... This lead to Dorian becoming narcissistic and obsessive, he looked upon the painting with genuine fascination. Dorian believed that it too was the loveliest portrait he had seen. Wilde uses Dorian's obsession with the painting to implicitly condemn aestheticism. However, this is contradicting what he said in his preface and how he portrays Lord Henry, which is a representation of himself. Lord Henry believes that art is completely distinct from morality. Lord Henry like Wilde is an aesthete. So, when he says that the way Dorian is obsessed with the painting, he is being hypocritical as he to thinks that beauty is the ultimate pursuit in life. In the preface of the book Wilde says that, "Beautiful things mean only beauty." Wilde is also ironic when he says that "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book." He is being ironic because after the preface is ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now