i

The Aesthetic Movement is a 19th century European movement that emphasized aesthetic
values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design.[1]
[2]
Generally speaking, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence stood for
in France, or decadentismo stood for in Italy, and may be considered the British branch of the
same movement. It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as
such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901,
and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (which occurred in
1895).

An Aesthetic Movement overmantle, showing ebonized wood with gilded highlights of peacock
feathers and flowers, and a top which has a color painting of birds and flowers.

Aesthetic furniture was limited to approximately late nineteenth-century. Furniture typically

originated in Britain/Ireland (usually referred to as simply "Aesthetic") or in the United States
(usually referred to as "American Aesthetic").

Aesthetic movement furniture is characterized by several common themes:

 Ebonized wood with gilt highlights

 Japanese influence
 Prominent use of nature, especially flowers, birds, ginko leaves, and peacock feathers.
 Blue and white on porcelain and china.

Ebonized furniture means that the wood is painted or stained to a black ebony finish. The
furniture is sometimes completely ebony-colored. More often however, there is gilding added to
the carved surfaces of the feathers or stylized flowers that adorn the furniture.

Japan was a relatively newly contacted culture in terms of influence, and looking at aesthetic
furniture, there are commonalities especially in the overall rectangular shape with columns, and
the intricate woodcarvings, this influence can be seen in a concurrent movement known as the
Anglo-Japanese style, especially in the work of E.W. Godwin and Christopher Dresser.

As aesthetic movement decor was similar to the writing in that it was about sensuality and
nature, nature themes often appear on the furniture. A typical aesthetic feature is the gilded
carved flower, or the stylized peacock feather. Colored paintings of birds or flowers are often
seen. Non-ebonized aesthetic movement furniture may have realistic 3D renditions of birds or
flowers carved into the wood.

Contrasting with the ebonized-gilt furniture is use of blue and white in porcelain and china.
Similar themes of peacock feathers and nature would be used in blue and white tones on
dinnerware and other crockery. The blue and white design was also popular on square porcelain
tiles. It is reported that Oscar Wilde used aesthetic decorations during his youth. This aspect of
the movement was also satirised in Punch magazine and in Patience.

In 1882, Oscar Wilde visited Canada where he toured the town of Woodstock, Ontario and gave
a lecture on May 29 entitled; "The House Beautiful".[4] This particular lecture featured the early
Aesthetic art movement also known as the "Ornamental Aesthetic" art movement, where local
flora and fauna were celebrated as beautiful and textured, layered ceilings were popular. A
gorgeous example of this can be seen in Annandale National Historic Site, located in
Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. The house was built in 1880 and decorated by Mary Ann Tillson,
who happened to attend Oscar Wilde's lecture in Woodstock, and was inspired. Since the
Aesthetic art movement was only prevalent in 1880 through to 1890, there are not very many
examples of this particular style left today.

From Decadence to Dissonance: The Aesthetics That Shaped The Late Victorian Era

The ideal meeting of the decadent movement might have been Oscar Wilde's short play Salome.
Originally written in French in 1891, Wilde's tragedy tells in one act the biblical story of the
beautiful Salome, the stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, and the final few days of the
life of John the Baptist.

Told in elegant and powerfully symbolic prose, the play is often called Wilde's piece of "strange
music". Oscar incited this idea himself by declaring in a letter that "the recurring phrases of
Salome,... bind it together like a piece of music" Its flamboyance, its hypnotic rhythms, recurring
lexical riffs and hauntingly melodic passages stitch the action together in such a way as to mimic
some sort of dramatic aria.

When Salome was translated into English three years later the text was accompanied by highly
stylised and erotic illustrations by the young Aubrey Beardsley. Perfectly capturing the attitude
of Wilde's lyrical decadence and visual intensity, the etchings seem now almost inseparable from
the original script.

Naturally, this movement wasn't limited to Britain; the roots had been stretching out on the
continent for the past 20 years. The development of the decadent movement there lead to
painters like the Viennese Gustav Klimt creating artwork that was inspired by the priceless
mosaics of Byzantium. Influenced by their inherent 'flatness', Klimt creates patchwork canvasses
of glittering gold and vigorous colors.

In fact, the lack of 'realist' perspective in famous works like The Kiss and the Portrait of Adele
seem to be the beating at the heart of the genre; to disband with depth and background and to
push everything to the shimmering fore. When, in these images and in Wilde's poetry, the visual
intensity is forced to be so immediate and so beautiful, the allure of decadence suddenly
becomes so directly apparent: these works are not concerned with representing anything,
accurately or otherwise, they are concerned with creating art and nothing else.

