Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) serves as a scathing critique of Victorian society by exposing the profound hypocrisy, superficiality, and moral decay hiding beneath the era’s rigid façade of respectability. Published during the fin de siècle (end of the century), the novel directly challeged the strict social norms of late-Victorian England.
Wilde meticulously dismantles the foundations of the Victorian elite through several key thematic critiques: 1. The Culture of Duality and Hypocrisy
The central plot mechanism—the magical portrait—acts as the ultimate metaphor for the Victorian split between the public and private self. Critique and Contradiction in The Picture of Dorian Gray
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