The Picture of Dorian Gray has three characters. In the novel, Wilde presents us with three personalities, all of whom bare some resemblance with him. They are Lord Wotton, Dorian and Basil. The making of Dorian Gray’s character was aimed at examining the interaction of aesthetics and ethics. Dorian, an incredibly handsome young man, is so taken with his looks and youth that he wishes that a portrait of him should age in his stead while he loses no aesthetic value. Dorian eventually becomes a thoroughgoing hedonist whose only goal in life is the achievement of sensual pleasure.
Wilde uses the character of Dorian as a symbol of his ideas regarding the interaction of art and ethics. Gray’s physical aesthetic qualities, while so close to the ideal as to be considered sublime, nonetheless have no relationship at all with the decadent individual underneath. Art, just like Dorian, has the capacity of being appreciated while absolutely no attention is paid to morals.
In its preface, the attitudes inherent in the novel are to be found. In it, assertions are made as to the inability of moral judgments to be made on works of literature. Works of art, of which literature is part, are inherently beautiful. Literary criticism can, therefore, only be made based on the aesthetic value of the work in question. This is because works of literature are mirror images of society. As such, they are vulnerable to the corrupting nature of society. It, therefore, should never be a writer’s task to prove an ethical point; and for a critic to find ugliness in a work of literature would be to miss the point completely.