This highly aesthetic approach is elegantly outlined in Wilde's preface to The Picture of Dorian
Gray, he claims there quite simply that: "The artist is the creator of beautiful things."

Of course this preoccupation with creating beauty was one that was not allowed to last. Salome
was banned from the London stage before it even had the chance to premiere and Beardsley was
hounded as a pedlar of filth and obscenity, forced to live out the rest of his tragically short life, a
sickly Catholic convert, in Manton in France.

Wilde himself of course was tried and imprisoned for Gross Indecency on accounts of his
homosexuality. Never truly recovering from the hard labor meted out at Reading Prison, Oscar
Wilde died in Paris in 1900. So disgusted with Wilde's crimes were the wider public that, from
the point of his conviction, not a single child was christened Oscar in Britain for twenty years.

The imposed repression of the Victorian era at far reaching consequences. Forced by the
prevailing society to conform with certain values and tastes, decadent art was forced out of polite
conversation and largely ignored. As Wilde's popularity receded, more 'wholesome' writers like
Kipling and Hardy began to blossom.

In short, the century that followed seems totally at odds with the simple premise that Wilde laid
down in his Preface in 1890. The world of Reading Gaol, of quantum mechanics, of Flanders,
Ypres and the Holocaust often seems to have very little to do with artifice and beauty at all.
Though Wilde's imprisonment was to protect the sensibilities of public, the impending
modernism, with its catastrophic treatment of banality, would ironically lead to the some of the
most vicious atrocities ever brought about.

Oscar Wilde's Aesthetics

The most important of Wilde's critical works, published in May 1891, is a volume titled
Intentions. It consists of four essays: "The Decay of Lying," "Pen, Pencil and Poison," "The
Critic as Artist," and "The Truth of Masks." These and the contemporary essay "The Soul of
Man Under Socialism" affirm Wilde's support of Aestheticism and supply the philosophical
context for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

"The Decay of Lying" was first published in January 1889. Wilde called it a "trumpet against the
gate of dullness" in a letter to Kate Terry Lewis. The dialogue, which Wilde felt was his best,
takes place in the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire. The participants are Cyril and
Vivian, which were the names of Wilde's sons (the latter spelled "Vyvyan"). Almost
immediately, Vivian advocates one of the tenets of Wilde's Aestheticism: Art is superior to
Nature. Nature has good intentions but can't carry them out. Nature is crude, monotonous, and
lacking in design when compared to Art.

According to Vivian, man needs the temperament of the true liar" with his frank, fearless
statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind!" Artists
with this attitude will not be shackled by sterile facts but will be able to tell beautiful truths that
have nothing to do with fact.

"Pen, Pencil and Poison" was first published in January 1889. It is a biographical essay on the
notorious writer, murderer, and forger Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, who used the pen name
"Janus Weathercock."

Critical Essays
Oscar Wilde's Aesthetics

Wilde's approach is that Wainewright's criminal activities reveal the soul of a true artist. The
artist must have a "concentration of vision and intensity of purpose" that exclude moral or ethical
judgment. True aesthetes belong to the "elect," as Wilde calls them in "The Decay of Lying," and
are beyond such concerns. As creative acts, there is no significant difference between art and
murder. The artist often will conceal his identity behind a mask, but Wilde maintains that the
mask is more revealing than the actual face. Disguises intensify the artist's personality. Life itself
is an art, and the true artist presents his life as his finest work. Wilde, who attempted to make this
distinction in his own life through his attempts to re-create himself, includes this theme in The
Picture of Dorian Gray.

The longest of the essays in Intentions, "The Critic as Artist," first appeared in two parts (July and
September 1890) with the significant title, "The True Function and Value in Criticism; With Some
Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing: A Dialogue." It is considered to be a response to Matthew
Arnold's essay "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1865). Arnold's position is that the
creative faculty is higher than the critical. The central thesis of Wilde's essay is that the critic must reach
beyond the creative work that he considers.

The setting of the dialogue is a library in a house in London's Piccadilly area overlooking Green
Park, and the principal characters are Gilbert and Ernest.

Along with the central theme of the importance of the critic, Gilbert espouses the significance of
the individual. The man makes the times; the times do not make the man. Further, he advocates
that "Sin is an essential element of progress." Sin helps assert individuality and avoid the
monotony of conformity. Rules of morality are non-creative and, thus, evil.

The best criticism must cast off ordinary guidelines, especially those of Realism, and accept the
aesthetics of Impressionism — what a reader feels when reading a work of literature rather than
what a reader thinks, or reasons, while reading. The critic must transcend literal events and
consider the "imaginative passions of the mind." The critic should not seek to explain a work of
art but should seek to deepen its mystery.

