Oscar Wilde Quote Art Is Not Moral or Amoral Either Good or Bad

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Wilde and Morality

Peter Benson deconstructs the moral intrigues of Dorian Gray.

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction ways."
Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest

One of the most famous and most frequently quoted statements about the moral responsibility of artists can be found in Oscar Wilde 's preface to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. "At that place is no such thing as a moral or an immoral volume," writes Wilde, "Books are well written or badly written. That is all." His merits is that works of art are legitimate objects of artful judgement, but not of moral judgement.

Wilde added this preface when the novel was reprinted a year after its initial publication in a literary mag. The preface was Wilde's considered response to various reviewers who had found his book to exist immoral. The extent of this antagonism should not be exaggerated. Only a few reviewers had condemned the novel in these terms, and in that location was never any serious campaign for it to be banned.

Wilde likewise replied separately, by letter, to each of the magazines and newspapers which had published these condemnatory reviews. These messages were collected together after his death and republished in a little volume entitled Fine art and Morality. (Today, they can be found more hands in the collected edition of Wilde'south correspondence.) It is worth our while to read and compare the various arguments he puts frontward.

He makes his first argument of the principle later enunciated in his preface in his letter to The St. James'southward Gazette: "The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely singled-out and separate." Nonetheless in a second letter of the alphabet to the same magazine he makes the surprising claim that "The public… will find that [Dorian Gray] is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, besides equally all renunciation, brings its own punishment. "

The Daily Chronicle had been even more condemnatory, describing Wilde'due south novel as "a poisonous book…. heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction." To this Wilde replied: "My story is poisonous if you like, simply you cannot deny that it is likewise perfect."

If we compare these three responses, we see that in his kickoff letter to the Gazette Wilde claims that Dorian Grayness has no moral significance; in his second letter he says that information technology is a story with an beauteous moral; and in his alphabetic character to the Relate, he says that the book is immoral but artistically perfect. Hence we have 3 contrasting assertions, all made by Wilde:

Thesis I: The book is amoral.

Thesis 2: The book is moral.

Thesis III: The book is immoral.

Kettle Logic

This line of argument might remind usa of the famous joke quoted by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams: "A man was charged by one of his neighbours with having given him back a borrowed kettle in a damaged status. The defendant asserted starting time, that he had given it back undamaged; secondly, that the kettle had a pigsty in it when he borrowed information technology; and thirdly, that he had never borrowed a kettle from his neighbor at all. " Whatsoever of these defences might be valid on its own, but together they abolish each other out. Freud used this joke to exemplify the manner that the unconscious mind is able to ignore logical contradictions.

You might exist familiar with this kind of reasoning, as information technology is found repeatedly in the stories of Frank Richards, the creator of that archetypal greedy schoolboy Billy Bunter: "I say, you chaps, it wasn't me who ate your chocolate cake; and if it was, y'all said I could accept it; and if you lot didn't, you never had a chocolate block in the first identify!"

Freud called such arguments 'Kettle Logic', in accolade of the joke he'd used to illustrate them. So we demand to enquire if Wilde is simply indulging in kettle logic in replying to his critics, or if any of his arguments have validity, and if and so, which ones.

Some of his other remarks in these defensive letters to magazines may help us to discover a way out of this maze of contradictions. In his reply to The Scots Observer Wilde states: "An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him but what the colours on his palette are to the painter. " He adds, "If a piece of work of fine art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will encounter its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will encounter its moral lesson. " However, "If a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing, he volition probably care very picayune for its ethical import. "

Here, Wilde is asserting, non but that the spheres of art and morality are singled-out, just that at that place is a hierarchy between them. When anyone learns to perceive aesthetically, ethics will seem of less importance. Moral values are merely among the materials which an creative person may use to create artful effects, along with other elements.

Information technology is peradventure not surprising that such views should have caused a degree of alarm at the time. But Wilde does not deny the importance of moral rules in daily life. "It is proper that limitation should exist placed on deportment," he wrote to The St James'southward Gazette, adding, "It is not proper that limitations should be placed on art."

Dorian Gray

To explore the possible validity of these views, let usa turn to the novel itself. The story of The Picture of Dorian Gray is well known. Dorian, a handsome immature man, has his portrait painted by Basil Hallward, a skilful artist, who also fatefully introduces him to Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry is clever, witty, elegant, and speaks in a torrent of paradoxical epigrams. In him nosotros can recognize an idealized self-portrait of Wilde himself. Dorian, past contrast, is not particularly brilliant, and is dazzled by Lord Henry's philosophising, with its gleeful inversions of moral norms (eg "The only mode to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."). He becomes enamoured of this hedonistic philosophy of life.

