The Inability of the Victorian Gentleman to Reconcile Hedonism and Guilt in The Picture of Dorian Gray

The conflict between the rules of society and the rights of the individual can lead to a chaotic moral state. In Michael Brander’s The Victorian Gentleman, Brander details how Victorian gentlemen are permitted freedom as long as they adhere to social norms in public. In Joris-Karl’s Huysmans’ À Rebours, Huysmans details how a member of the Decadent movement, Des Esseintes, prioritizes the fulfilment of his own desires over societal expectations. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde demonstrates how the tension between the Victorian pressure to conform and the Decadent philosophy to seek pleasure leads to Dorian Gray’s downfall. In his condemnation of the Victorians for their equation of appearancewith morality, and the Decadents for their preference of sensation over morality in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde endeavours to show the consequences of the suppression of guilt.In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the tension between the Victorian notion of the appearance of morality and the Decadent tendency to subvert the significance of art to moralityculminates in Dorian Gray’s inability to accept that he possesses guilt. As his participation in the Decadent lifestyle leads to his indulgence and vice, and he cannot distinguish between his looksand his conscience, he experiences the loss of the primary component of morality: the soul.