Morality and Immorality în The Picture of Dorian Gray

In my essay I will try to explain the direction that Oscar Wilde's novel takes. My support will be one of the aphorisms from the Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book" and I will try to illustrate the morality/immorality by using a few episodes from the novel. Morality is understood as a system of principles followed by a particular group of people, and immorality as not following accepted standards of behaviour. These definitions are reflected in The Picture of Dorian Gray very well.

Oscar Wilde opinion is that "there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all". According to Wilde, the artist might consider the moral or immoral lives of people as part of the subject matter of a work, but art itself is not meant to instruct the reader. The true artist is not out to prove anything and makes no judgments of right or wrong.