Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is undoubtedly a mirror of its author and his time. As an academic, social, and political figure in late 19th-century London, Wilde was deeply engaged in the ongoing public dialogue surrounding the stream of new social developments and philosophical beliefs flowing from London throughout the rest of the Western world. As a center of thought development, Victorian London society was under constant attack from new ideas generated by people like Wilde, resulting in a society rich in radical philosophies but incredibly restrictive and resistant to change. The best way to avoid suffering social harm from this deluge of thoughts was to avoid thinking about them at all, something the Victorians became very adept at. Once filtered through social screens, radical philosophies became much more civilized. By alternately establishing and destroying assumptions and ideologies throughout the text, Wilde creates a void in which he forces the reader to think about the validity of aesthetic, Victorian, and contemporary ideologies rather than accepting a conclusion presented by Wilde or the reader's social assumptions. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The image, in particular, highly reflects the philosophy of aestheticism that became popular at the time thanks largely to the work and influence of Wilde. This philosophy took hold in England due to academic celebrities' rejection of the robotic ugliness and inhumanity of the industrial revolution. Aestheticism espouses the idea that “All art is utterly useless” (Wilde's preface), but that its beauty serves as a sort of counterweight to the hideous functionalism of the day. Wilde establishes the principles of his personal brand of Aestheticism in his epigram-filled preface, stating that “No artist wishes to prove anything… No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unforgivable mannerism of style” (Wilde's preface). Art, Wilde states, has no intrinsic meaning and should not aim to be anything beyond beautiful. He defines art as "useless", but believes that its creation is excusable as long as it is "admired immensely" (Wilde's preface). If a viewer perceives meaning in art, it is a reflection of themselves rather than of the work, Wilde reasons. This philosophy is examined throughout the book, largely and most directly through the character of Basil. At the beginning of the novel he explains to Lord Henry that “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age where men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty” (Wilde chapter 1). Basil believes that he has revealed too much of himself in Dorian's portrait, and that it is therefore inappropriate for others to see it because they might perceive a moral or meaning within it, ruining its artistic value. Later in the novel, however, while still feeling “that I've put too much of myself into it,” Basil reverses his position on the biographical nature of art and decides that “it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is always present ”. truly shown in the work that is created. Art is always more abstract than we imagine... It often seems to me that art hides the artist much more completely than it ever reveals him” (Wilde chapter 9). This change of thought is one of the devices Wilde uses to force the reader to examine the implications of Aestheticism. It suggests that the meaning or beauty of art is a conduit to meaningunique between the spectator and the work. Instead of being a social phenomenon used to influence society or create movements, art is – or should be – exclusively an individual experience. To Dorian, the portrait said nothing about Basil and everything about himself. The yellow book given to him by Lord Henry was the same: Wilde does not blame Henry, the author, or the book itself for having "corrupted" Dorian, but points to Dorian's personal interpretation and application of the work as the reason for the his perceived wickedness. “There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book,” states Wilde, “Books are written well or written badly. That's all" (Wilde's preface). This statement addresses the detective story as well as critics of the original edition of Wilde's The Picture: is it the book that is immoral, or is it your inappropriate analysis of the book beyond what the author intended that creates immorality, reflecting on it yourself as a person rather than the writer? As we progress through the narrative, however, the questions Wilde asks have increasingly unclear and delineated answers. Since the majority of readers do not come from the same critical aesthetic background as Wilde, we constantly analyze the book through two lenses that give contradictory answers: one is Wilde's philosophy that art is meaningless, and the other is the modern formalist perspective that our current systems of thought in society are often inadequate. Wilde argues that, to be properly received, we must read his book only for the enjoyment or beauty we find in the tale, ignoring any implication of subterranean meaning. However, our mainstream education is shining red lights on the plethora of symbols, themes, and literary devices that suggest the work is more than appropriate for many, many further analyses. We are therefore left suspended between divergent tracks: what is Wilde trying to say with this narrative, if there is anything? The only appropriate conclusion when