The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of Oscar Wilde's masterpieces. This novel is written in unique, authentic and beautiful language style. There are a lot of metaphoric expressions used in this novel. Even it is rich in terms and lessons related to philosophical and moral values. This novel is about a young aristocrat man living in England in the era of Victoria who had great obsession on physical beauty, youth and materialistic lifestyle in which all those things would just lead him to violate moral values and bring him to an unbearable and tragic life ending.Â
Here are some following points of my analysis:
First, the picture of Dorian Gray is a product of Oscar's protesting action toward the problematic system and inequality that existed in England during the Victorian era
the portrait of social inequality of people in England (the Bourgeoisie vs Proletariat)
In the picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar implicitly tried to compare two groups of people from different social classes which were the powerful class and the subjugated class by portraying their opposite life conditions. With the Victorian time setting, two contradictive sides of England were vividly revealed in this novel. On one side, the group of Bourgeoises enjoyed their hedonistic lifestyle. We as readers are invited to come to the world of aristocrat by following the life of main characters; Dorian and Lord Henry. Both of them were described as noble and prominent men. They were as narrated in the story living in big mansions in which full of fancy property and even some imported products such as divan of Persian saddle-bags, Chinese silverware, Japanese paintings and so on. Their mansions had beautiful flower gardens and parks and even art studio. As the members of aristocrat family, Lord Henry and Dorian often attended fancy parties and elite social gatherings where they wore their best clothes to meet aristocrat ladies with their best ballgowns, jewelries and tiaras and to have so-called intellectual conversations with aristocrat scholars and businessmen in their best night coats. In the luxurious parties, they ate good foods and drunk best wine, enjoyed classic music performances, danced happily in a large hall and watched an opera. They did also love seeking for unordinary entertainment and pleasures such as hunting wild animals, taking a fancy trip to famous destinations, collecting famous fainting and other artistic works, collecting jewelries and fancy stuffs and also consuming a few types of drugs. They seemed to have whatever they wished for with the money and social power they had in society. They lived luxurious lives, got respect, popularity and power. On the other side, the marginalized people which were represented through the characters of sybil, her brother and mom, their lifestyle was very opposite to the ones belong to Lord Henry and Dorian. Yeah, they lived very divergently from the way the main characters did. They had to struggle, working every day to make their living. They even had to work under the control of a Jewish man as their employer. They could not go to schools or pursue their dreams since they spent most of their time working to make money. Sybil had to do the job that she was not really fond to. She often felt like she was being forced to do that. Even Sybil's brother had to move to other country in order to look for better opportunity. He decided to part away with his family at the young age.Â
Therefore, I would say that in this novel Oscar attempted to show how problematic the social and economic system in England was at that time. Despite of the fact that Victorian era is always regarded as the golden era of British empire since there was a lot of improvement and development in a few fields like technology, science, industrialization, transportation and agriculture, unfortunately the social gap between the rich and poor people was big. A lot of people still lived under poverty and inequality.
"..I don't suppose the proletariat live correctly'.
the portrait of gender inequality of people in England (Women vs Men)
In this novel, the writer also attempted to highlight the other type of inequality as the failing product of problematic system that existed in England during the late nineteenth century which was gender inequality. Even at the very first beginning, we could see how women were theoretically and practically subjugated through the ways how Lord Henry and Dorian viewed women only as brainless beauty. In which they considered women as the source of inspiration and entertainment only for the sake of their physical beauty since they believed what men could adore from women was only their beauty. The way how these people considered women not more than a part of decoration of men's lives implicitly represented the common stereotype and attitude that mostly people at that time had in treating gender equality. It indicates that mostly people at that time did not think women were capable for doing things in certain areas like business and education. They expected women to be good only in domestic stuff like child-bearing, household business and how to take care of their physical appearances so men could feel satisfied with them. Even more, certain people like Lord Henry had extreme belief in seeing women's quality. He believed that a smart woman might be ugly one because beautiful women were the one who could do nothing excepts satisfying their men and how men did not need a smart woman in their lives because smart women would only be disobedient and rebellious, could not give benefits in their lives. Moreover, it was not only men who did underestimate women's roles and capabilities. As a matter of fact, women at that time were also narrated as the ones who agreed with the stereotype. They might also consider themselves inferior than men. Through the characters of Sybil and her mother who believed that women could not live without men, that they had to rely on men in order to have chance to improve their lives. They did not believe that they could stand on their own feet. Even the noble lady like Henry's wife could not have enough courage to interfere in her husband's business. And the duchess, as one of Henry's friend was narrated as a woman in which all she had in her mind were dresses and how to look prettier. She was expected to be loyal, obedient and supportive in giving her husband freedom to do his business and enjoy the life he wanted. It actually represented the way how mostly women lived their lives at that time. They did let men to regard them less powerful since they did even see themselves as inferior than men.
"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are only a decorative sex. They never have anything to say but they said it charmingly. Women represent the triumph...."
-Lord Henry-
