The Reflection of Dorian Gray

"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"

So laments Dorian Gray, staring into his beautiful likeness. There is something very fishy about the way Wilde writes this gothic horror. Compared with the explicitly Victorian Dracula, Wilde paints the same themes but instead of focussing on the hero, focuses on the monster. Underlying Lord Henry, with his light hearted hedonism is Satan, the great tempter. Dorian, tempted by the pursuits of the flesh, sells his soul to feed his Henry-induced desire to keep his beauty forever and in the end, perishes, the guilt and fear forcing his hand; a clear indictment of his own moral excesses and promotion of Christian value.

However, there is a certain ambiguity in Wilde’s analysis; there is no doubt that he paints Dorian as wrong. With the moral turpitude that he practises comes drug addiction, murder and the ruin of reputations, in that time a fate slightly better than out and out murder. Yet, the supernatural element of the painting hides a deeper meaning. Wilde appears to be commenting on the ridiculousness of it all.

"I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more,--at least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."

Do we have a soul underneath our skin carrying all of our collective sins or are we instead instinctive creatures that should embrace the pleasures of life? His death comes at his own hand after attempting to purge his sins, Wilde knows such an act is not possible; to attempt to purge one’s sins is to kill oneself. Henry in the book is both devil and Savior, Wilde leaves enough ambiguity to feel some truth in his words, some reflection in the joy of hedonism. It is the old who realise the truth of pleasure, it is the folly of youth to attempt to pursue these outdated moral truths.

"Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot…"

If anything, this story is about the rejection of these illusions of youth and learning to accept one’s sins for what they are. A reflection of our true selves. A society cannot repress its sexuality, its brutality, it must embrace and understand indulgence. Wilde never attempts to suggest this means going down the dark path of Dorian's disgrace but it is the denial that brings his worst sin and his own death. Only in acceptance can we be truly satisfied.

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."