Critical Essays
Oscar Wilde's Aesthetics

"The Truth of Masks" first appeared in May 1885 under the title "Shakespeare and Stage
Costume." The essay originally was a response to an article written by Lord Lytton in December
1884, in which Lytton argues that Shakespeare had little interest in the costumes that his
characters wear. Wilde takes the opposite position.

More important within the context of Intentions, Wilde himself always put great emphasis on
appearance and the masks, or costumes, with which the artist or individual confronts the world.

Wilde also raises the question of self-contradiction. In art, he says, there is no such thing as an
absolute truth: "A Truth is that whose contradictory is also true." This sentiment recalls Wilde's
tremendous respect for the thoughts of Walt Whitman. In "Song of Myself," Whitman writes,
"Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain
multitudes)."
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" first appeared in February 1891. In it, Wilde expresses his
Aesthetics primarily through the emphasis that the essay places on the individual. In an unusual
interpretation of socialism, Wilde believed that the individual would be allowed to flourish under
the system. He thus warns against tyrannical rulers and concludes that the best form of
government for the artist is no government at all.

In this essay, it's easy to see that Wilde loved to shock. If Walt Whitman wanted to wake the
world with his "barbaric yawp," Wilde preferred aphorisms, paradox, irony, and satire. While
Wilde wouldn't want to be accused of sincerity, he was certainly devoted to Aestheticism in his
life as well as his art.

M. H. Abrams provides the context that enables us to undertstand how this rather bizarre, fuzzy
concept derived from the much serious and carefully thought out ideas of Kant. Placing the idea
in the context of earlier theories of art and literature, Abrams points out that by the end of the
eighteenth century "some critics were undertaking to explore the concept of a poem as a
heterocosm, a world of its own, independent of the world into which we are born, whose end is
not to instruct or please but simply to exist" (27). Drawing on the anti-utilitarian theories of art of
Kant, Ruskin, and a range of writers on the subject that beauty is disinterested and has no crude
utility, some critics,

particularly in Germany, were expanding upon Kant's formula that a work of art exhibits
Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck (purposiveness without purpose), together with his concept that
the contemplation of beauty is disinterested wthout regard to utility, while ignoring Kant's
characteristic reference" of works of art and literature to both artist and audience. This "aim to
consider a poem, as Poe expressed it, as a 'poem per se . . . written solely for the poem's sake,' in
isolation from external causes and ulterior ends, came to constitute one element of the diverse
doctrines usually huddled together by historians under the heading 'Art for Art's Sake.'" [27]

In a wonderful bit of irony unnoticed by most who relate the history of Aestheticism, Ruskin, whom
most commentators take to be the bête noir of the movement, turns out to have advanced a complex
theological argument for Art for Art's Sake before mid-century! As I show elsewhere on this site, Ruskin
had a far more complex relation to Aestheticism than the by-now standard mentions of him suggest. We
know he did much to advance the career of the most influential artist associated with Aestheticism, the
painter, illustrator, stained-glass and mosaic designer, Burne-Jones, but who would have expected this
very earnest Victorian sage to have provided an early justification for it?

References

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. NY:
Oxford UP, 1953.

Dowling, Linda. "Aestheticism." Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Ed. Michael Kelly. 4 vols. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998. I, 32-37.

