The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Essays - eNotes.com.
The subtlety of Wilde’s portrait makes Dorian’s relations with Sibyl all the more disturbing. Dorian rejects Sibyl as soon as her theatrical talents falter. Sitting alongside Henry and Basil at one of Sibyl’s performances, Dorian observes with horror that Sibyl is merely a mediocre actress.In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde writes of a beautiful young man with an ugly secret. While Dorian Gray will forever retain the innocent looks of his youth, his portrait will degenerate with every wrong he commits.In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde demonstrates the corruption of youth by taking the initial innocence of Dorian and turning his values completely immoral under the control of Lord Henry mainly through the use of symbolism.
To put this into content with the book, Dorian Gray caused moral corruption because in the 18th century it was socially unacceptable to have sex before marriage; however Dorian Gray ruined many innocent women by taking their virginity and therefore cause them to be viewed in society as “ruined”.Oscar Wilde ’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was written during the years that Wilde was writing fairy tales and short stories such as “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” (1887), which the novel resembles in milieu. Aside from the fairy tales and “The Canterbury Ghost” (1887), the novel is his only prose fantasy.
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde uses a number of literary techniques to develop his characters and to enhance some of the novel's key themes. Allusions, for example, are widely used in Chapter.
