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In the Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde claims that “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.” (17) In the pages that follow, however, Wilde introduces his personality and views into many of the characters. As a homosexual in a repressive society, Wilde knew firsthand the pains of unhappy marriage and frustrated love. It is no surprise, therefore, that the women in Dorian Gray are by and large useless and tiresome, that marriages are portrayed loveless, and that love itself is ill-fated and destructive.

“Women,” quips Lord Henry Wotton, “are a decorative sex… [they] represent the triumph of matter over mind.” (64) Wilde’s women are mostly caricatures of either silly girls or self-important matrons. For instance, Dorian falls for but ultimately discards Sibyl Vane, a penniless young actress. Everything about Sibyl is unreal, her beauty, her acting, even the meteoric manner in which she flashes through Dorian’s life. Wilde creates her not so much as a character but as an example of careless youth. Sibyl calls Dorian “Prince Charming,” gushing excitedly about how wonderful he is and paying no heed to her brother’s warnings about how gentlemen prey on lower-class girls. In the face of Dorian’s ultimate rejection, her devotion to him is complete but futile, or vain, and her death marks a turning point in the book away from the possibility for pure, youthful passion.

Sibyl’s character starkly contrasts with the old noblewomen whom Wilde lampoons. If the naive actress is at one extreme, society hostesses like Lady Narborough are at another. Wilde is describing a type he was probably very familiar with in late nineteenth-century England. Lady Narborough is a wholly useless member of society with an inflated sense of her own consequence. Her position in London high society is due to her distinguished marriage “to one of our most tedious ambassadors,” but it was a hollow marriage. (187) When Lady Narborough, whose intellectual capabilities appear to be nil, asks Dorian to sit and amuse her, we can imagine similarly insipid aristocrats seeking entertainment from Wilde.

The pretty and lively Duchess of Monmouth is an exception among the women content to sit in salons and utter inanities. She alone is bright, independent, and equal to the men around her, trading jests with Lord Henry and flirting openly with Dorian. In fact, she seeks the same pleasures as the men. Shrugging off Lord Henry’s warning to tread carefully around Dorian, the Duchess says, “[if he were not fascinating] there would be no battle.” (210) Interestingly, Wilde added this character in the revised version of the book. She serves no actual plot purpose but is a verbal foil for Lord Henry’s wit.

Perhaps a shared knowledge of unhappy marriage explains the Duchess’ friendship with Lord Henry. The Duchess’ husband is “a jaded-looking man of sixty” too senile to be jealous of her attentions to Dorian. (205) Their marriage is obviously loveless, a match of mere convenience. In fact, Wilde depicts all of the marriages in the book as empty. Lord Henry’s wife is a nervous silly woman; “she tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.” (62) She and her husband live apart and are hardly aware of each other. Wilde, in Lord Henry’s voice, explains that marriage “makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and she never knows what I am doing.” (22) By the time of the novel’s publication in 1891, Wilde was becoming estranged from his own wife and had begun to live a secret life in London’s homosexual circles, so this comment surely mirrors his own situation. Lord Henry’s comment that “There are other and more interesting bonds between men and women [than marriage]” probably best states the author’s view. (90)

If Wilde criticizes marriage, he does not however envision happy endings for relationships between those who are unmarried. In confronting Dorian about his dissolute life, Basil Hallward mentions a string of women Dorian has seduced and cast off to disgrace and oblivion. In the beginning of the novel, Basil himself professes an adoration for Dorian that has strong homosexual overtones. Basil is reluctant to divulge Dorian’s name to Lord Henry, and also admits fearing to exhibit his portrait of Dorian lest his “idolatry” be expressed to the “prying eyes” of the public. (28) Basil’s passion for Dorian is unfulfilled as the young man drifts away from him under the influence of Lord Henry, and ultimately Basil’s concern for Dorian is self-destructive when his attempt to reform his erstwhile model provokes Dorian to murder him.

Wilde strongly emphasizes love’s potential as a self-destructive force. Sybil commits herself so completely to an impossible passion that when she discovers the illusion she is destroyed. Basil, who rarely appears in the book separate from Dorian, finds that his ideal of beauty is also his killer. The most terrible love, however, is Dorian’s self-love. Dorian’s narcissistic enshrining of his own youth and beauty represents a twisted extreme of the aesthetic movement with which Oscar Wilde is associated. As his end approaches, Dorian says, “I wish I could love. But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the desire. I am too concentrated on myself.” (216) The excesses of Dorian’s hedonistic life cut him off from society, but Wilde’s ambivalence in condemning him is evident in the unflattering portrait of the vapid society surrounding his protagonist. The author’s negative perception of women and marriage is evident in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Soon after the book’s publication, Wilde would meet and begin an ultimately self-destructive affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the relationship for which he would be tried, convicted, and imprisoned. With his own passions frustrated by the prejudices of his time, Wilde shows little hope in Dorian Gray for the achievement of happiness and lasting personal fulfillment through love.