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Works
 The
best illustrations of Wilde’s decadent theory of art are The Picture of
Dorian Gray and Salome, la Sainte Courtisanne.
Dorian Gray, the hero of the novel, is at first a
cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man who immediately
captures the well-known artist Basil’s artistic imagination. When the novel
opens, the artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as he truly is,
but, as he admits to his friend Lord Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints
him because it reveals too much of his feeling for his subject. Lord Henry,
a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth,
beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure, disagrees, claiming that the
portrait is Basil’s masterpiece. Dorian arrives at the studio, and Basil
reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry, who he fears will have a damaging
influence on the impressionable, young Dorian. Basil’s fears are well
founded. Lord Henry gives Dorian a book that describes the wicked exploits
of a nineteenth-century Frenchman; it becomes Dorian’s bible and he sinks
deep into a life of sin and corruption. He lives a life devoted to garnering
new experiences and sensations with no regard for conventional standards of
morality or the consequences of his actions. Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s
reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread
regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept
him because he remains young and beautiful. The figure in the painting,
however, grows increasingly wizened and terrible. On a dark, foggy night,
when Basil begs him to repent, Dorian claims it is too late for penance and
kills Basil in a fit of rage. One night, in a fury, Dorian picks up the
knife he used to stab Basil and attempts to destroy the painting. There is a
crash, and his servants enter to find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian
Gray as a beautiful young man. On the floor lies the body of their master—an
old man, horribly wrinkled and disfigured, with a knife plunged into his
heart.
The theme of the book concerns with Wilde’s aesthetic
philosophy. When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, it was decried as immoral. In
revising the text the following year, Wilde included a preface, which serves
as a useful explanation of his philosophy of art. The purpose of art,
according to this series of epigrams, is to have no purpose. The Victorians
believed that art could be used as a tool for social education and moral
enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles Dickens.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is to free art from this responsibility.
Art need not possess any other purpose than being beautiful. In his preface
to the novel, he declares:
The artist is the creator of beautiful
things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s sake.
…
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
Here the beauty in the novel, The Picture of
Dorian Gray has developed into a kind of ugly or evil one. The hero
Dorian Gray was a complete hedonist, rebellious to all traditional values
and also, in a sense, self –destructed out of extreme despair. At the
opening of the novel, Dorian Gray exists as something of an ideal: he is the
archetype of male youth and beauty. As Dorian’s sins grow worse over the
years, his likeness in Basil’s portrait grows more violent. Dorian seems to
lack a conscience, but the desire to repent that he eventually feels
illustrates that he is indeed human. Despite the beautiful things with which
he surrounds himself, he is unable to distract himself from the dissipation
of his soul. His murder of Basil marks the beginning of his end: although in
the past he has been able to sweep infamies from his mind, he cannot shake
the thought that he has killed his friend. Dorian’s guilt tortures him
relentlessly until he is forced to do away with his portrait. In the end,
Dorian seems punished by his ability to be influenced: if the new social
order celebrates individualism, as Lord Henry claims, Dorian falters because
he fails to establish and live by his own moral code.
All in all, Wilde had emphasized on the subjectivity
and hedonic value of art in the novel and thus reflected the slogan of
Aestheticism, “art for art’s sake”.
The tragedy, Salome was written in the same theme and principle as
The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was derived from a story in the Bible.
After John the Baptist, who was loved by Salome but did not love her, was
beheaded, Salome, out of her carnal desire, asked for his head in order to
kiss it. The mysterious and horrible atmosphere prevailing throughout the
whole play again reflected Wilde’s thought that art should pursue beauty at
all cost.
All his comedies, although displayed in a relaxed
atmosphere, moral system of the clear and clean upper class. They were very
popular in the field of drama at the end of ninetieth century.
Oscar Wilde was versatile writer and achieved great
success in many literary forms such as novel, drama, and essay. His works
are filled with wonderful imaginations and miraculous plots. He wrote in
very Standard English with exquisite words and simple structures, which were
full of wits. Although a writer of decadence, Wilde was definitely the
strongest voice of Aestheticism and has put much influence on the latecomers
of English literature.
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