Femininity In Dorian Gray

Although « The Picture of Dorian Gray » was published more than one hundred years ago, Dorian Gray is more real than he has ever been nowadays. It is a novel written by Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest authors in the English literature. It reflects themes that have been human preoccupations: the expresses of desire for eternal beauty and youth, which is a representation of our today’s society and its fixation on appearance. The pursuit of staying young forever has always existed and will continue to grow along with our developing society.

Cruelty plays a vital role in developing the plot and characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Throughout the piece, many acts of cruelty are displayed from Dorian Gray and others that show truly who they are how they've developed from it. Dorian takes on a huge change in his morals and standards because of the influence taken in from others. This influence causes him to only care about his own youth and vanity, resulting in a huge change of personality. The more Dorian becomes influenced by Lord Henry and the painting, the crueler he becomes

In the award winning article, “Passages in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Cynthia Pon addresses masculinity and feminism in terms of conventions, ideals, and practices (Pon, 33). She focused on whether Mary Shelly's work as a writer opened the way to a feminist figure of humanity like Donna Haraway argued. The article has a pre-notion that the audience has read Frankenstein and Haraway's article. Pon has a slight bias, due to her passion as a feminist writer. It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.

The 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. To get what they want, he will do anything and they do not want to feel the hurt. They think the important things in their life are pleasure and happiness. Pleasure for Anthony is when he lives freely without hard work, spends a lot of money for drunk, goes to the party and also makes up his wife more beautiful using luxuries treatment. The important thing for him is could get his grandfather’s heritages. Here, hedonism is used as the main theory to analyze because the problems of these novels are related to the luxurious lifestyle and temporary happiness.

Page Three and Four of Fall Author Report In my opinion the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, is a very verbose read. Greg Buzwell and Patrick Duggan both write about Oscar Wilde and his novel. Both highlight the positive and negative points found in the novel. Oscar

As 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.

Margret Atwood’s short story “Lusus Naturae” is known as a work of fiction in which a monster uncommonly plays the role of the protagonist. Discussing character dynamics, it is interesting to examine the symbolic meaning behind the girl as a monster in this story. Is this text simply a fantasy created with the goal to serve solely as a horror story with a typical ending, or does this tale have a deeper meaning encompassing the treatment of women and their sexuality throughout history. Through close reading of “Lusus Naturae,” I plan to use evidence from the text to illustrate symbolic parallels between the unusual protagonist and the known historical role women held in society.

The Picture of Dorian gray is a book written by Oscar Wilde and it was published in 1880. The book was later revised by addition of more chapters and reprinted in April 1891. Dorian Gray is the main character in this book that is described as a beautiful and unspoiled male who changes his life completely by sinning and pleasure after meeting Lord Henry. Basil Hallward who is a painter develops obsession for Dorian because of his beauty whereas Lord Henry Wotton Basil’s friend influences Dorian with his theories about life, pleasure and women even though he had no intention of changing Dorian’s personality. Lord Henry’s influence in Dorian leads to his downfall. The author’s main themes are identity, influence, and experience.

Hedonism, the seeking of self pleasure, is described by the homosexual innuendos in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The idea of homosexuality was not only unaccepted in London at this time, but also illegal, therefore it is an act of self-service with no care for the laws or others opinions. “Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. ”(Wilde 83) This quote demonstrates how Wilde vigorously accepts homosexuality by displaying Basil’s intense love for Dorian. The consequences of the aestheticism movement and more specifically, self-indulgence, are not only prominent in the novel but also in Wilde’s own life.

Another 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…” (Wilde 23). This conversation leads Dorian to wish that he will only age in the painting, and not in reality. Wilde creates a theme of superficiality as he shows through motifs and symbols how Dorian’s sinful and horrific inner beauty becomes excused as the characters of the novel primarily superficially values Dorian’s outer beauty.

Of course, one almost intuitively understands that the novel’s leading women adhere rather closely to socio-gender norms; both Adeline and Clara, the two women who most represent Radcliffe’s idealized morality, are traditionally beautiful, focus on emotional intelligence via poetry and music rather than on scientific pursuits, and represent the appealing innocence of ingénues. In the same manner that Adeline’s unconsciousness contributes to her integrity, it also appears that her extensive physical beauty results in part from her inherent saintliness, her beautiful eyes linked to some intrinsic purity (7). Further highlighting this ethical preference for femininity, Adeline exhibits fear related directly to the presence of men; in the Marquis’s chateau, her terror specifically abates when she realizes that “elegant” and “beautiful” women surround her, and later the inverse occurs as she balks in fear at “the voices of men” (158, 299). On some level, Adeline seems to recognize that masculinity poses a significant threat to her, and instinctively shies away from its

The theme of appearance extends further in Dorian’s life. Dorian’s outer beauty allows him to get away with almost anything, due to the fact that people equals his outer beauty to him being a good person. In reality, Wilde makes it very clear that Dorian Gray is not a good person.

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ is the title of this book which wrote by a great author named Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde had writing many books based on his experiences and most of his genre is quite dark and mysterious, same as this book he wrote which contain gothic genre. I found this story had gothic genre because the storyteller, which is Oscar Wilde illustrating supernatural event in this story such as the Dorian’s wish seem like coming true as the portrait was the one that kept aging instead of Dorian Gray himself. Thus, the portrait has reflected as Dorian Gray’s soul and his personality grew darker and more evil as his life continued. This book that I read has quite artfully as it is like engaging me to keep reading more to know the

The 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. The genre of the novel is a terror, drama, psychology, humanitarianisms, romance and paranormal components.

The human mind works in mysterious ways; it knows what it needs yet desires what it wants. You can conclude it as the battle between one’s ID and Super ego; they both need a controlling factor which is the ego (Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory). Similarly the mind needs a controlling factor which could be, idealistically put as; “morals”