The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lord Henry is a master manipulator. He quickly latches onto Dorian due to Dorian’s good looks. From the outset, these looks prime Dorian to be the perfect means by which Lord Henry’s subversive and provocative views can find material expression. Lord Henry constructs and craftily imposes what he posits as a moral system revolving around formal and formalized artistic beauty on Dorian. This is only a posited moral system, as Lord Henry himself remains slippery and seemingly uncommitted to anything but creating disruption and carousing. It is this purported moral system—this dedication to pursuing and experiencing pleasure derived from beautiful works of art—that is the impetus of both the novel’s dramatic plotting and its thematic exploration. Throughout Dorian’s misadventures, Lord Henry waits in the wings, crafting Dorian into the piece de resistance of his iconoclastic provocations, regardless of the harm and ruin that befalls both those around Dorian and, eventually, Dorian himself. 

Although Dorian Gray is the protagonist of the novel, he can be seen more as a vessel for Lord Henry Wotton’s predation and provocations. Dorian has almost supernatural good looks, which causes both Hallward and Lord Henry to fall for him. Though Hallward paints him as the ideal of beauty, Lord Henry believes that Dorian should embody beauty in a more physical way.