At a later point in the story Lord Henry lends Dorian a book – an unnamed French novel which can be recognized past its description as J. K. Huysmans ' Against Nature. Ofttimes regarded as the 'Bible' of French fin-de-siècle literature, this volume was published 6 years earlier Dorian Gray, in which it is several times described as 'poisonous' (the very epithet the reviewer of The Daily Chronicle would utilise about Wilde'due south own novel). Dorian himself, at the very end of his life, claims to have been 'poisoned' by Huysmans' book, to which Lord Henry replies, "Art has no influence on action. It annihilates the want to act. It is superbly sterile." This repeats Wilde's claim of the separation of morality – relevant to the sphere of 'action' – from art. Yet Dorian has, in fact, lived a considerable portion of his life in witting imitation of the mode of life described in Against Nature, devoted to the savouring of sensations. And the chapter of Dorian Gray which follows the fatal souvenir of this book is written in an appreciative pastiche of Huysmans ' fashion.

So the themes discussed in the preface and debated between Wilde and his critics were already fully present in the novel itself. Let us consider the diverse ways in which each of the three theses can exist plant manifested in the novel.

Lord Henry himself had expressed Thesis I of the kettle argument: that Art does not affect Life, and and then has no moral significance. Past this stage of the novel still, Lord Henry is growing increasingly oblivious of the dark and sordid realities of Dorian 's life. He refuses to believe that Dorian could be capable of murder, on the grounds that "All crime is vulgar." Nevertheless Dorian has already killed Basil, and cunningly disposed of his corpse.

When Dorian was first allowing his image to exist captured on canvass by Basil, he was simultaneously listening to the seductive paradoxes of Lord Henry. These already began to change his ways of thinking, long before he read Against Nature. He starts to adopt a mode of speaking which is clearly imitative of Lord Henry (without ever achieving the luminescence of his model). Then, while the painted canvass captures Dorian's image, he is himself recreating his personality in the image of Lord Henry.

The famous supernatural premise of the story, which has fabricated it a archetype of the gothic macabre, is that the painting volition show the moral and concrete decay of Dorian while Dorian remains as fresh-faced every bit when its pigments were still wet. Hence, even to understand the novel in an intelligent fashion, the reader must bring to it some fairly ordinary moral assumptions. Unless 1 thinks that murdering Basil was wrong, one would non be able to understand why the painting, as the manifestation of Dorian 'due south soul, should become even more hideous afterward this issue.

Therefore in contrast to statements made past characters within information technology, the story of the book seems to exemplify Thesis 2 of Wilde's kettle logic: Dorian Gray is, indeed, a moral tale. Dorian, steeped in crime, finally comes to a bad end. The conventional moral norms which whatsoever reader can exist expected to bring to their reading of the book are necessary to the enjoyment of the story 's formal perfection. The book does not induce these moral norms in the reader, only assumes they are already present and makes utilise of them in the same way that a painter makes apply of the colours on his palette –the comparison made past Wilde himself. Thus his book performs an alchemical process whereby the reader'south moral norms are transmuted into artful delight. And then even Thesis Two (that the tale is moral) subordinates ethics, as a ways, to aesthetic ends.

However, the story has a greater moral complication than this would suggest. It implicitly raises the question of Lord Henry's own moral responsibility for Dorian's actions, which have been inspired by his words and by his loan of Huysmans' book. If we see Lord Henry as a self-portrait of Wilde, this raises the farther event of a writer 'due south responsibility for misunderstandings of his works. Lord Henry was clearly non expecting Dorian to get a murderer –just maybe he took bereft account of Dorian's lower intellectual level and his less creative temperament, both of which pb him towards the field of action rather than contemplation. Dorian is finally punished for the crimes he has committed, but the book leaves Lord Henry unpunished, suspending sentence on his words and behaviour.

Seduction and Betrayal

At the finish of his life Dorian encounters a state of affairs of unexpected moral complexity. This seems to be a principal precipitant of his suicidal assail on the painting (bringing about his own death). In this incident we volition find embodied the terminal of the iii theses of Wilde'due south kettle logic.

In the main body of the book, the allusions to Dorian'south immoral activities are vague, thus inviting the readers to fill out these foggy, indeterminate references to veiled abuse with their own sordid fantasies. Hence, in his reply to The Scots Observer, Wilde can say with some accurateness: "Each human being sees his own sin in Dorian Grayness. What Dorian Grey's sins are no-one knows. He who finds them has brought them." This would perhaps be sufficient to absolve the book of whatsoever morally corrupting force, since any tempting images of immoral acts would exist brought to the text by the reader, not placed in their thoughts by the writer.

Even so, at least three of Dorian's morally significant actions are described in some detail, the cardinal such deed being his murder of Basil Hallward. No conceivable coherent moral scheme could condone such an act, and Dorian'south subsequent attempts to dismiss it from his heed are notable failures. This marks the everyman point of his slide into evil. Information technology is necessary for the sake of the story that Dorian now be regarded by any reader equally corrupt – a fact made visible in the painting, whose hands now baste red with claret. Wilde has chosen to describe an action of which no possible civilised reader could approve. This is another example of Wilde using morality as one of the colours on his palette in creating his artwork.

