Aestheticism In The Picture Of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Lust for Our True Character
The struggle to seem perfect on the outside is ever so present in today’s society. The desire to project an unrealistic version of ourselves, striving to mask our insecurities with layers of falsehood. The Victorian era is known for its beautiful women, art and architecture. Beneath the surface, it is all false portrayals full of pretend actions and untruthful ideas in order to uphold their aestheticism. Victorian authors used the idea of “destructive doppelgangers”, showing parallels in the contemporary culture of the falsity. In Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the symbolism of the portrait illustrates the conflict between outer appearance and inner immorality. The central conflict presents the question; is the facade people portray representative of their true intentions? Furthermore, does their deceit ever receive punishment?
In the last three decades of the 19th century people considered art as a substitute of older values. The movement gave importance to the aesthetic value of things rather than the practical ways of thinking. Oscar Wilde used art as a reaction to the ugliness and materialism of industrializing times. Through his writing, Wilde transposed his beliefs and values regarding the aestheticism movement of the Victorian age further making the novel a topic of controversy. The preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray became the platform for the English aestheticism
movement,
The Theme Of Superficiality In Dorian Wilde, By Oscar Wilde
1108 Words | 5 PagesAnother theme illustrated through Wilde’s use of motifs and symbols is the theme of superficiality. The theme of superficiality can be understood as a sense of the superficial view of outer beauty that is shown in the work. It relates to the concept of remaining young, which is an important factor of what is shown in the novel. This is an important part of the novel because outer beauty plays a bigger role for Dorian, than inner beauty does. In the beginning of the novel, Lord Henry and Dorian have a conversation that focuses on the topic of youth and Dorian 's outer beauty – Lord Henry mentions the fact that Dorian has a beautiful face, and later during this conversation, Lord Henry states that: “youth is the only thing worth having…”
House Of The Seven Gables Rhetorical Analysis Essay
759 Words | 4 PagesYou’re a Big Fat Phony!: Corruption in The House of the Seven Gables Appearances can be everything. In today’s society, especially, appearances are a major factor in how society views and values individuals. However, while one can appear to be high-principled and faithful, he or she can easily be deceiving the public in order to maintain his or her reputation. In The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne, through a collection of oxymoron, syntax, tone, rhetorical question, connotation, details, metaphor, and direct characterization, reveals the corrupt nature of Judge Pyncheon.
The Picture Of Dorian Gray And The Beautiful And Damned
1115 Words | 5 PagesThe researcher decides Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned to be the objects of the study on inferiority and superiority complex causing hedonistic lifestyle in main character. The first reason, both of literary works cover the changing of each life of the main character, society and ultimately the individual. Second, they both share the same social background of the main character in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian, displays a well-respected young man. He doesn’t recognize his own beauty until he sees it reflected in Basil’s portrait, and, once he does, it’s all too late. While Anthony in The Beautiful and Damned is illustrates reaching pleasure as the lifestyle and it becomes a habit.
Social Commentary In The Picture Of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
1121 Words | 5 PagesRelatively all authors are very fond of creating an underlying message to criticize society. Authors do this through social commentary. The book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is no exception. The author, Oscar Wilde, criticizes the upper class through the consistent underlying idea that people are often deceived by one's beauty and are unable to understand the poison that fills the world is corrupting it. From the beginning of this book, the social commentary towards the upper class begins with the structure of the novel.
The Importance Of Being Earnest Rhetorical Analysis
920 Words | 4 PagesNot only do individuals change to meet the higher class standards, but they also change to meet the needs of the average class. “You are my little cousin Cecily, I’m sure” (60). Algernon wanted to marry Cecily and the only way of doing that, he thought, was by making a second identity. The last example how Wilde used exaggeration to show individuals couldn’t make decisions without the impact of society is when Lady Bracknell constantly lied regarding Jack being apart her family. Jack has never known who his mother or father was.
Theme Of Corruption In The Picture Of Dorian Gray
725 Words | 3 Pages“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). The protagonist in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde suffers from bad company. The sway of people and objects causes impressionable Dorian to descend into corruption. Little by little, he makes choices influenced by the thoughts put in his head.