Sartwell, Crispin. "Art for Art's Sake." Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Ed. Michael Kelly. 4 vols.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. I, 118-20.
Moreover, since Ruskin firmly believes "the art of any country is the exponent of its social and
political virtues" (20.39), he searches the artistic creations of the past for lessons he can apply to
the present. In particular, much troubled by "the apparent connection of great success in art with
subsequent national degradation" (16.263), he examines the arts of India and Italy to see if it is
possible to discover causes of national decline in their painting and architecture. One may say of
Ruskin's aesthetic theories what he said of the arts — that they are in some sort an expression of
deeply felt emotion, the recasting of intensely felt experience. One such experience impelled him
to create his theory of Typical Beauty, while another almost as powerful led him, a few years
later, to change direction and admit the importance of association — a human element — in the
beautiful. Although his most intensely felt emotional events, and not purely theoretical
investigation, engendered his aesthetics, these views about beauty nonetheless bear the
characteristic impress of Ruskin's thought; for, like his conception of the sister arts, they are
derived in large part from neoclassical writings and serve a polemical purpose. In particular, his
statements about the nature of beauty permit him to answer certain problems which an
emotionally centered theory of art presents. His confrontation with the Holy, his sense of the
glories of becoming nothing before God, led him directly to formulate a theory of the beautiful,
which, denying the importance of human elements, derived all from the eternal, the unchanging,
the infinite. The difficulties Ruskin must solve appear first in the brief mentions of the beautiful
which he makes in the opening volume of Modern Painters. In the chapter "Of Ideas of Beauty,"
he states that "any material object which can give us pleasure . . . without any direct and definite
exertion of the intellect, I call in some way, or in some degree, beautiful" (3.109). The perception
of beauty is thus an act of some non-intellectual part of the mind — non-intellectual, because he
later states that ideas of beauty "are the subjects of moral, but not of intellectual perception"
(3.111). Ruskin believes beauty, then, to be a disinterested pleasure which has an objective
reality and which is perceived by the non-intellectual part of the mind. Although Ruskin, in
contrast to many English aestheticians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, believes that
beauty is an objectively existing thing or quality, he yet speaks of "the emotions of the Beautiful
and Sublime" (3.48). Emotion is subjective, and it is difficult to see how it could be thought to be
objectively verifiable, since emotions, which are the product of the non-intellectual, the "moral"
part of the mind, cannot, as can conceptual thought, be reasoned over or even compared with
each other. If emotion is thus subjective, and if beauty is an emotion, it is difficult to see how
Ruskin believes that beauty can be objective. He attempts to solve the problem of feeling in
beauty by reasoning that all men perceive, or should perceive, certain qualities with the same
emotion much in the same manner that all men find sugar sweet and wormwood bitter. Men react
so, says Ruskin, because it is God's will and because all men have a divine element in their
nature, but men do not receive pleasure from certain forms and colors "because they are
illustrative of it [God's nature], nor from any perception that they are illustrative of it, but
instinctively and necessarily, as we derive sensual pleasure from the scent of a rose" (3.109). By
appealing to an order that is ultimately divine, Ruskin thus proves to his satisfaction, if not, alas,
to ours, that aesthetic emotions are both uniform and essential. In other words, he has found a
theological reason for claiming that "Ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be
presented to the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it" (3.111). He has also found the
perfect defense of art, for if it is allowed that beauty is the image of God, then it is also easily
allowed that the painting and poetry which create, portray, and interpret this beauty are important
as well.
 The 19th Century Aesthetic Movement

Group Members: Esmeralda Lessire, Linh Nguyen, and Kate Pastoor

Introduction and Overview

by Linh Nguyen

The Arts and Crafts Movement is the main line of reform design in the 19th century that defines
the period of its greatest development, roughly between 1875-1920. The Aesthetic Movement
and Art Nouveau, whose roots were in the reaction to the Industrial Revolution in England in the
middle of the 19th century, are the two major stylistic developments of this Movement’s
philosophy.

The term "Aesthetic Movement" refers to the introduction of principles that emphasized art in
the production of furniture, metalwork, ceramics, stained glass, textiles, wallpapers, and books.
The catalyst for its widespread popularity was the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876.
There, in numerous displays, many Americans, artists and craftsmen as well as the general
public, were exposed to art objects from a great variety of nations and periods. Most writers on
the Aesthetic Movement agree that its roots lie in the reaction to Industrialization in mid-19th
century England The movement incorporated both exotic and historical sources of design
generally, the Japanese influence became the strongest and best known. However, not all
Aesthetic Movement design is in a Japanese style and vice versa. Today relatively little remains
of the highest expressions of Aesthetic Movement design. Never inexpensive and therefore never
plentiful, few objects and very few intact interiors, particularly the domestic interior, survive to
suggest their richness and beauty.

The Aesthetic movement in Britain began as a reform impulse. It was a part of a larger critique
of the Industrial Revolution, which had radically altered Britain following the Napoleonic Wars,
and it paralleled political events that had firmly established the power of the middle class with
the Second Reform Bill of 1867. The costs of these social transformations were the subjects of
impassioned debate, in the aesthetic realm as well as elsewhere (Bolger Burke et al. 25). At first
English designers and manufacturers followed the pattern of conscious imitation established on
the continent. Apart from prints, free use was also made of Japanese cloisonné wear, ivories,
bronzes, lacquer and textiles. However it was not long before a distinctly English brand of
Japonisme began to appear. English potters in particular were well accustomed to the decorative
principles of oriental design and so began almost immediately to turn the pure European form of
Japonisme into an essentially decorative up date of 18th century chinoiserie (Klein 10). Thus the
speed with which Japanese styles were accepted in England as a result of a well-established
decorative oriental tradition blurred the boundaries between Japanese and Chinese arts as styles
became quite increasingly oriental. But it remained primarily an expression of British culture.