The murder precipitates the final stage of Dorian's life. Much before, however, the first steps in his relentless glide into corruption were besides marked past a death. Dorian was the unwitting but culpable crusade of Sybil Vane's suicide. After becoming engaged to her, enchanted by her talents as an extra, he cruelly rejects her when she begins to prefer real life to the fictional world of the phase. Sybil's development from fantasy to reality is in an contrary management to Dorian's –who therefore no longer desires her.

The most shocking attribute of Dorian'southward subsequent reactions (even disturbing the constitutionally blasé Lord Henry) is his refusal to feel either responsibility or regret for what has happened. His attempt to pursue a hedonistic philosophy takes a securely unsympathetic turn here. We tin can assume that Wilde would exist conscious of his reader's likely revulsion.

In so far as hedonism is itself a moral doctrine, which is eloquently expounded by Lord Henry, the novel cannot be said to endorse such a doctrine. The philosophy of hedonism becomes an element in the story'due south content (a colour on the palette) rather than a bulletin it seeks to deliver. The result of this philosophy on Dorian is far from attractive –only at the same time, its exposition by Lord Henry is deeply beguiling.

In anthologies of quotations, Lord Henry'due south aphorisms are oft attributed directly to Wilde himself. They are, indeed, the behavior usually associated with Wilde as the high priest of fin-de-siècle decadence. Yet, for the sake of his fine art, Wilde is willing to give these behavior a questionable air, to place them betwixt inverted commas, both literally and metaphorically. Here too, art uses moral ideas every bit its cloth, not its purpose.

At the end of the novel, increasingly unsettled by remorse for his murder of Basil, Dorian again deserts a young woman whom he has caused to fall in love with him. This time, even so, he claims that his reasons for this action are of the highest moral asceticism. He has now decided to modify his way of life, to reverse his descent into evil. Therefore he decides not to corrupt this innocent daughter by continuing to acquaintance with her. Yet we are left in considerable doubt as to the result of his desertion of her. Might she as well not kill herself, as did Sybil Vane? The terminal image we are given of her – "her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine" –suggest her considerable hurt and hurting, at the very least.

There is therefore no real distinction between Dorian's first serious immoral act, and the first act which he hopes volition restore him to the path of virtue. They are perfect reflections of each other. It is in the face of this cruel and daunting paradox that Dorian stabs the haunted painting in despair, and dies. The picture show and the human exchange characteristics once once more, and his servants find Dorian 's aged body corroded by vice, while the portrait is restored to its pristine beauty. With the exquisite symmetry of this conclusion the novel ends, revealing itself every bit a dazzling play of mirrors. Its final moments therefore embody Thesis Three of the kettle logic: a formal artistic perfection is created out of a morally poisonous paradox (the paradox being that the very same act – of deserting a woman –can exist indistinguishably moral or immoral).

This final flourish may indeed prompt ruminations on the office of the reader about the nature of morality, suggesting an ethical agnosticism which the remainder of the novel keeps at bay. Simply this moral paradox, like all the others, is utilized in the service of art. Strictly speaking, consideration of its ethical import lies outside the frame of the novel. Beauty is restored to the piece of work of art even as the human being receives the ugly stigmata of his corruption. Art has toyed with moral danger, played with ethical paradoxes, and brought about an aesthetic triumph out of Dorian 'due south moral defeat.

Conclusion

So, to return to the question with which I began: is information technology true, equally Wilde declared, that "there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book"? His own novel demonstrates that this is a rhetorical exaggeration. A volume can have immoral effects (as Huysmans' novel does on Dorian) only only when it is read, non for its beauty, through aesthetic glasses, simply as if information technology were a guide to life. And a book can contain moral and immoral acts and statements which, when they go a part of the novel 'southward aesthetic pattern, shed their moral force equally they contribute to the book's aesthetic qualities (aesthetic qualities which are to exist contemplated, rather than taken as a model for one's being).

A novel therefore is non moral or immoral in itself (but a man could be moral or immoral in themself, not an artefact such as a book), only just in the style information technology is read. And a book can exist read in various means. Wilde'southward evidently contradictory statements, forming a ambivalent 'Kettle Logic', in fact distinguish betwixt dissimilar ways of reading, and different readers. In a paradox which Wilde himself would have appreciated, it is the aesthetic reader rather than the moralistic reader whose approach to the text purifies it, defusing in advance whatever possible immoral effect it might otherwise have. To exist a decadent aesthete, therefore, is to preserve oneself from moral stain.

© Peter Benson 2008

Peter Benson lives in London and works in a library.

diazthernibled.blogspot.com

Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/65/Wilde_and_Morality

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