Controversy In Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Controversy has surrounded Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray since its publication, but critics often disagree on the how the ethics of the tale conflict with the morality of society, both then and now. It was common belief that, when the novel was first published, the story was immoral and the themes of decadence offended the seemingly “delicate” senses of the Victorian society. (“Oscar Wilde” 408) However, now that a different culture has developed and minds have opened, the ethics of the novel are now seen through a different eye. After its first publication in Lippincott’s Magazine, negative reviews arose everywhere, one of the most notable being by The Daily Chronicle, in which the critic states things such as “Not wishing to offend the nostrils of decent persons, we do not propose to analyze [the novel]...that would be to advertise the developments of an esoteric prurience.” and that it had “effeminate frivolity, studied insincerity, flippant philosophisings, and a contaminating trail of garish vulgarity…[it is] a poisonous book...heavy with mephitic odours of moral and
Critic and Wilde’s former mentor Walter Pater found the novel to have “a very plain moral...to the effect that vice and crime make people coarse and ugly.” (“Oscar Wilde” 116) Pater cites the event in the novel in which titular character Dorian Gray’s sins and wrongdoings are displayed not in his physical appearance, but in a portrait that shows the corruption for him. Some have said that the story could be a critique of the aesthetic and immoral lifestyle portrayed in the novel rather than an endorsement. Dorian Gray represents a personification of the act of acting upon baser desires and impulses, and he eventually reaches his downfall due to the confrontation of his misdeeds in the climax of the novel. The story could be considered a cautionary tale of the dangers of aestheticism.