Out of the Aesthetic Movement came new ideas and shapes that looked towards the 20th century.
The study of Japanese principles of design brought varying results; many of the large
commercial firms like Wedgwood, Copeland, Worcester and Minton were interested in the
foreign influences merely for their fashionable decorative values; they were satisfying the
appetites of a mass market, albeit with fine workmanship and design. But Christopher Dresser
and Edward Godwin responded to the functional side of oriental design, analyzing it, stripping it
to its bare bones, and revealing a new sense of functionality in design that was to set the mood
for the 20th century. Godwin’s sketchbooks show that he studied the designs of as many nations
as possible, but in his finished products these studies have become incorporated into a
completely English style (Klein 10). A leading revolutionary a century ago, Englishman William
Morris' work as an artist, designer, printer, and intellectual reflected a search for a new social
order. He persuaded many of the necessity for change. He wrote, "I know by my own feelings &
desires what these men want, what would have saved them from this lowest depth of savagery;
Employment which would foster their self-respect and win the praise and sympathy of their
fellows, and dwellings which could come to with pleasure, surroundings which would soothe and
elevate them; reasonable labor, reasonable rest. There is only one thing that can give them this,
and it is art" (Kaplan viii-ix). Morris urged the need to restore the lost sense of beauty that the
dehumanization of industry has forced upon society.

The labor divisions were depriving the craftsman of the pleasure of his work and as work was
central to the social life of the individual, this disintegrated and debased English society. Beauty
and quality were ignored for profit and quantity. The political philosophy was, naturally, anti-
aristocratic and the expression of that idea in terms of design principles was a rejection of the
characteristics of design associated with the rich. There was also a religious component, in that
the nature of religious beliefs was a great influence in the formation of British values. As it was
oriented away from ritual and visual symbols and more towards social and community ideals, it
reinforced the social nature of the movement. Thus, although the Movement definitely had its
stylistic expressions, it was not simply an art movement but had a rather complex structure of
social, political and moral ideas of the British life in during that period.

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 The End

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.50 )1

Again, Lord Henry serves as an adequate example:

[...]

Dorian Gray as a rebel 3

Dorian Gray – a rebellish gentlemen?  4

The characters motivation for rebellism 8

Is he a rebel or not?  11

Dorian Gray as a devil 12

The charm of Dorian Gray 13

Is Dorian Gray in league with the devil?  15

Conclusion 16

References  17

Introduction

This essay is a contribution to a seminar in English Literature studies in detail a seminar about
novels of the 19th century. It is assumed that the reader of this essay is familiar with the novel
“the Picture of Dorian Gray” written by Oscar Wilde and first published in 1891. As basic
knowledge the reader should consider the circumstances in Great Britain during the reign of
Queen Victoria including the prevailing moral views. Some key words to describe the Victorian
Age are prudish, repressed and old-fashioned. However, this age was also the time when
reforms, innovations and revolutions took place or were about to begin. “Above all it was an age
of paradox and power”1 So he we are and that is the background to the question: Dorian Gray –
rebel or devil? This general question is difficult to evaluate. In this essay only a few aspects are
taken into account for answering that question such as the character’s position in the Victorian
Society, his violation of the code of conduct in that society and his resemblance of Lucifer.
There are two main parts in this essay the first deals with Dorian Gray as a rebel and the second
and last takes a closer look on Dorian Gray’s develish features. In the end the reader has read
many pro and contra arguments and finds a brief conclusion as an answer to the question of the
title.

Dorian Gray as a rebel

This part of the essay will deal with the question wether the character Dorian Gray is a rebel or
not. It is an analysis of the following aspects that will answer the question. His relation and
association with the Victorian Society, his motivation for being a rebel and his philosophy of life
are the topics discussed. Arguments why the Victorian Society regarded Dorian Gray as a rebel
are pointed out first, then reasons why the character became a rebel are given with regard to the
motivation that guided him. In the Victorian Society of Great Britain, named after Queen
Victoria’s reign from 1837 until 1901, one or two decades before 1900 the life of the character
Dorian Gray is settled. In the following his relation and association with this society will assist to
reveal whether Dorian Gray is a rebel or not. It is important to take the Victorian Society into
account for such an evaluation since a rebel is either defined as someone who “act(s) in or
show(s) opposition or disobedience (e.g.) rebelled against the conventions of polite society”2 or
someone who “oppose(s) or disobey(s) one in authority or control”3. Dorian Gray’s behavior in
the novel fits in both definitions. He offends against the conventions of polite Victorian Society
as well as he ignores rules of authority or control of that time. How he rebels in the sense of the
given definitions is shown in a later paragraph. First a closer look on Dorian Gray’s social
position in Victorian Society is crucial to understand the events of his rebelish behavior.

