University Honors

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts an affluent young man with a striking appearance developing into a socialite within a changing Victorian society. Dorian interacts with two distinct men who each encourage him to experience life in different ways: a humble artist, Basil Hallward, and a poisonously charming socialite, Henry Wotton. He is ultimately left with a moral choice of either living humbly or using his appearance to exploit all that life has to offer. Thus, the novel explores the connection between identity and morality in a historical moment when gender and sexuality were being reconstructed and strictly redefined, according to Michel Foucault. Thus, Gray’s choice raises the question: to what extent does the malleability of gender influence morality? I argue that while in Victorian society gender is seen as informing morality, Gray allows his morality to dictate his gender. That is, while Gray believes that he can freely express himself without moral consequence, internally, his “true” self as reflected in his portrait reveals the inhuman person he has become, which is an aged and morally “gray” Gray. Ironically, the novel concludes with Dorian’s internally inhuman person depicted in the portrait rapidly overcoming the supposedly “free” person reflected on the outside. In reflecting on how Gray’s sexuality and gender are limited by social constraints, Wilde ultimately constructs an anti-morality moral story. Through queer theory and masculinity studies, I will explore the gender and sexual identity of young men in the Victorian era to understand how morality shaped masculinity.