“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral
book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”-Oscar Wilde
As the above quote suggests,
Oscar Wilde was an as aesthete, appreciating art and beauty over its moral
issues. How does Wilde portray aestheticism in his novel The Picture of
Dorian Gray? Is it viewed in a positive light or negative?
In 1890, during
the Victorian era in which the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was
written, England had an upright society with a strict moral code. Aestheticism, a
branch of philosophy that valued beauty and art over morality, was rebuked by
many Victorian critics for its attempt to free art from its moral burden, that art
strives solely for beauty and need not have any moral significance. Throughout
his career, Oscar Wilde was well-known for being an advocate of aestheticism, as
displayed in his famous epigram, “There
is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or
badly written. That is all.” And though regarded as the masterpiece today, his
novel The Picture of Dorian Gray received poor critique when it was
first published due to its aesthetic elements and ‘immoral, poisonous’ plot. However,
some considerations must be done before concluding The Picture of Dorian
Gray as a novel embodying aestheticism. Just because Oscar Wilde is an ardent
supporter of aestheticism, does that mean The Picture of Dorian Gray is
also its proponent? Or is Oscar Wilde criticizing aestheticism by reminding us
that even appreciation of beauty must have its limits. Regardless of what Wilde’s
true intentions were, The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to suggest that
aestheticism must only be confined to the realm of art and that its extension
to real life may actually result in disaster.
One of the
principal elements of aestheticism is the appreciation of beauty. It is
aesthetes’ beliefs that pursuit of beauty must come first in art before
considering its moral validity. However, The Picture of Dorian Gray takes it a step further by personifying ‘art’ into a person [1]. In other words, Wilde creates a rather
extreme situation by applying the sense of aestheticism to a person’s
perspective of life, something that is beyond art. From
the beginning of the novel, elements of aestheticism subtly appear from the
discussion between Basil Hallward and Lord Henry. In Chapter One, Lord
Henry remarks the way he values beauty (or good looks in this case):
“I make a great difference between people. I choose
my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters,
and my enemies for their good intellects.” (Ch.1 p.11, Penguin Classics)
Starting from Chapter Two, however, readers can feel an abrupt leap as
the theme of aestheticism intensifies. Unlike in Chapter One, Lord Henry
clearly seems more radical and silver-tongued as he persuades Dorian Gray. Note how he uses the word "genius" to describe beauty as if it was the most important virtue of life:
“You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray.
Don’t frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of Genius—higher, indeed than Genius,
as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like
sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell
we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has it divine rights of
sovereignty.” (Ch.2 p.24,
Penguin Classics)
After Lord Henry charmingly convinces Dorian Gray about the importance
of youth and beauty, Dorian Gray begins his pursuit for eternal youth and
beauty. And Lord Henry is also enthralled by the beauty of his new ‘art’ of
having an influence on Dorian Gray.
“To a larger extent the lad was his own creation.
He had made him premature….Sometimes this was the effect of art and chiefly of
the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the
intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed
the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, Life having its
elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.” (Ch.4 p.57, Penguin Classics)
This seems to suggest that Lord Henry considers Dorian Gray as his
masterpiece of art rather than a human being, an application of aestheticism on the perspective of human life just as mentioned above. Lord Henry values Dorian Gray for
his beauty more than anything, and as Lord Henry had such an influence in
shaping Dorian’s life, Dorian was merely a form of art in which Lord Henry
could express himself.
From the first few chapters, Lord Henry’s excessive emphasis on beauty makes
the readers view him in a disgusted, pejorative way. Naturally, as a result, the way Lord
Henry applies aestheticism in his life philosophy is also looked down upon. So can we really say Wilde was depicting aestheticism in a positive way? I think not.
Another element of aestheticism is freedom from the
burden of morality. However, the novel is not without any moral issues. For example,
when Dorian’s lover, Sibyl, kills herself after Dorian had broken her heart,
Dorian falls into a deep dilemma.
“Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I
can’t tell you what it was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her.
I felt I had done wrong. And now she is dead. My God! My God!”
(Ch.8 p.97, Penguin
Classics)
This shows that Lord Henry’s influence until
now had not been absolute and that Dorian still had remnants of his moral
conscious. But once again, Lord Henry comes into play and convinces Dorian yet
again that if one thinks about it her death was quite ‘beautiful.’ Lord Henry
continually acted as someone who freed Dorian Gray from the burden of moral
issues (values of aestheticism in art) while his aging portrait was the
reminder. Generally throughout the novel, Lord Henry tended to have negative
influences on Dorian, thereby his aesthetic views, it would seem to me, were
also depicted in a negative light.
Furthermore, there is also an ironic part in the novel
regarding the purpose of art. Though Oscar Wilde would argue that “there is no
moral or immoral book, only well-written or badly written,” Chapter Eleven of
his novel shows the immoral effects of some books. In Chapter Ten Dorian Gray
receives a strange yellow book which he describes ‘poisonous.’
“It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of
incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was
of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of
the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of
dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.” (Ch.10 p.121, Penguin Classics)
This sentence, contrary to Oscar Wilde’s
famous epigram, shows that Wilde acknowledged the moral influences that some books
tend to have. The novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, shows the importance
of being morally conscious of actions, may it be beautiful or not, and that books
do have, to some extent, a moral bearing.
Oscar
Wilde’s quote that there are no moral or immoral books sounds rather convincing. However,
whether a book has moral or immoral elements in them is an entirely different
story. As for The Picture of Dorian Gray, there are a whole lot of moral
issues; the plot is based around the moral issue of aestheticism. Without a
moral stance, there would be no plot as there would not be a difference in
perspective between the protagonist and the antagonist. The novel, The
Picture of Dorian Gray, is not an immoral book; it merely brings up a moral
issue regarding the application of aestheticism beyond the realm of art.
[1] This interpretation
may be considered controversial as Dorian Gray is, in a sense, a work of art—Basil
Hallward considers him an embodiment of true beauty in art. However, even then,
Wilde would be simply juxtaposing between the applications of aestheticism in
art and perspective of life.
