Dorian's Aestheticism

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As Dorian continues his descent into madness, he comes into ownership of an unnamed yellow book from Lord Henry that becomes a driving force of his hedony, pushing Dorian over the edge and into an unrestrained materialistic life that negatively affects both himself and those around him. The unnamed book serves as Dorian’s gateway, opening his mind to a way of thinking that Henry had not been able to provide him, even replacing Henry in many ways as a guiding force for Dorian, as while Henry lives his life as a more ideal aestheticist, Dorian’s perversion of aestheticism is only accentuated by the yellow book. It pushes him into many new forms of hedony, and in each and every step he is searching for the meaning and morals behind the works or …show more content…
In a climactic confrontation between Basil and Dorian, Dorian decides to expose his true self on the canvas to Basil in a final act of hedony in exposing his true self to his oldest friend, who utterly rejects how depraved he has become. In a fit of madness, driven by the painting’s and his own sin and bloodlust, Dorian impulsively murders Basil, staining the painting with its creators blood: “He rushed at him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table and stabbing again and again” (184). Fortunately for Dorian, despite such a bloody and cruel murder, he gets away with it cleanly, blackmailing his old friend Alan Campbell into disposing of the body, which leads to Alan’s guilty suicide later, another case of Dorian’s corruptive influence. However, despite there being no evidence to stack against him due to some excellent alibi craftsmanship, Dorian begins to feel the weight of his actions and crimes upon him, becoming sick with worry. With a chance encounter with Sibyl Vane’s older brother James Vayne, desperate to avenge his sister’s suicide, Dorian barely manages to escape death, convincing James that he’s far too young to have been with Sibyl. However, being once again faced with the direct effects of his work, he begins fearing for his life, and suddenly is found fainted and “ now and then a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the conservatory… he had seen the face of James Vayne watching him” (229). Dorian is constantly reminded of the effects of his actions, as Wilde portrays how, while it may initially seem fine to live such a materialistic life, when taken to
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