Murder, sex, scandal and drug abuse: all these sins of the main character intertwine to give shape to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a story dark story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth while his portrait bears the scars of his crimes. However, before Wilde's readers dive into this dark immorality, they encounter the novel's preface, where Wilde states that "all art is utterly useless" and "there is no such thing as an immoral or moral book" (Wilde 3-4 ). These statements support Wilde's position as a key player in the aesthetic movement, advocating "art for art's sake". They also demonstrate his position that morality simply has no place in art. Yet despite all this, many critics have attempted to impose a moral on this novel. In the following article I will examine both the novel and the arguments of these critics to determine whether or not Wilde presents his readers with a lesson about this particular work of art. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There is little doubt among contemporary critics that The Picture of Dorian Gray is truly a literary masterpiece. A 1990 review of the novel notes that "despite the dark theme, it offers us the peculiarly Wildean brand of flashing wit and paradox and finely wrought descriptions of color, sound, and even scent" (image 1). In a few descriptive words, Wilde manages to draw the reader into the meaning he is trying to convey, allowing them to experience vicariously through his descriptions. It also features a constant flow of wit and paradox through the character of Lord Henry, whose statements include "a great poet, a truly great poet, he is the most unpoetic of all creatures" and "a man can be happy with any woman, as until he loves her” (Wilde 48, 139). Wilde combines his wit and description with a suspenseful plot that manages to keep readers intrigued while revealing each character's fate work of art, but the question is whether there is more than just art in the novel, whether or not a moral is also present Most critics who attempt to claim The Picture of Dorian Gray as a moral book use his conclusion to support his thesis. Oscar Wilde, Sheridan Morley claims "a rigorous underlying morality" in the text based on the fact that "after his years of sinister and voluptuous life, Dorian is after all left on the ground, dead, a figure of senile decay, while the portrait returns to its original beauty" (72). Even early reviews that argued the book as immoral point out that Wilde made a "desperate effort to invent a 'moral' for the book at the end" (Mason 65). While it is true that Dorian dies at the end of the novel, we must carefully examine the two parts of this argument to determine whether or not his death provides a moral to the reader. The first directly concerns the nature of Dorian's character. The latter reviewer argues for the presence of a moral on the grounds that Dorian's death is appropriate for a character he describes as "cold, calculating [and] without conscience" (69). Not having a conscience means not feeling guilt or remorse for one's actions; however, Dorian often feels both. We first witness Dorian's guilt when he notices the initial change in the painting and realizes his first misdeed, the end of his engagement to Sibyl Vane. The mere thought of having actually been cruel to her displeases him immensely (Wilde 73). The guilt continues to plagueDorian throughout the novel, demonstrating that he is not a completely unconscious character. We see him in tears at several points in the plot, showing that his sin affects him deeply and emotionally. As a result of his most heinous crime, the murder of his friend Basil, Dorian loses his appetite and is left "weeping like one whose heart will be broken" (136, 153). Not only does Dorian have a conscience because he feels guilty, his nature is also not cold because his crimes and guilt affect him so deeply. Wilde not only presents Dorian as a character with a conscience, but also a highly impressionable one. Wilde wants us to immediately notice Dorian's impressionable character by referring to him as a "boy" and demonstrating how quickly Lord Henry's words influence his naive thinking. Moments after his physical entrance into the plot we see the immense influence Lord Henry exerts on him, and later we witness how easily his mind is influenced by the allure of immoral actions from a single book presented to him by Lord Henry (Wilde 17, 97). Because of this highly impressionable nature and our knowledge that Dorian actually has a conscience, it is clear that his behavior does not stem entirely from internal evil but rather from the conditioning of his environment. We must therefore examine Dorian's actions and intentions within the novel and their consequences to see if these consequences provide a moral. They don't. It is only when Dorian's intentions turn to good that he is punished outwardly. For example, he only learns of Sybil's suicide after he is determined to do the right thing by her. Indeed, it is immediately after the moment he finishes writing her a sincere apology that he learns of her death, forever linking the two together in his mind and providing him with his first lesson in the rewards of morality. These lessons continue when, at the height of his wickedness, Dorian finds true pleasure and is free from all consequences. For example, fate