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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is widely acknowledged as an alluring and horrendous novel. The majority of reading publics in America and Britain in the eighteenth century considered it as an immoral work of art due to the explicit sexual content of the novel (Gillespie 13). However, the readers in the contemporary times do not worry over the issue of sex as doesn’t discuss and/or mention sex by itself. The primary reason people thought The Picture of Dorian Gray as an immoral narrative is that Dorian Gray, the central character, is not presented by Wilde as the villain. It is a common tradition that bad guys in books and movies are rejected by the society and/or punished by the end. On the other hand, Wilde presents Dorian Gray in a light that needs sympathy from the reader. Similarly, The Picture of Dorian Gray was also opposed due to the content regarding homosexuality. The affection showed by Basil towards Dorian reflects the romantic love and the basis of the painting of Dorian. Likewise, the novel was also condemned for the seductive behavior of Lord Henry towards Dorian. The opposition that the novel met can be measured by the fact that Wilde was punished and incarcerated for the disgusting lewdness demonstrated by him in The Picture of Dorian Gray (Kohl 132). For this reason, the book was revised by Wilde in 1891 so that his rebellious influence over the young minds could be removed. To cut a long story short, Oscar Wilde's discussed novel is one of those renowned works that met the awfulest response on their publication. Although The Picture of Dorian Gray received dreadful reviews and poor sales, the novel gained immense popularity as a classic many years after the death of Oscar Wilde.
Works Cited
Gillespie, Michael Patrick. Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1996. Print.
Kohl, Norbert. Oscar Wilde: The Works of a Conformist Rebel. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Print.
