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Dorian’s attempts at reformation ultimately fail due to self-centered and unwholesome intentions. Dorian spends years living an immoral life, with Basil’s painting bearing all of his guilt and consequences. Eventually, he becomes tired of living an immoral life and decides to change for the better. He describes his first act of reformation as sacrificing his desires so a young woman can live her life without the negative influence of Dorian. He discusses his act of reformation with Lord Henry and says, “I spared somebody. It sounds vain but you understand what I mean. [...] Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am …show more content…

This quotation exposes Dorian’s deeply rooted immorality. He is so used to doing immoral things that when he stops, he thinks it is special and that he is doing a good thing. However in actuality, to think and act good is expected of everybody. Any reasonable person is expected to not go around defiling innocent women. Dorian’s unwholesome intentions are further emphasized by his defensive attitude towards Harry’s jests; “I can’t bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don’t care what you say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. [...] don’t try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.” (173) Harry criticizes Dorian on his ‘transformation’, pointing out that Dorian probably hurt the poor girl in his ‘act of reformation’. Dorian is reluctant to accept the criticism, he gets defensive and his true intentions show. He suggests that he was acting morally and he is not wrong. However the reason he acted morally wasn’t because he wanted to be a good person. It

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No matter how hard Dorian tries to act innocent, his sins cannot easily be erased since he acts pure for selfish reasons, such as clearing his conscience. Additionally, Wilde uses mist to symbolize Dorian’s uncertainty about beauty. As Dorian enters the opium den, “the mist thickened, he felt afraid” (205). In Plato’s theory, Dorian does not completely understand the beauty of something, since he glances it from at a surface level and therefore, remains far from the truth and results in confusion and uncertainty, such as the mist. Moreover, Wilde suggests how before Basil’s murder, Dorian did not appear completely innocent but society could still consider him pure and white if he prayed for God’s forgiveness.

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Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde illustrates the dichotomy of Dorian Gray revealing the corruption of his soul and the reflection of that corruption in the appearance of his portrait. At the beginning of the novel, Dorian is the epitome of youth and beauty: his appearance and innocence enable him to be well-liked among everyone. However, Dorian begins his descent into evil and sin when he pledges his soul to remain youthful while his portrait ages. To illustrate, Wilde repeatedly draws a parallel between Dorian’s corruption and the physical appearance of the portrait. Furthermore, Dorian’s murder of Basil reveals the extent of the irreversible corruption of his soul.

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In Oscar Wilde’s audacious and diabolic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray is an ambiguous character neither being entirely good or bad. Dorian’s ambiguous characteristic displays that people can be influenced easily. Throughout the novel, Dorian’s motives, emotions, and intentions become skewed, opposed to the young and beautiful man society sees. The readers can see the change of Dorian’s moral ambiguity, from the start of the novel he is a young and handsome man, almost innocent.

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Dorian was led to be this way because of Lord Henry. Lord Henry is the evil Dorian has to constantly battle against because Henry encourages Dorian to do things he shouldn’t. Michael Gillespie wrote a critical essay outlining Lord Henry’s influence and how it impacted Dorian Gray’s morality. Gillespie writes, “Basil protests against such an outspoken articulation of New Hedonism by refusing to believe that Harry holds views as cynical as his statements suggest.” Basil and Henry were constantly on opposite sides when it came to ethics, what mattered, and what didn’t.

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Cruelty plays a vital role in developing the plot and characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Throughout the piece, many acts of cruelty are displayed from Dorian Gray and others that show truly who they are how they've developed from it. Dorian takes on a huge change in his morals and standards because of the influence taken in from others. This influence causes him to only care about his own youth and vanity, resulting in a huge change of personality. The more Dorian becomes influenced by Lord Henry and the painting, the crueler he becomes

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Dorian Gray is a young, vain, impressionable, narcissistic man. He is obsessed with youth and goes as far as selling his soul to the devil. Gray realizes the beauty of youth while sitting for a painting for Basil Hallward. The influential Lord Henry changes his life. He tells Dorian the greatest secret of life to get rid of temptation by yielding to it.

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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. The

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At the end of the book, he has lost all of his innocence and gained cruelty. Bad company and objects are what causes Dorian Gray 's corruption. Basil Hallward is a painter who wants to paint Dorian 's picture. He is a quiet and unchangeable man. When he first meets Dorian, they talk about how it was destiny for them to meet.

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Dorian Gray is a handsome, narcissistic young man enthralled by Lord Henry 's new enjoyment. He satisfies in every pleasure of moral and immoral life ultimately heads to death. Henry tells

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Basil attempts desperately to lead Dorian to decency, to hold onto the perfect image of Dorian, being the one and only force of goodness in his life. He cannot accept the reality of Dorian’s actions after being influenced by Lord Henry. Basil’s good nature can be seen through the fact that he never loses faith that Dorian can change his ways and become the innocent, naïve boy he once painted and loved unconditionally. This goodness backfires after Dorian kills Basil. He had reached a point in his life in which he had lost his consciences and his corruption was out of control.

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Lord Henry’s painting showed Dorian the reality of life and all the sins he had committed. With the picture, Dorian destroyed it plus his own life because he could not bear the fact that his beauty was going to fade. In addition, Henry influences Dorian by manipulating him because; he carries on with his idea of remaining youthful. This is evident when he says, "To get back to my youth, I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable" (Liebman 300). Lord Henry had everything to do with Dorian’s obsession of wanting to remain young especially with the picture and his philosophy.

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From the beginning of the novel we get to see a model of poor and unconventional morality, Lord Henry Wotton, a man who is moved by an ethic current called “New Hedonism” which taking into account society’s ethics (specially the ones from the Victorian Era) is quite immoral. The New Hedonism basically consists in looking for the individual’s best comfort, pleasure and happiness (based on beauty), leaving aside the other’s comfort and what should be morally done. This character with poor morality is who guides the book’s main character Dorian Gray along his adventure. However, it is vital to take into account the fact that Dorian Gray is never forced to follow New Hedonism and that Wilde never influences or invites the reader to follow New Hedonist

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The double standard can be depicted in image changing, in lavish lifestyles, and in superficial happiness. Dorian Gray, the protagonist in the novel, lives a superficially stable double life. The portrait that Basil Hallward, Dorian’s artist and friend, created for Dorian caused a self-image imbalance. The portrait was young and juvenile, while Dorian was soon to grow old and immoral. Thus causing a mental epiphany that made Dorian realize he could not have his fellow peers discover he is not innocent.

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Basil has come to ask Dorian about all the horrible rumors surrounding him, and hopes they turn out false. Basil also asks about the portrait and why Dorian hides it, so Dorian decides to show him his “to see your soul. But only God can do that—you shall see it yourself to-night!”. Dorian then takes Basil to see his picture, which at first cannot be recognized by Basil, but soon he realizes the true horror of the situation, “an exclamation of horror broke out from the painter’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him” (Wilde 113). Dorians soul has become rotten to the core with selfishness and pleasure, mainly because of Lord Henry’s poisonous words.

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As the portrait significantly becomes more hideous, Dorian gradually loses his mind. The reader understands that what eventually leads Dorian to kill Basil Hallward, the only true friend he has, is the constant reminder of the evil found at the heart of Dorian’s nature, as represented by the portrait. In Dorian doing so, the reader realises that not only does Dorian kill Basil, he also kills his only chance of redemption of his soul. The reader realises that the statement that Dorian had expressed earlier in the story was the truth: “Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now.”

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