Kim Wilde

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, we see how the different characters show their love of beauty and pleasure and the affects they have on the main character: Dorian Gray. Each of the three main characters, Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, and Dorian Gray portray a part of how the author felt about himself and the world around him. “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks of me: Dorian what I would like to be- in other ages, perhaps” (qtd. in Bloom pg. 117)

tenacious pleasure-seeker. Lord Henry convinces Dorian that his youth and beauty is waning and resultantly, Dorian curses his painting saying “If it were I who was to be always young and the picture was to grow old… I would give my soul for that!” (Wilde 28) This curse starts the five stages of moral regression within Dorian Gray that ultimately leads to his demise. In the beginning of the novel, Lord Wotton introduces Gray to the philosophy of “the new Hedonism,” where only good thing to do is seek

Insipid, gray, and restrained - these are the words that come to the minds of most when they think of the Victorian era. Strict social codes of refined sensibilities and austerity dictated the time, and to act unseemly or out of line was synonymous with committing social suicide. Yet, the Victorian era was also a time run rampant with sensationalism, drug use, and promiscuity. The juxtaposition of these conflicting morals lends to a period rife with hypocrisy, as reflected in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture

transformation to seek self-indulgence through hedonism. Throughout the course of the novel, he demonstrates his allegiance to his beauty and seals his conscience in the form of a painting as to never expose the desecration of his soul to society. Oscar Wilde manipulates allusion, pessimistic diction, and subtle imagery to manifest Dorian’s perpetual fear of his youthful deterioration being publicly showcased and the temptation of enamoring his aesthetic appearance, which facilitates the process of initiating

From all the novels I have read the stories that stood out the most and had the most comparison was “Picture of Dorian Gray” and “Stavrogin's Confession”. From both stories the theme that captivated me the most was beauty and the level of ego between Stavrogin and Dorian. Both characters possessed the same personality in which they thought the world resolved around them and should always be the center of attention. These characters are associated to some droves of famous people, suggesting that the

You will never be happy if you’re living you’re life from the outside in. Once you understand that you’re life experience has everything to do with the story that you tell yourself, all the sudden you take responsibility for the narrative that you hold. When you tune in with the deepest version of you (your soul), the reality that you choose to experience is totally different from the reality you choose to experience when you’re being animated by your ego, from your fears and insecurities. I believe

who abide by the social attitude of anti-intellectualism that undervalues and despises art) who viewed and responded to art in an unrefined manner, and who failed to appreciate the artistic worldview that was becoming fairly prominent at the time. Wilde often describes in detail his disenchantment with the age in which he lived. Commonly referred to as the fin-de-siècle (French for “end of the century”) period, the 1890s in Europe, and especially Britain, were marked by a cynical sensibility that

The picture of Dorian Gray is a classic victorian novel that has maintained its influence through the years. To this day, it is consider to be a masterpiece that treats in a very precise way the themes of beauty and identity. The book revolves around the life of Dorian Gray and his portrait. At the beginning, when Basil Hallward, a prestigious artist, is painting the portrait of Dorian Gray, the character is presented as an innocent and beautiful guy. However, as the novel progresses, Dorian’s soul

The speaker mocks Charles Darwin the scientist and the man as well. She doubts the theory of evolution which says that apes are the origin of human species reducing it into mere likeliness to a chimpanzee: “Mrs Darwin” thus fittingly originates in a zoo, with a wife’s contemptuous casual remark written down in a diary entry, mocking the Great Victorian figure but also recalling and mimicking the attention paid by gender criticism to diaries as a private female space allowing intimate counter-discourse

Wilde’s novel is an obvious evidence of the pervasiveness of main values of Victorian society. According to Wilde, “Aesthetic tendencies have to be taken with prudence and have reasonable limits that imply moral responsibility.” According to the critic Alex Ross, “ Wilde’s aestheticism, his fanatical cult of beauty, was the deepest and most lasting of his passions