Oscar Wilde: A Moralistic Aesthete

Oscar Wilde, an Irish-born playwright, novelist, essayist and poet, associated with the nineteenth-century "art for art's sake" movement, was undoubtedly better known in his lifetime for his scandalous lifestyle than for his literary theories and their execution in his works. But actually he should have deserved a higher status in literature. So it might be helpful and necessary that we re-evaluate Wilde's aestheticism and his work The Picture of Dorian Gray.It is well-known that aestheticism holds the belief that art is just there for its own sake and has no ethical involvement. It seems to the world that Wilde espoused precisely such an aesthetic outlook. In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, he formulated his famous view: "All art is quite useless." His only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is regarded as amoral, if not immoral, and some characters of his famous plays are also defined as amoral dandies.The present author argues that Oscar Wilde's views of aesthetics look backwards to the aestheticism of Walter Pater but at the same time in his works there is ethical position and moral sensibility. Wilde has in no ways given up his moral senses but that he has his own, even higher, moral demands. Though Wilde announces that "the sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolute distinct and separate", his artistic works present the punishment to moral decay and the sympathy towards the weak. The present author adopts an ethical analysis to approach the ethics reflected in Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and go in depth to find out the contradiction in his ethical view, that is, his aestheticing ethics and his humanizing ethics.By analyzing his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, we find that Dorian is the embodiment of all the aesthetics view of Oscar Wilde, meanwhile Wilde condemns his character and punishes him to death. From the other two main characters, Lord Henry and Basil Hallward we can trace out their ethical outlooks. Basil Hallward is a moralistic guide to Dorian. His generosity and humanity is the reflection of his humanizing ethical view. As a gospel of aestheticism, Lord Henry holds the aestheticing ethical view. His attitude to life is detachment and his belief of happiness is the peace of mind. The present author argues that Dorian Gray, thoughhe lives an aesthetical life, violates the ethical standards Wilde has set for his Wildean Dandies. Thus, Dorian Gray is destined to death because of his moral decay.There are many conflicting influences accounting for Wilde's paradoxes between his aestheticism and ethics, as well as within his ethics. Wilde was an Irish but was seeking his fame in London, so the Irish heroism and ingenuousness collided with the hypocrisy of London. This experience explains a lot. Wilde owed much to two great artists Walter Pater, an aesthete and John Ruskin, a moralist. Besides, he was also interested in the pleasure-seeking Greek philosophy and the no-action Chinese Taoism, but at the same time he could not avoid the duty of Catholicism.Based on the above analysis, the paper finally concludes that Oscar Wilde is a paradoxical aesthete as well as a paradoxical moralist. All these paradoxes make his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray profound and provoking.