prevents James Vane from rightfully killing him twice. His final attempt to do a good deed, which I will discuss in the next section, also follows this pattern, teaching Dorian and the reader that repentance brings unnecessary pain and suffering while wallowing in sin brings only beauty and pleasure. Even if it is clear that Dorian's nature is not intrinsically evil, we still cannot ignore the second part of the critics' argument that imposes a moral on the ending, the fact that Dorian's actions - murder, vanity, sexual promiscuity and abuse of drugs - they were truly evil and his fate at the end of the novel is death. The question is whether this fate truly demonstrates a sense of cosmic justice, and to demonstrate that it does not I will examine the events immediately surrounding Dorian's death and his intentions in destroying the portrait. Dorian acknowledges to Lord Henry that "I have done too many terrible things in my life. I will do no more. I began my good deeds yesterday" (Wilde 159-160). It seems that his intentions have finally turned to the good, yet fate continues to teach its immoral lesson to Dorian when he attempts another good deed towards another woman and finds an involuntary motive in it, discovering that he has lost his possibility of achieving true purity. When he comes to this realization, he blames the portrait, recognizing it as the essence of his corruption. He destroys the portrait out of a desire to free himself from this corruption and finally bring the consequences of the action upon his own form, and receives only a grotesque death of both body and beauty as reward for this last good deed. Dorian is a character whose first intentions in discoveringthe soul of the painting were to do good to prevent it from being further ruined, whose environment later conditioned him to accept that only pain can come from repentance, and whose final attempt to reclaim morality harshly reinforced this lesson. His death was not the result of a greater cosmic justice that justly punishes the evil and rewards the noble, but rather an artfully designed plot twist that only served to make one last attempt at morality by causing Dorian to destroy himself with repentance. Although this is clearly not the case, if the novel taught that one's destiny is the right outcome of one's actions, then this moral should be true not only for Dorian but also for others.even the characters in the novel. I will now examine the fate of the secondary characters measured against their actions to demonstrate that there is no correct morality in them. One critic stated that "despite the general critical image of Lord Henry as a dilettante, lightweight intellectual and effeminate hedonist, he is in fact one of the most philosophical characters in British fiction" and then claims that Basil had an equal role in Dorian's corruption through his flattery (Liebman 299). However, despite Harry's philosophy and Basil's flattery, the "morality" of these two characters is easily contrasted. The former clearly corrupts Dorian and revels in his misdeeds while the latter, his counterpart in the novel, continually acts as the voice of reason throughout the plot, begging Lord Henry not to corrupt Dorian and imploring Dorian to pray for his soul during the their last meeting. . The fate of these two characters, however, does not seem alone given their actions. Basil suffers a more painful death than Dorian, stabbed to death by Dorian in an attempt to redeem him. At the same time, Lord Henry does not suffer even the slightest inconvenience for corrupting Dorian, and the novel's ending shows him alive and well despite all his horrible actions. Another character, James Vane, also loses his life while in the midst of a noble deed, in an attempt to keep a promise made to his deceased sister. Through the fates of these characters and Dorian, Wilde provides no relationship between actions and consequences, a lesson from which no moral can be derived. Although the characters' outcomes present no moral to the reader, there remains a strong argument that a moral exists in the work. This is the fact that the author claims one. In a letter to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, Oscar Wilde states that "the true moral of the story is that every excess, as well as every renunciation, brings with it a punishment, and this moral has been so artistically and deliberately suppressed that it cannot be repressed ". do not enunciate his law as a general principle” (345). The existence of a moral, however, does not make the novel itself "moral". That both excess and the renunciation of such excess entail punishment appears to be simply another of Wilde's famous paradoxes, not a standard by which he wishes his reader to live. Furthermore, the only excess the reader witnesses in the novel is that of Dorian, and Dorian lives in a world of eternal youth, unlimited influence and wealth, and exemption from all consequences of his actions as long as they are immoral. The conditions of this world do not apply to the world of readers where, even if they were to escape the consequences by chance, they would still face the limitations of age and beauty. Despite the impracticality of this "moral", we must also recognize that Wilde added the novel's preface after the book's original printing but before its publication following critics' attempts to., 1988.