Dorian Gray – a rebellish gentlemen?

In the Victorian society the old hereditary aristocracy still existed and was fortified by the new
gentry who owed their success to trade and industry. Together these two groups formed the so
called upper class where women were ladies and men were gentlemen either by birth or by
means of money. “Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books”4 which means in detail he is
not an aristocratic. However, he was raised by his aristocratic grandfather, the last Lord of Kelso.
Therefore, he obvious ly received an education appropriate for a gentleman of that time. The
gentlemen in Victorian Society was expected to have certain characteristics and to follow a code
of conduct. In fact no explicit rules or typical gentleman features existed which is sho wn by the
following quotation from Lord Fermor, Lord Henry Wottons’s uncle and a true gentleman by
birth: “If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he
knows is bad for him.”5 Despite the missing definition of a gentlemen, a person was accepted as
a gentlemen if he had a public school education or the means of money to move in the upper
classes. Dorian Gray inherited all the wealth of his grandfather and of his mother Lady Magret
Devereux. He did not inherit a title because his mother married a subaltern, a junior officer in the
British Army. As a result Dorian Gray is educated as a gentlemen and possesses the means to
occupy a social position as part of the upper Victorian Society.

[...]

1. Introduction

There are some famous writers at the end of the 19th century who are often
mentioned as “decadent”. They have asserted the superiority of beauty and
pleasure over all other considerations. Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of
Dorian Gray presents the aestheticism and the hedonist way of living. The
novel anticipates developments and structures of society of that time. The
importance of Dorian’s experiences refutes the decadent theories which are
described in the Yellow Book that enthralls the protagonist. The novel as a
whole can be seen as a psychological study which analyzes the gradual
debasement of Dorian’s nature. At the end of the story he is responsible for
every vice and crime including murder.

The author shows that on the one hand pleasure and beauty are the highest
goods, on the other hand he argues that they also bring death and crime. The
task of this research paper is to analyze the mentioned contradiction and the
influence of the Aesthetic movement on the novel as well as Oscar Wilde’s
view of art.

2. Aesthetic movement in England

I would like to begin with a brief survey of the social and intellectual background at the end of
the 19th century, exploring the major art movements of that time and how far they affect Wilde’s
work. Afterwards his main principles of Aestheticism and their reflection in the novel are
analyzed as well as Dorian’s life under the influence of the hedonist model.

Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray reveals the contradictions of Wilde’s
relationship with the decadent trends of that time. He adopts and proclaims their esthetical and
literary views, but the flippant amoralism that he sometimes parades so defiantly is belied by the
final catastrophe descending upon his hero as a result of his obvious moral degradation. The
novel shows that man’s chief purpose in life cannot be seeking pleasure. To be good is more
important than to be beautiful. Though in the preface to his novel Oscar Wilde declares that all
art is quite useless, the novel itself proves the opposite. The tension between the aesthetic (Art)
and the moral (Life) is the focus of the novel. In setting a portrait, a work of art, at the center of
the action, Wilde affects the interplay of natural perception and moral judgment in the novel. The
ideal of art for art’s sake was proclaimed by Wilde but hardly ever consistently put into practice.

I. Introduction

This paper will be separated into three main parts. The first examines late-Victorian moral
values, literary standards as well as Oscar Wilde´s view of art and its criticism.
The second part explores reactions of the audience, especially the press, to Wilde´s novel The
Picture of Dorian Gray.
The third part then critically analyses these arguments and explains the role Victorian values and
the resulting literary expectation played in the criticism.

II. Victorian values and literary standards

This Chapter analyses both the era and the societal norms that influenced the creation of The
Picture of Dorian Gray as well as the expectations Victorian readers had towards literature. It
will also explore the principles of Aestheticism as a possible alternative to these standards, and
explain how Wilde used them to defend his book.
Victorian society is "conventionally regarded as a time of prudery, Puritanism, sexual repression
and moral strictness in nineteenth century England" This era is connected with the reign of
Queen Victoria I, who led the British empire through a period of economic and technological
growth as well as significant shifts in moral attitudes. The importance and influence of religion
especially in the nascent middle class rose quickly in this period and soon "churches became the
centre of Victorian culture" (Brooks, IX) and "religion occupied a place in the public
consciousness, a centrality in the intellectual life of the age, which it had not had a century
before". As the influence of religion rapidly grew the moral expectations of society changed as
well. The Bible and the Prayer Book used by the British High Church suggested virtues which "
were not just for guidance, they were for obedience" and Victorian Society accepted and strictly
followed them.
Cleanliness, health, sincerity, earnestness, morality and manliness were virtues, expected of good
British citizens. Furthermore "family values" (Cambridge Companion, 18) were adopted.
Cleanliness became a virtue, which could easily be practiced whereas health was hardly in their
own hands.

