A Theme of Beauty and Appearance in The Picture of Dorian Gray

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde many different themes are shown throughout. But the theme I feel is most important is beauty and appearance. At the beginning of the book we are introduced to Basil, a painter, he paints a portrait of Dorian Gray. The painting ends up possessing a mythical power of keeping Dorian young and perfect and turning the person in the painting into a gross old man. Dorian keeps the painting locked where no one will find it so he can forever keep the secret to why he looks so perfect. Dorian throughout the book devotes himself to all things pertaining to the arts. In a society that places beauty before everything else, so youth and physical attractiveness become valuable commodities Dorian places too much on youth and beauty that it would lead him to his own demise. And this truly ruins the chance for him to have any real relationships with anybody throughout his life.

Firstly, after a conversation with Lord Henry, Dorian is set on that youth is the only thing worth having. Dorian goes to talk to Basil after having a long argument with Lord Henry about his opinions on the topic of youth. He then comes to face the fact he will old day turn old and then thinks about how the portrait will remain young. After realizing this he gets enraged at Basil forever creating the painting in the first place. So Dorian yells at him “I know now that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find myself growing old, I shall kill myself”. Dorian is obviously quickly won over by Lord Henry’s argument, and he finally realizes that he will one day age and turn old. But this doesn’t seem to be a new idea for Dorian, not knowing he’d been thinking like this the whole time but Lord Henry has just made him realize it. Dorian has always behaved and acted differently to different people, to beautiful people he listens and admired and with ugly people he treats like they aren’t even there and this talk with Lord Henry has shown that this theory is correct. It ties into the phrase ”don’t judge a book by its cover”.

Secondly, how Dorian is driven by beauty and blocks out everything else and that is main the reason for his engagement with Sibyl. He only focuses on her beauty and doesn’t care about her other attributes and that stops him from realizing who she really is. Lord Henry tells Basil about Dorian‘s engagement with Sibyl. They talk about how the only thing Dorian told them about her was about her beauty and nothing more. Lord Henry tells Basil that “ Dorian says she is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your portrait of him has quick and his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people“. As Lord Henry tells Basil of Dorian‘s engagement with Sibyl, he explains what he knows about Sibyl from Dorian. Her appearance made a strong first appearance with Dorian a key piece of information Lord Henry feels necessary to pass on to Basil. Although Dorian must have obviously known about his good looks long before Basil’s portrait, he did not put much value into his looks until he first saw the portrait. As a result, he now only focuses on the appearance of something which blinds him from everything about it. This is truly the reason why he got engaged to her in the first place, it wasn’t because he was a good actress or had a great personality it was because she was beautiful. Even after her death, Dorian shows no remorse for her and actually calls her selfish for commuting suicide.

Lastly, how Basil explained to Dorian that his outer appearance is much different from his inner, and how he is a handsome man on the inside but the cold/cruel person on the inside. Basil tells Dorian that he has shown a change. He tells him that even though he’s beautiful on the outside he is evil on the inside. Basil says “ Something has changed and you completely. You look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural, and affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don’t know what has come over you. You talk as if you had no heart“. This conversation between basil and Dorian expresses of the danger and miss taking outer beauty for inner beauty. Poor Basil is just realizing that the Dorian before him really is totally different from the Dorian he captured in the painting. Basil notices that Dorian has a look about him that shows great anger. Sadly, he doesn’t know how true these words would eventually be.

In conclusion, a driving factor and theme throughout the book are how Dorian is so weirdly driven by appearance and beauty. Through the course of the book, Dorian is told going through life with the idea that if you are beautiful and then everything is perfect. This is blinding Dorian from truly growing up and realizing that you can’t live with that mentality your whole life. And just as Dorian decides to try and live a humble/virtuous lifestyle. But it is too late because he has already damaged himself too much by continuously trying to keep his appearance first. This topic is important because the aspect of beauty and appearance are reasons for a lot of the choices Dorian makes. And ultimately this is also the reason for Dorian‘s spiral into insanity which led to his own death in the end. Who knows what would have happened if he actually got to start over and live a virtuous life. Maybe he would have lived the rest of his life happy with his new mindset or would he eventually turn back to his old ways and would it have ended the same.  

Works Cited

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