Rebellion And Conspiracy:The Aestheticism Paradox Of The Picture Of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel of Oscar Wilde,a British writer of aestheticism,which embodies Oscar Wilde’s thought of writing.Concerning with aestheticism and appalling artistic morality,the novel has been controversial since its publication.Starting from the hot spot of research on the contradiction between art and morality or reality in The Picture of Dorian Gray,this paper examines this problem from the narrative level and affirms the pure aesthetic pursuit of “art for art”in it.On this basis,this paper further discusses the political subversive function of realistic resistance achieved by aestheticism while pursuing pure art,and the paradoxical phenomenon of capitalist ideology hidden behind it.Firstly,with the help of the narration function of the second death in Orpheus mythology,this paper analyzes the mapping and dialogue among painters,Dorian,Cybil and narrators and the Victorian view of art.In combination with the Victorian context,this paper reinterprets the paradox between art and morality or reality in Picture,and probes into the aesthetic pursuit of Picture.The narrator of the text kills Dorian at the symbolic level in order to criticize traditional aesthetics or morality.The pursuit of beauty in the final ending of Picture is the persistent betrayal of the imitation theory of classical aesthetics,which is the essential demand of modernism or aestheticism.Secondly,this paper analyzes the concrete embodiment of the attempt to replace the ugly realistic form with the perfect artistic form in Picture,and how to form the force of rebellion against the society in this aesthetic practice.In Picture,Dorian and Lord Henry’s pursuit of external forms in the aspects of sensory appearance,space decoration,fashion style,language thought and so on,constitute various dimensions of resisting rational society.There is a inevitability from the pure pursuit of art form to social subversion,and the strong social criticism in Picture has already been embodied in the slogan“Art for Art’s sake”.Finally,the collusion between the aesthetic pursuit in Picture and the capitalist society it opposes is examined in the context of Victorian society.Although the pure art of Picture has its independent value and its own law,it cannot fundamentally surpass the value system of the times.On the one hand,this kind of empty content and the pursuit of form criticizes the capitalist society,and on the other hand,marries with the experience of modernity,which plays a positive role in bourgeois ideology.The ambiguous collusion is also embodied in the capitalist consumption logic behind its formal pursuit and in helping the middle class to complete the social identity.