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Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls. (Chapter VIII)
    Dorian decides to ignore the lesson provided by this recognition, choosing to believe that the portrait would free him fromthe consequences of his actions. But Dorian is never free. Thus despite hisworship of and unbridled indulgence in pleasure, he cannot escape from his fascination with the portrait, constantly examining his ‘soul’ with an obsessional intensity to rival the sternest puritan or the most ascetic anchorite.
    He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. (Chapter XI)
    â€˜Conscience’ (whether one reads that in sacred or secular terms) is strongly delineated in the novel. Dorian believes that he has destroyed conscience, but in truth it destroys him. The portrait
    had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it. (Chapter XX)
    Thus although the central conceit of the physical consequences of certain acts is informed by beliefs peculiar to the time, Wilde’s depiction of how this process affects Dorian has the power to fascinate and chill readers in an age that has discarded such beliefs, and can recognize in such descriptions an outline of what now might be termed ‘paranoia’.
Dorian Gray
is in part an acute study of obsession and psychological collapse, depicting a mind destroying itself with its own obsessions.
    The Picture of Dorian Gray
is therefore a work that can be read in a number of ways. It is an enduring parable on the corruption of the soul and a study of psychological collapse, a compendium of the beliefs of its period, and an exercise in literary decadence, conspicuous in its exotica and esoteria, and defining the
Zeitgeist
of the so-called
fin de si`ecle
. Finally it is also in part a comic novel, and in the revised version especially Wilde the humorist (a role equal to homosexual martyr in the public mind today) perfected the arts of epigram and sparklingdialogue before transferring them to the stage. In Chapter XV Lord Henry observes of Madame de Ferrol,
    â€˜She is still
décolletée
… and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
edition de luxe
of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief
    Wilde recycled this line for
The Importance of Being Earnest
, a practice he repeated often at this time. Such passages significantly enrich the novel, making it a more enjoyable and durable work of art, of comparable stature to anything he produced for the stage.
    Lady Windermere’s Fan
(1892), which also re-uses epigrams from the novel, appeared the year after the revised version
of Dorian Gray
and launched Wilde’s extraordinarily successful career as a dramatist. At the time of his public downfall he had two plays playing to packed audiences in the West End. His ostracism was swift and conclusive. First his name was taken from the hoardings of
An Ideal Husband
and
The Importance of Being Earnest
, soon both plays were taken off, and an imminent US tour of
A Woman of No Importance was
promptly cancelled. On 25 May 1895 he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour; in November he was declared bankrupt. His wife changed her name to Holland, and on his release from Reading gaol Wilde changed his own name to Sebastian Melmoth