analyzed from an aesthetic point of view is that the book is simply an information booklet for the aesthetic movement. Yet we know that Wilde was deeply involved in the politics of his time and that he made strong public comments on social issues (such as blind rationalism, the abandonment of romanticism, and the collapse of the value of human life) that our formalist perspective tells us this. the book contains. This is where it is useful to analyze Wilde's text through a deconstructionist lens to see if we can find meaning in this contradiction. The very existence of the work is a complete contradiction. Despite Wilde's insistence that art should not be analyzed or moralized, the very act of reading involves constant analysis of incoming information. Wilde also later said in a letter to a newspaper that “Dorian Gray is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: every excess, as well as every renunciation, brings its own punishment" (Wilde, letter). This would be clear through our lens of formalism; Dorian's downfall is his excess and his renunciation of limits, while Henry's excess is of the lips and Basil's of the eyes: all three men exceed what is acceptable for their Victorian society and in doing so contribute to the fall of themselves and their friend. In Wilde's hands, however, that criticism could easily point to the excesses of the English social bond and the renunciation of many human desires that characterized Victorian society. The same statement can be twisted two ways, creating different meanings for different readers. Other key contradictions in the book are Dorian's thoughtlessness contrasted with Lord Henry's rethinkability, and Dorian's complete embrace of raw experiences versusto Henry's lack of them. Despite encouraging Dorian to pursue every imaginable avenue for pleasure, Henry's life remains well within the boundaries of social acceptability even if his words do not. While Wilde repeatedly states that “art has no influence on action,” (Wilde ch.19) we see Dorian's every move directly linked to the effects of his portrait or the detective story. A final, very important opposition is Dorian's angelic physical appearance and the ugly, sinful nature revealed by his portrait. Throughout the work, we see the dominant ideological set of Victorian cultural assumptions undone by the very things it so condemns. The handsome, young Dorian is easily manipulated and can barely think for himself, while Lord Henry's vile and scandalous nature is matched by a cunning intellect and social skills. To suggest that such noble virtues could be the undoing of these characters is to contradict these prevailing cultural ideals and to truly deconstruct the assumptions of Victorian society, giving greater validity to things that would have been despised at the time: namely aestheticism. At the end of the book, Lord Henry tells Dorian that “he is really beginning to moralize. Soon you will be going around as the convert and revivalist, warning people against all the sins you have grown tired of. You are too delicious to do that” (Wilde chapter 19). The virtue of morality here, something celebrated by the Victorians, is interpreted by Lord Henry as something unfortunate, a disease to be avoided, suggesting that those moral champions who warn people against sin are in fact trapped in a restricted existence and "unpleasant". The pleasure Dorian takes in life results in his downfall, while the traditionalism of the other characters is clearly theirs, living lives in boxes with no room for new experiences. By rejecting the dominant moral code of the age and filling that void with a new belief that he then apparently refutes, Wilde creates such a void that any given meaning is impossible to achieve. Thus, at the end of the text, we are left with a hole from which little definite meaning can be gleaned. Wilde's traces are all destroyed, with no good suggestions as to what Wilde believes or what we should believe. The pillars of beauty, morality and reason have all been overthrown, art is declared meaningless but proven to mean everything, Victorian sensibility and Wilde's philosophy have been dismantled, and the very fact that the book exists seems to contradict itself. The text is extremely unstable, alternately making claims and disproving them with example, or vice versa, so much so that we lose track of what is valid and do not trust anything. At the end of the book, a deconstructionist would say there is no solid ground left. It is in this void that I believe Wilde implores us to think: the only thing left standing in his story. Dorian, Henry, and Basil all fail to think about consequences, lacking thought about moderation, implications, or the world outside themselves. The rest of the Victorian puppet characters are the blindest of all, they think almost nothing. Society guides them so gently that they do not have to think for themselves, but simply repeat what they see happening: “the terror of society, which is the basis of morality, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion – these are the two things that govern [the masses]” explains Lord Henry (Wilde chapter 2). With its blanket condemnation of blind society and its blurring of the line between salvation and damnation, The Picture dismisses popular morality based on others and God as the prime example of thoughtlessness. Next, Wilde disavows radicals like Dorian, someone who Lord Henry says “not