Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Purpose of Art
When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first
published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890,
it was decried as immoral. In revising the text the following year,
Wilde included a preface, which serves as a useful explanation of
his philosophy of art. The purpose of art, according to this series
of epigrams, is to have no purpose. In order to understand this
claim fully, one needs to consider the moral climate of Wilde’s
time and the Victorian sensibility regarding art and morality. The
Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for social
education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers
such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing. The aestheticism movement,
of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from this
responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt
for bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in Dorian
Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word seems designed to
shock the ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as
they were by the belief that art need not possess any other purpose
than being beautiful.
If this philosophy informed Wilde’s life, we must then
consider whether his only novel bears it out. The two works of art
that dominate the novel—Basil’s painting and the mysterious yellow
book that Lord Henry gives Dorian—are presented in the vein more
of Victorian sensibilities than of aesthetic ones. That is, both
the portrait and the French novel serve a purpose: the first acts
as a type of mysterious mirror that shows Dorian the physical dissipation
his own body has been spared, while the second acts as something
of a road map, leading the young man farther along the path toward infamy.
While we know nothing of the circumstances of the yellow book’s
composition, Basil’s state of mind while painting Dorian’s portrait
is clear. Later in the novel, he advocates that all art be “unconscious,
ideal, and remote.” His portrait of Dorian, however, is anything
but. Thus, Basil’s initial refusal to exhibit the work results from
his belief that it betrays his idolization of his subject. Of course,
one might consider that these breaches of aesthetic philosophy mold The
Picture of Dorian Gray into something of a cautionary tale:
these are the prices that must be paid for insisting that art reveals
the artist or a moral lesson. But this warning is, in itself, a moral
lesson, which perhaps betrays the impossibility of Wilde’s project.
If, as Dorian observes late in the novel, the imagination orders
the chaos of life and invests it with meaning, then art, as the fruit
of the imagination, cannot help but mean something. Wilde may have
succeeded in freeing his art from the confines of Victorian morality,
but he has replaced it with a doctrine that is, in its own way,
just as restrictive.
The Supremacy of Youth and Beauty
The first principle of aestheticism, the philosophy of
art by which Oscar Wilde lived, is that art serves no other purpose
than to offer beauty. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, beauty
reigns. It is a means to revitalize the wearied senses, as indicated
by the effect that Basil’s painting has on the cynical Lord Henry.
It is also a means of escaping the brutalities of the world: Dorian
distances himself, not to mention his consciousness, from the horrors
of his actions by devoting himself to the study of beautiful things—music,
jewels, rare tapestries. In a society that prizes beauty so highly,
youth and physical attractiveness become valuable commodities. Lord
Henry reminds Dorian of as much upon their first meeting, when he laments
that Dorian will soon enough lose his most precious attributes.
In Chapter Seventeen, the Duchess of Monmouth suggests to Lord Henry
that he places too much value on these things; indeed, Dorian’s
eventual demise confirms her suspicions. For although beauty and
youth remain of utmost importance at the end of the novel—the portrait
is, after all, returned to its original form—the novel suggests
that the price one must pay for them is exceedingly high. Indeed,
Dorian gives nothing less than his soul.
The Superficial Nature of Society
It is no surprise that a society that prizes beauty above
all else is a society founded on a love of surfaces. What matters
most to Dorian, Lord Henry, and the polite company they keep is
not whether a man is good at heart but rather whether he is handsome.
As Dorian evolves into the realization of a type, the perfect blend
of scholar and socialite, he experiences the freedom to abandon
his morals without censure. Indeed, even though, as Basil warns,
society’s elite question his name and reputation, Dorian is never
ostracized. On the contrary, despite his “mode of life,” he remains
at the heart of the London social scene because of the “innocence”
and “purity of his face.” As Lady Narborough notes to Dorian, there
is little (if any) distinction between ethics and appearance: “you
are made to be good—you look so good.”
The Negative Consequences of Influence
The painting and the yellow book have a profound effect
on Dorian, influencing him to predominantly immoral behavior over
the course of nearly two decades. Reflecting on Dorian’s power over
Basil and deciding that he would like to seduce Dorian in much the
same way, Lord Henry points out that there is “something terribly
enthralling in the exercise of influence.” Falling under the sway
of such influence is, perhaps, unavoidable, but the novel ultimately
censures the sacrifice of one’s self to another. Basil’s idolatry
of Dorian leads to his murder, and Dorian’s devotion to Lord Henry’s
hedonism and the yellow book precipitate his own downfall. It is
little wonder, in a novel that prizes individualism—the uncompromised
expression of self—that the sacrifice of one’s self, whether it
be to another person or to a work of art, leads to one’s destruction.
