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The Picture of Dorian Gray 155
and Henry, he becomes fascinated first with his own beauty
but then with a growing ugliness that he recognizes as also
himself ” (503).
5. Jeff Nunokawa and Amy Sickels in their biography of Oscar
Wilde point out the parallels between Dorian Gray and the
author himself:
The novel’s protagonist and the men who surround
him are covered in the codes of homosexuality through
which Wilde and men like him communicated with one
another. Dorian Gray is constantly likened to homosexuals
of other times such as Antinous, the emperor
Hadrian’s lover, or to various other famous and infamous
homosexuals from history. Dorian Gray’s portrait
allows the original to lead a double life, such as the one
that Wilde and his friends knew (57).
These biographers also point out that with the publication of
this novel where he “invited inevitable comparisons between
himself and the characters that he created, Wilde courted the
danger of blowing the door off his own closet”. They go on to
say, the novel “would supply ammunition to his persecutors and
prosecutors and thus help bring on the disaster that cost Wilde
all but his life” (59).
6. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan in the essay, “The Phenomenon of
Aging” takes a different approach in analyzing Wilde’s failure to
understand or accept the need for secrecy and conformity in his
private life: “ When the Marquess of Queensberry accused Wilde
of sodomy, Wilde insisted, against advice, on prosecuting the
Marquess for criminal libel. After his release from prison Wilde,
seeking refuge in a Catholic retreat, was refused this courtesy.
He was also shunned by friends, wife, and children. Yet despite
his own guilty torments, one senses that Wilde could never
comprehend how such dire consequences could follow from his
pursuit of sensual pleasures and his practice of a kind of love
shared by great artists of the past. In Lacanian terms one might
say that he never understood that his real crime was to have
elevated Desire above Law” (480). One could argue that Basil
seems to be having this conversation with Dorian who fails to
understand the priority of moral law over desire.