The dream of Dorian Gray is to live a full and fruitful life according to the dictates of appetite and unadulterated beauty. But it is nothing more than a dream—a distraction from the reality of the picture, which eats at him like a cancer.

Guilt Gone Wilde: 

The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar Wilde

by Sean Fitzpatrick

If Oscar Wilde had been a man of our time, he might have had rather mixed feelings about the LGBT liberation agenda. Though Wilde himself had homosexual tendencies and would probably have approved of the gay rights movement, he probably would not have been a public advocate. Decadent dandy though he was, Wilde considered his homosexuality his “pathology:” a guilty pleasure and predilection he indulged behind closed doors.

This double life was in accord with the Victorian era in which he lived, and also with a philosophy that pleasures are most pleasant when they are private. No sin is as seductive as the secret sin. There is reason to believe that Wilde would have recoiled at the tendency to wear one’s sexuality upon one’s sleeve—as many do today—instead of making such inner desires the substance of subtle, furtive gratifications. “Illusion,” as he famously quoted, “is the first of all pleasures.” Wilde was able to rationalize his temptations while enjoying the thrill of forbidden fruit—but in his heart of hearts, in his inmost conscience, what guilt lurked?

Just as homosexuality in Wilde’s only novel,The Picture of Dorian Gray, is obvious without being overt, many wish their sins could be unrestrained without being seen.The Picture of Dorian Gray explores the fantasy of invincible vice only to discover that, while justice can be dodged, there is no escape from conscience. Written in 1890, the homosexual undertones of the novel were used as evidence in the criminal-libel suit of Wilde vs. the Marquess of Queensberry in 1895, who accused the writer of homosexual promiscuity with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde was found guilty of gross indecency, and sentenced to two years hard labor—from which he never recovered. He died in poverty and disgrace in 1900. Like his tragic hero, Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde tried to conceal something about himself in art, and in the end was betrayed by art.

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