Sincerity, as a synonym for truth can be regarded in two different ways as Prof. Altholz does on
his internet article on The Warfare of Conscience with Theology:

One of the moral virtues most frequently inculcated (and regarded as distinctively English) was
the virtue of truth. Now truth is a two-edged sword. For one thing, there was a fundamental
confusion in the Victorian concept of "truth." In one sense the word refers to objective truth, the
factual reality; in another sense it means truthfulness, that is, the honesty of a person. It is
characteristic of the Victorians that they were more interested in truthfulness than in truth; they
were more concerned with the moral character of the speaker than with the factual correctness of
his statement.

Victorian earnestness was precisely the intellectual seriousness and sincerity that was expected
by educated man. In their quest for earnestness, clergymen even avoided the theatre in order to
keep off pleasures, which might influence their thoughts. The catchword of Victorian Society
which was already mentioned in the introduction and which will become a reoccurring theme
from now on is morality. One of the most significant topics in the discourse on morality was the
relationship between men or as Foldy says “same sex passion” (68).

At the beginning of the Victorian Age not much interest was paid to the way men behaved
towards each other, at least sexually. “Men could be much more affectionate and could be seen
to be more affectionate, without causing suspicion or innuendo.” (Samuelson). As timed passed,
however, these types of relationships gained attention. Foldy suggests the words “homophobic
and heterosexist” as a description of the emerging “cultural climate” (67). This fear or panic of
relationships between persons of the same sex spread quickly in Victorian Society and produced
a “deeply ingrained prejudice” (Sinfield, 187). 

This strongly developed bias was at first preceded “by a certain tolerance and even pity, which
might be attributed to widespread public ignorance about both the act and the actors, as well as
by a circumscribed Christian sympathy for the sinner” (Foldy, 68) This attitude was reinforced
by a fear of losing one´s moral identity. Victorian morality was also influenced by the
humanitarian ideology of helping others. “They preached the duty of active benevolence; they
freed the slaves and improved the conditions of factory labor” (Altholz, 65).
Aestheticism in England

In England, Swinburne, Symonds, and Pater established a tradition of English

aestheticism that threatened the Victorian belief, expressed most forcefully by
Matthew Arnold, in art's requisite ethical and social dimension.

At a time when nineteenth-century social thinkers were establishing medical models

for an understanding of same-sex behavior, these writers looked back to Greek and
Renaissance civilizations for alternative historical examples of homosexual affection
that had been tolerated and even encouraged.

In extolling earlier periods of high creative achievement, English aesthetes insisted

that artists of genius by definition defied ordinary categories of correct masculine and
feminine behavior, implying that all moral distinction must be subsumed to the search
for the beautiful.

Swinburne declared that "great poets are bisexual, male and female at once," and in
his poem "Anactoria" (1866), he presented a dramatic monologue in the voice of
Sappho, in which the Greek poet declares that "There are those who say an array of
horsemen, and others of marching men, and others of ships, is the most beautiful
thing on the dark earth / But I say it is whatever one loves."

In the chapter "The Genius of Greek Art" in volume two of his Studies of the Greek
Poets (1875), Symonds celebrates a return to an eroticized ideal of aesthetics as a
guide to proper moral conduct. Symonds's posthumously published memoirs revealed
the anguish of his life as a married homosexual, but during his lifetime he expressed
his feelings toward other men through an exploration of the Greeks and their
Renaissance devotees as precursors of aestheticism.

In his novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), Pater, a long-time bachelor and professor at
Oxford, sketched a portrait of a susceptible aesthete who is drawn to a series of
cults, among them Cyrenaicism, whose credo "from time to time breaks beyond the
limits of the actual moral order, perhaps not without some pleasurable excitement in
so bold a venture."

Pater created a storm of dissent with his notorious "Conclusion" to Studies in the
History of the Renaissance (1873), in which he urged his readers--in the chapter's
most frequently quoted clause--"to burn always with this hard gem-like flame" and to
discover happiness in the avid pursuit of sensations raised to the pitch of "poetic
passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's sake."

