Victorian England and The Picture of Dorian Gray - 2083 Words

Wildes novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is just the sort of book that made Victorian England shiver. This decadent masterpiece is anything but a vehicle for the propagation of middle-class morality. We have in Wilde the ultimate aesthete, a disciple of Walter Pater, a dandy who in his personal life seems to have lived out Paters quiet injunction to burn with that hard, gemlike flame in experiencing art and, no doubt, other things. How could Wildes book, given its affinities with the ages decadent manifestoes--Stegrave;phane Mallarmeacute;s symbolist poetry, Huysmans Agrave; Rebours (Against Nature), Aubrey Beardsleys drawings, The Yellow Book, and so on--serve as a cultural critique every bit as scathing, and perhaps more†¦show more content†¦This aristocratic epigram-pusher and society wit acts a good deal like Oscar Wilde at a London dinner party and talks a good deal like Walter Pater, though we must make allowances for the latters bashful, philosophical way of stating th e most outrageous things. Lord Harry likes to live vicariously, it seems. While he lives the more or less respectable life of a British aristocrat and man of means, his present respectability as a social animal does nothing to keep him from experimenting, Pater-like (yet in a way that surely would have horrified Pater himself), on the passions of others. Perhaps understanding well the dangers of actually living the dandyist, amoral philosophy he peddles, Harry treats Dorian as a kind of lab animal upon which to perform his nefarious experiments. In Lord Harry, we see a master of spiritual corruption at work. nbsp; It is a likely wager, nonetheless, that most of us rather like old Harry in spite of our own still-Victorian sensibilities. Why should that be so? Probably not entirely because he is a successful villain (though thats part of it, no doubt). It is more likely that we admire him because he is so very accurate in his judgments of the world around him. Unfortunately, the same witty epigrams that fill the empty container Dorian and lead him to ruin actually reflect the behavior and institutions of Britain. When Harry sneers at sincerity, marriage and politics, that is, he turns out more often than not to be describingShow MoreRelatedOscar Wilde s The Picture Of Dorian Gray1656 Words   |  7 PagesThe Victorian era is an extraordinarily complex age that occurred throughout the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. The Victorian Era was a tremendously exciting period that created the emergence of many various artistic styles such as literacy, poetry, and painting. In addition, the Er a caused the social, political, and religious movements to flourish. The Victorian Era, although being known as the beginning of modern times, still embraced some radical views that today we would associateRead MoreEssay on The Victorian Society in The Picture Of Dorian Gray699 Words   |  3 PagesThe Victorian Society in The Picture Of Dorian Gray Works Cited Missing The Victorian age was the time when the British Empire was at its strongest and greatest. 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