While Lord Henry instigates, seduces, and sits back to watch the drama unfold, Basil Hallward’s chaste adoration of Dorian Gray, as partially modeled on John Ruskin’s views of self-discipline, restraint, and the notion that “beauty had to be aligned with good” (Ellman 47), demurely represents both Wilde’s repression and the contradiction that existed between his heart and his head-between his natural state of being and what was required by the existing societal norms. Basil initially tells Lord Henry that, “Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art. [….] He is simply a suggestion […] of a new manner. I see him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of certain colors. That is all.” (Wilde, Norton TPoDG 181) Basil is the quintessential artist and relates everything to his work. He is focused and pleased with the effect that Dorian Gray has had on his artistry. At the same time, however, he is fearful of giving in to his desires.

In response to Lord Henry’s repeated question as to why he won’t exhibit the portrait, Basil tells him, “because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of course, I have never dared to speak to [Dorian]. He knows nothing about it. He will never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.” (Wilde, Norton TPoDG 181) The dilemma for Basil is two-fold: to begin with, exposing one’s feelings for another person to that person is frightening enough with possible rejection looming on the horizon. Love is sufficiently complicated with its potential pitfalls without adding societal pressure to the mix, which makes the second part of the dilemma for Basil even more problematic. And so it must have been for Wilde, himself, in having to push aside and hide his true nature. Rumors swirled around him, of course, concerning his behavior with other men, all of which helped propagate his 1895 trial, but Wilde continue to play the game until such time as he was convicted, both legally and in the court of public opinion. Additionally, with Wilde’s fascination with Catholicism, there must have been a heightened element to his already existing guilt coupled with self-loathing and repentance.

Wilde surrounded himself with much younger men on whom he lavished gifts and adoration in return for affection (and, dare I say, sex), and in the end it was to play an integral role in Wilde’s downfall. If rumors were swirling around Wilde, they most certainly would have included whispers about with whom he was spending his time, so to speak-Wilde, in his self-imposed shame, must have considered himself partially responsible for their respective disgraces. Basil echoes these sentiments when confronting Dorian with rumors he has heard, asking, “Why is your friendship so fateful to young men?” (Wilde, Norton TPoDG 258) In the 1891, version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Basil goes on to say, “One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honor, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure.” (Wilde, Oxford TPoDG 124) Wilde fully recognized that society would judge a man by his actions and how those actions are reflected in the company he keeps and yet, in the end, he did very little to hold himself in check. Perhaps that is the conflict for both Wilde and Basil-that, despite the knowledge of what society would think, they both spent an inordinate amount of time torn between denial of their true natures and their desire to simply succumb to them.

The second book Wilde fell enamored with was Huysman’s A Rebours (Ellman 237), long rumored to be basis for the mysterious book Dorian Gray “never sought to free himself from” (Wilde, Oxford TPoDG 241), and it was this book, coupled with Lord Henry’s subtle urgings, that led Dorian down the path of depravity and to fulfilling his every sense with sensation at the expense of a great number of things: his good name, his friendships, his standing in society, his very soul to name a few. But with the grab for sensation comes addiction-not only to substances such as the opium that Dorian is so fond of, but also to the sensations themselves. Each experience much be escalated beyond the previous one to continually reach the same amount of addictive high and by the time one reaches the point of addiction it is generally too late to simply walk away. There is also something appealing in committing illicit acts and a thrill to be found in evading detection, and this is where Wilde found himself by the time of his trial in 1895. He had followed Dorian’s example and fallen prey to his senses. His statement of “’Dorian is what I would like to be in other ages…’” is perhaps an indication that, by the time Wilde was firmly entrenched in feeding his senses, he felt the “other ages” for him had arrived; that society was finally ready to accept him for who and what he was. Either that or he had ultimately decided that he no longer cared what others thought of him-especially in light of what he saw as the inherent duplicity of Victorian society where there were plenty of other closeted homosexuals subversively addressing their true nature as was Wilde, not to mention others who were committing more nefarious acts. In fact, when Wilde was essentially kicked out of the house he shared with Frank Miles due to the rumors surrounding his homosexuality, Wilde biographer Richard Ellman notes, “the hypocrisy pervading England found its expression when a molester of small children [referring to Frank Miles] could take a high moral line with [Wilde]” (143). This hypocrisy must not have been far from Wilde’s mind; indeed, in the 1891, version of The Picture of Dorian Gray,Wilde uses Dorian to address this in response to Basil’s question about why Dorian’s friendship is “so fateful to young men”. Dorian responds:

I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society, and on intimate terms with the people they slander. [….] You forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite. (Wilde, Norton TPoDG 124)

Wilde must have certainly been irritated with the hypocrisy for he had Dorian show Basil, after Basil remarked that only God could see his soul (Wilde, Norton, TPoDG 259), the extent of the degradation of his soul as exhibited in the portrait Basil had painted. Dorian states, “You can tell the world about it afterwards [….] Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they’d like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do.” (Wilde, Norton, TPoDG 259) Dorian, like Wilde, was certain he could gauge the societal climate far better simply because he refused to play the hypocritical game that society required, which indicates that not only were both Wilde and Dorian annoyed at the hypocrisy, but that they had both reached the point of sheer hubris in thinking that they were above the societal norms, right or wrong though they may have been. And even though Dorian realized his error and murdered Basil in order to keep his secret from being released to the world, it was this hubris that ultimately led to their respective downfalls. And like Dorian, Wilde lost his good name, many of his friendships, and his previously elevated status in society, ultimately losing his life, one could argue, by his own hand.

On the surface, Oscar Wilde was enigmatic and certainly fed on the spectacle that surrounded him, but beneath that he was working to determine where his beliefs actually lied. Basil Hallward, in response to Lord Henry’s assertion that Dorian’s portrait must be exhibited, states that he cannot exhibit it because he has “put too much of himself in it” (Wilde, Oxford TPoDG 2), and the same can be said of Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The difference, of course, is that whatever hesitations Wilde had about releasing the novel to the public were firmly ignored. It was no secret that Wilde was contemptuous of “conventional morality” just as it was apparent that he fostered “self-contradictory inclinations” (Ellman 32). The splitting of Wilde’s souls into the three characters allowed him to fully explore each aspect of himself without having to admit to anyone beyond his close circle of friends that the characters were so closely representational.

Wilde asserted that “’man is the least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth’” (Ellman 308). The Picture of Dorian Gray was Wilde’s mask and it was this mask that allowed him the freedom for such overt self and social examination. The Picture of Dorian Gray was, therefore, as much an attempt to sway the masses as it was an indication of the fracture that existed within him and an exercise in exorcising his own personal demons. It is ultimately unclear why Wilde felt the inclination to expose the essence of who he was so publicly, though the answer is possibly to be found in Wilde’s own assessment of Lord Henry in which Wilde states, “’[Lord Henry] finds that those who reject the battle are more deeply wounded than those who take part in it.’” (Ellman 300); perhaps Wilde had chosen his side of the battle in an effort to offset his own wounding or perhaps he felt that by exorcising his own demons he could assist Victorian society in exorcising theirs.