Gender Roles In Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest
928 Words | 4 PagesWilde’s representation of the British upper class, its values and opinions, is presented most notably through Lady Augusta Bracknell. She is a dignified aristocratic residing fashionable London society circles. On the surface, she is very typical Victorian woman. As a mother to Gwendolen Fairfax, she has a great authority over her controlling her life. She has even a list of ”eligible young man” whom she is ready to interview in order to select a suitable partner for her daughter.
Dorian Gray Good Vs Evil Essay
997 Words | 4 PagesAs soon as Dorian enters in Chapter 2 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wildes’ one and only novel, its is evident that there will be a battle between who will have the most influence on his pure, untouched soul. Basil Hallward, a painter and worshipper of art is an optimist and sees only the good in even the wickedest of people, such as Lord Henry. Lord Henry is a charming, self-indulgent aristocrat that shapes and molds Dorian to lead a life devoted to pleasure. Both Basil and Lord Henry represent two important opposing forces in the novel, good and evil. The greatest struggle in The Picture of Dorian Gray is inside Dorian; he himself embodies both pure good and pure evil.
Influence In The Picture Of Dorian Gray
2219 Words | 9 PagesHis words and painting influenced Dorian’s life immensely and this made him so determined to want to retain his youth after taking a look at his
Hedonism In Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray
1283 Words | 6 PagesAs a writer one is greatly influenced by their personal experiences with social, historical, and cultural context within their specific time period. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was shaped by the aspects of the world around him. The themes of the text are are influenced by morality in the Victorian Era. Throughout the Victorian Era a deeper movement was also prominent in London called Aestheticism. Aestheticism is the worship of beauty and self-fulfillment.
The Picture Of Dorian Gray Literary Criticism
750 Words | 3 PagesThe Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray shocked the moral judgments of British book critics. Some of them said Oscar Wilde deserved to be pursuance for breaking the laws guarding the common morality because the uses of homosexuality were in that time banned. This book was for that time unusual because it had a pretty serious criticism on the society from that time. The novel is about a young and extraordinarily beautiful youngster, named Dorian Gray that have promised to his soul in order to live a life of eternal youth, he must try to adapt himself to the bodily decay and dissipation that are shown in his portrait.
Theme Of Appearance In Dorian Gray
937 Words | 4 PagesThe reader gets the impression that the portrait is a representation of Dorian 's inner self, and how it becomes uglier and more disgraceful as time gradually passes and with every horrific crime that he commits, as can be seen in the following quote: “The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.” (Wilde 113). The portrait serves as an image of Dorian 's true nature and the relationship between how his soul progressively becomes more nefarious, and how the evil of his soul becomes visible on the painted surface of the canvas. The way Wilde uses the portrait as a motif throughout the story helps the reader to see and understand how Dorian himself is not yet entirely unfettered by the influence of the portrait.
Gothic Elements In The Picture Of Dorian Gray
1087 Words | 5 PagesIn the early 18th century a new genre of fiction prose, named "Gothic Novel" was introduced. The term ”Gothic” used to refer to the German tribe of the Goths. The Gothic novel spread over the 19th century and had the popular theme of haunted places such as castles, crypts, gloomy monasteries; supernatural elements having the role to intensify the atmosphere. The characteristic motifs of the gothic genre were the strange places, the supernatural, magic objects, monsters, demons, science used for bad purposes. And many of them appear also in "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
The Picture Of Dorian Gray Romanticism Essay
782 Words | 4 PagesThe Picture of Dorian Gray, one of Oscar Wilde’s masterpieces, portrays one of the most important values and principles for him: aestheticism. As a criticism to the life lived during the Victorian era in England, Wilde exposed a world of beauty a freedom in contradiction to the lack of tolerance a limitation of that era; of course inspired due to Wilde’s personal life. All the restrictions of the Victorian England lead him to a sort of anarchism against what he found to be incoherent rules, and he expressed all this to his art. His literature is a strong, political and social criticism. He gave a different point of view to controversial topics such as life, morality, values, art, sexuality, marriage, and many others, and epigrams, for what he is very well known, where the main source to the exposure of his interpretations of this topic.
The Importance Of Being Earnest Satire Analysis
1876 Words | 8 PagesWilde mocks at the superficiality of a Dandy in the mouth of Algernon, ‘I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them’ (303). The apparently absolutized tone on expressing his hatred unveils Wilde’s intention to mean the contrary: it is food that is not a serious matter, and people who are solely serious on food are so shallow of them. However, members of the idle upper class members were interested in nothing else
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