• From the Novel:

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirros. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows tha the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics diagree, the artist is in accord with himelf. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensly. All art is quite useless”(Wilde 42)

Wilde, Oscar. “The Preface.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Norman Page, Broadview Press, 2005, pp. 41–42.

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions…He becomes an echo of someone elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him”(Wilde 58).

“To Realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for”(Wilde 58).

“Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves” (Wilde 97)”

Wilde, Oscar.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Norman Page, Broadview Press, 2005.
  • Critical Commentary:

“…Caron then painted Dorian as a classic example of a young person ruined by corrupting influences, observing that the novel described “that boy’s life” from the time when “corruption [is] implanted in his mind from his conversation with Lord Henry Wanton” up to the point where Dorian has indulged in “all the vices that can be imagined.” Carson seems to have regarded this opening tableau as merely an instance of what we might call “The obsenity effect,” depicted within the story and capable of corrupting the reader in precisely the same way that Lord Henry corrupts Dorian”(763).

Stern, simon.”Wilde’s obscenity effect: influence and immorality in “the picture of dorian gray.” The review of english studies, vol. 68, no 286. 2017. pp. 756-772.
  • Historical Context:

“The luxuriously elaborate details of his “artistic hedonism” are too suggestive of South Kensington Museum and aesthetic Encyclopedias. A truer art would have avoided both the glittering conceits, which bedeck the body of the story, and the unavowing suggestiveness which lurks in its spirit. Poisonous! Yes.”

Punch Magazine, “our booking office” July 19, 1890. https://archive.org/details/punchvol98a99lemouoft/punchvol98a99lemouoft/page/340/mode/2up?q=wilde
  • Visual

“Iconography of Oscar Wilde.” Clark Library, 7 Apr. 2016, clarklibrary.ucla.edu/collections/oscar-wilde/iconography/.