Dorian Gray and Aestheticism

Table of Contents

I Introduction

II What is Aestheticism ? (two different philosophies)
1. Aestheticism as a philosophy of life
2. Aestheticism as a philosophy of art

III The History of Aestheticism
1. The origin
2. The development
3. The decline

IV The Development of Dorian Gray as compared to Aestheticism in general
1. The infection
2. The advanced stage
3. Transgression of the last frontier
4. The Fall of Dorian

V Conclusion

I Introduction

In this paper I will first give an account of the aesthetic movement in England, from origin to decline, which I will then oppose to the character of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The comparison of the different stages in the development of both aestheticism and its incarnated representative Dorian Gray is intended to outline the fact that, even before the decline of aestheticism sets in in the 1890s, Oscar Wilde has anticipated the danger that lies in leading a life that is exclusively based on aesthetic values and pursuing its doctrines too persistently. Through the ruin of Dorian Gray, Wilde reveals the tragedy of the aesthetic movement and thus shows that it is eventually inevitably condemned to fail. Dorian is the epitome of an aesthete who in the end becomes the martyr of a movement which has preached, taught and understood its philosophy too narrow-mindedly. Of course this is a deficiency of narrow-mindedness in general and thus The Picture of Dorian Gray does not only represent the undoing of the epoch it was written in but also of any other theory or philosophy that takes itself too seriously.

I will support this statement with an assertion of Lord Henry Wootton’s, who is obviously a polemic on general principles but therefore mostly not less right.

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It’s the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.” (p.50¹ )

II What is aestheticism? (two different philosophies)

1. Aestheticism as a philosophy of life

When the Romantic Age comes to an end in England, there is an aspiration after the liberated, the free imagination, a longing for the new and the strange. In a Victorian Society that is dominated by traditional and conventional ideas, such as vulgar materialism (e.g. that the gross national product is seen as a criterion of civilisation), a utilitarian spirit which disparages intellectual pursuits and a puritan moralism that preaches ‘doing good and avoiding evil’, aestheticism is the artistic expression of dislike for these predominating values. The aesthetes estimate beauty over commonly received standards and ideas and live now according to the formula of John Keats that “beauty is truth, truth is beauty”. They go even so far to elevate beauty above truth and glorify it as their new deity.²

The aesthetes make the search for beauty their main aim in life, they tend to seek beauty everywhere, in art, literature and life in general, in order to satisfy their need for personal fulfilment and find something to give meaning to life. In their opinion, it is the enjoyment of beauty that can provide this meaning everyone is searching for, which is again a controversy with the Puritan ethic that considers a good life to be active and some kind of moral struggle or even a pilgrimage. Aestheticism, on the other hand, sees life rather as a spectacle than a battle, in their view life is not active but contemplative. Again, Lord Henry serves as an adequate example: “All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.” (p.54), or, as Dorian once mentions, “To become the spectator of one’s own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life.” (p.128)

However, aestheticism is not only just an idea or a mental attitude but rather a consistent outlook on and way of life, a self-culture that is performed as a social cult. In the big cities such as London and Oxford, circles of like-minded aesthetes come into being and the performance of aesthetic values becomes a social phenomenon.

Walter Pater, a friend of Wilde’s, is one of the most important representatives of aestheticism as a philosophy of life. It was the following assertion of his that first aroused the idea in me that Dorian Gray’s new life-style is based on an extremely aesthetic background and has thus to be seen in a different light.

“While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hand, or the face of one’s friend.”

This quotation seems to contain or reveal the quintessence of Dorian’s life after his first encounter with Lord Henry. He becomes more and more obsessed by the idea of living according to these principles, which ends in madness and delusion.

Furthermore, Pater maintains that since death is obligatory for us all, and die we must indeed, we should make the best of our lives while we have it. He warns us that we must not become so preoccupied with the means of living to neglect living itself, which is reflected in his utterance that “Not the fruit of experience but experience itself is the end.”, which is by the way quite similar to the buddhistic “The way is the aim.” Again, Pater’s idea can be found in Wilde’s novel: [context: New Hedonism] “Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.[...] But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.” (p.151)

To my mind, these quotations show quite clearly that Pater has stood sponsor to The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is unfortunately only a pun in German.

2. Aestheticism as a philosophy of art

“Art for art’s sake!” is the aesthetes’ demand and becomes their catchword and ‘war-cry’. This philosophy separates art from life since art is considered to have no reference to life and therefore to lack the content of any moral implications. Consequently, literature exists for delight alone, its possible message is only incidental and totally irrelevant to its value as art. Seeing this, it is no wonder that aestheticism attaches great importance to the form of a piece of art. As regards the relationship of form and matter, there are two different attitudes, one being that form can be separated from matter, that it is the only thing that is important. The second says that form and matter, language and thought, are not clearly separable but fuse to a total impression of a piece of art. A suggestion of this emphasis on form can also be found in Dorian Gray, that is when he first becomes spellbound by Lord Henry’s book: “The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad ... a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming...” (p.146).

On the whole, art for art’s sake tries to constitute a segregated world of its own, to which ‘ordinary’ values are irrelevant. Among the aesthetes it is generally agreed that imagination can render anything artistically acceptable, however wicked or repulsive it might commonly be considered. I feel that there are two sides to this theory, just as everything can be seen from two different sides. Of course our whole world would be much nicer if we always assumed a positive point of view towards everything. That would be to have a what is generally called ‘positive outlook on life’. It goes without saying that Lord Henry also worries about the issue of optimism. His train of thought is as follows: “The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” (p.88)

However, optimism can also drift into a wrong direction, just as aestheticism clearly shows. There is no wrong in seeing everything from its aesthetic side, but concentrating exclusively on things that are generally considered not beautiful but ugly and elevating them over the ‘really’ beautiful things is in my opinion the last step of a movement that has grown tired of its own values and ideas and thus has to seek for the ultimate sensation. At this point aestheticism becomes incredible since it is ludicrous for a movement which calls itself ‘aesthetic’ to search beauty in the morbid and pervert.

III The history of aestheticism

1. The origin

The origin of aestheticism must clearly be seen in France, where it comes up in the 1840s as a counter-movement to realism and naturalism. It is for instance Gautier who says that “Beauty in nature or in art can have no end other than itself.” About twenty years later, similar thoughts have crossed the channel and first emerge in England. They have of course to be understood as inspired by the aesthetic movement in France but also as a continuation of the Romantic Age in England. In contrast to romanticism, however, aestheticism goes beyond the romantic ideal and seeks for the liberated imagination, the new and the strange.

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¹ All page references, unless otherwise stated, given parenthetically within this essay refer to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Penguin Popular Classics (Cox & Wyman Ltd: Reading, Berkshire,1994).

² All information on the philosophy and history of Aestheticism is taken from R.V. Johnson’s The Critical Idiom: Aestheticism, ed. J.D. Jump (Methuen & Co Ltd: London,1973).

Any references to the bibliography of Oscar Wilde are based on R. Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde (Hamish Hamilton Ltd: London, 1987).