Towards the end of Chapter 1 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde introduces his ideas on of how aestheticism can influence life. On one level, Wilde develops this theme through his depiction of the relationship between the portrait and its sitter, painter and admirer. While Lord Henry is fascinated by Dorian Gray upon observing Basil’s overt fascination of the young man, he is also strangely attracted to Basil’s artistic depiction of Dorian Gray’s aesthetic beauty. In effect, Henry grows infatuated with the aesthetic representation of Dorian; consequently, the portrait itself has asserted an influence and control over Henry. In Basil’s view, Henry desires the “harmony of body and soul” of the picture, to which Lord Henry exclaims, “Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray”.
As Basil states about Henry’s character, an allegory of “what the world thinks,” in perhaps a naïve belief given Henry’s subsequent ostensible role as the devil’s advocate: “You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose”. Given Wilde’s often-made criticisms of Victorian England’s hypocritical disposition (apparent from the book’s Preface), Henry’s extravagantly cynical character may well be an act; however, it is an act on which he seems to thrive: “‘I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies’”.
The reader is provided with a further example of Lord Henry’s habit of making paradoxical speeches about whatever topic being discussed. What starts off as a praise of Basil’s latest painting becomes a comment on the size of the Academy as being “too vulgar,” so that there “have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which is worse”. As...