Pater chose to excise the "Conclusion" from the book's second edition but brazenly
reinserted it into the third edition. That Pater's initial audience was potentially
impressionable young Oxford students augmented the Renaissance's reputation as a
piece of propaganda.

The novelist George Eliot, for one, declared that Studies in the History of the
Renaissance "seems to me quite poisonous in its false principles and criticism and
false conception of life." Pater's sway over writers of the 1890s, however, was
incalculable.

Oscar Wilde
Although Wilde downplayed Pater's influence on his work, Pater, Gautier, and
Huysmans were of collective importance in helping determine Wilde's special brand of
aestheticism.

Although Wilde is generally considered to be the fin-de-siècle aesthete par

excellence, looked at as a whole his writings on aestheticism reveal a far more
complex and even critical attitude toward a life devoted to artistic sensation.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), in portraying the cruelty and disintegration of a
young aesthete, is scarcely a defense of aestheticism; as Wilde's biographer Richard
Ellman noted, the aestheticist aphorisms that make up the preface function in
dialectical relation to the main body of the book, which rapidly changes from breezy
salon novel into dark cautionary tale.

The true Wildean aesthete in Dorian Gray is Lord Henry, who though married, is
smitten with Dorian and attempts to lure him into a life devoted to art and hedonism.
Dorian's descent into crime is thus an allegory of how Lord Henry's aestheticist
axioms, taken to extremes, negate life, even one devoted to art.

Wilde's epigrammatic essays, particularly "The Decay of Lying" (1888), do, however,
provide a coherent rationalization for aestheticism. Here Wilde claims that "All art is
entirely useless" and "Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance."

Identifying two basic energies of art, Wilde asserts that artistic works exist in
isolation from experience and that art is drenched in images, a recapitulation in
Baudelaire's belief in an art composed of a "forest of symbols." Most important, Wilde
insists that just as form determined content, art dictates life.

It is not, Wilde claimed, a given age that shapes art (as the literary historian Hippolite
Taine had asserted) but art that shapes a given age. "The nineteenth century, as we
know it," Wilde declares, "is largely an invention of Balzac," an idea polished into
comic paradox in the playwright's remark that London had become foggy only after
Turner had painted his misty London city-scapes.

Wilde's continual stress on the value of artifice and the insincere can be read not only
as a defense of the "unnatural vice" of homosexuality but as a sophisticated
appreciation of the way in which sexuality is neither unified, static, nor constant but
contextual. Reactions to Wilde's Aestheticism

In an era when the homosexual was "invented" by medical sexology as a separate

species from the heterosexual, Wilde's aestheticism offered the retort that sexuality,
like taste, was simply a heightened sensitivity to the beautiful.

Beginning with Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881), Wildean aestheticism was the
target of satire. Wilde is lampooned as the effeminate aesthete Reginald Bunthorne in
an operetta whose popularity led Max Beerbohm to declare that it helped prolong the
aestheticist movement after its heyday.

More catastrophically for Wilde, Robert Hichens's The Green Carnation (1894), with
innumerable sexual double-entendres, underlined the connections between
aestheticism and same-sex erotics. Hichens spoofed the playwright and his lover Lord
Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") as Mr. Amarinth and Lord Reggie, master wit and his slavishly
imitative friend, leaving no doubt about Douglas's sexuality when he depicts Lord
Reggie chasing a boy.

Although undoubtedly intended as an affectionate satire (Wilde himself expressed

admiration for the book), The Green Carnation strongly confirmed Lord Queensberry's
charges concerning Wilde's indecent sexual influence over his son, thus helping doom
the playwright as a reckless corrupter of youth during Wilde's legal imbroglio.

It is perhaps an irony of the English aestheticist movement that its chief proponent,
Wilde, and the author of a damning parody of aestheticism, Hichens, were both men
of homosexual inclinations.

Walter Horatio Pater

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 |

Walter Horatio Pater , 1839-94, English essayist and critic. In 1864 he was elected a fellow of
Brasenose College, Oxford, and he subsequently led an austere and uneventful life. An exemplar
of Victorian aestheticism and a proponent of the doctrine of "art for art's sake," Pater believed
that the ideal life consisted of cultivating an appreciation for the beautiful and the profound. His
first work, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), established his reputation. Then
followed his masterpiece, Marius the Epicurean (1885), a study of the intellectual and spiritual
development of a young Roman in the time of Marcus Aurelius. His other works include
Imaginary Portraits (1887); Appreciations (1889); Plato and Platonism (1893); The Child in the
House (1894); and two posthumous publications, Greek Studies (1895) and Gaston de Latour
(1896). His style is noted
i