When Oscar Wilde’s first and last novel debuted in 1890, few readers bothered themselves with trying to discern a moral within its pages. On the contrary, most blasted Wilde for its apparent lack of any morals, and not without some justification; The Picture of Dorian Gray is a perfect literary simulation of the abandonment of traditional values, a premise they must have found shocking. Had these early readers only looked past the discomfort of its more disturbing scenes, however, they might have perceived a wonderful, terrible message at the heart of it all, shining unobtrusively yet steadfastly behind every word and action. For Dorian Gray is at once an author’s answer to the universal moral crisis of humankind, that pivotal reevaluation of one’s values in the face of temptations in a dynamic world. Addressing an unsolvable problem with all the authoritative confidence of an expert, Wilde presents in his book a bold theory of moral health stretched across a spectrum comprising three characters. At the one extreme perches classic conservative Basil Hallward; at the other, lovably liberal Lord Henry Wotton; and caught somewhere between the poles, eager and corruptible, young Dorian Gray. This most profound of human struggles, suggests the author, can be thus simplified and wholly represented in these three men. Any substantial understanding of The Picture of Dorian Gray demands a thorough study of each, for only following this can their simultaneous trifold existence, as in some Wildean affectation of the Holy Trinity, be successfully comprehended as the work’s grand moral.

Man’s instinctive inclination for the regulation of his own passions for the spiritual welfare of himself and others manifests itself neatly in the figure of Basil. He represents a genuine rarity in our world, and not merely because he has (unrealistically, perhaps) mastered the art of the brush beyond hope of improvement: Basil is actually capable of living a life without sin, content with other loves, precious things of substance that fulfill him in warm, deep ways; in this fashion has the temptation of sin lost its sway over him. But Basil is not happy. The trouble with his traditionalist approach to the great moral question is that a man need not sin himself to be crushed by sin’s effects. Wilde understood this well, and he took care to provide this purest of painters with a companion who by succumbing himself to forbidden pleasures could attack Basil’s otherwise-impervious heart. Hallward displays all the trademarks of the ultra-moralist, from an isolationist view of his own emotions (“You can’t feel what I feel. You change too often.”) to a familiar kind of desperate optimism in the face of crushing reality: “Pray, Dorian, pray,” he implores his fallen friend upon beholding his twisted likeness in the attic. “The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also.” Basil’s unfortunate fate is the author’s testament to the tragic inviability of his puritanical principles. In a perfect world, Wilde suggests, every Basil Hallward would rise to a state of supreme, undisturbed happiness; in this one, no man can survive for long at the rightmost edge of the moral spectrum.

At the opposite end dances Lord Henry with all his charisma and cynicism, sense and sensuality. His disregard for any standard or convention which impedes the immediate gratification of his senses gives rise to a dangerous new philosophy that alarms poor Basil even as it seduces an impressionable Dorian. While one might easily (and mistakenly) accuse him of playing the villain in this story, Lord Henry’s position is not without its own warped spirituality: “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” This liberated man of society doggedly pursues his every whim, no matter how selfish or depraved, according to “a new Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism [Basil’s, specifically] that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.” Small wonder that the author’s first audience took Harry’s provocative views for his. But nothing could be farther from the truth; Wilde condemns a life governed by the senses as he steers his protagonist toward ruin. It is Dorian’s fate and not Lord Henry’s, then, that proves the downfall of sensuality as a philosophy: the hedonist is no more successful than the puritan.

The answer would appear to lurk somewhere in the middle. And Wilde covers all this region, too, with characteristic audacity; using the figure of Dorian Gray as his vessel, the author boldly explores everything from far right to far left, principled purity to unbridled self-gratification. At the book’s beginning Dorian’s character is yet unstained, as he whiles away his hours in the spiritual sanctuary of Basil Hallward’s studio. His natural contentment with the painter and all that he represents, however, erupts into something novel, thrilling, and perhaps not so natural in the company of the “enlightened” Lord Henry: “Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.” Dorian, this boy of a man, so naive, so anxious, holds within him a limitless potential, at once both spiritual and sensual. Gradually he renounces the familiar comfort of old friendships and antiquated dogmas, plunging instead into fresh and dangerous associations, into the pages of Lord Henry’s enigmatic yellow book, into seedy public houses and underground opium dens, until all that remains of his very soul is a twisted depiction on a friendly canvas. At last some trace of his former character, inherited from so many happy, ignorant days with Basil Hallward, rebels against all this decadence and debauchery, and the man called Dorian Gray falls by the same weapon that destroyed the artist before him. His fate mustn’t be taken as any pessimistic expression of moral futility on the author’s part, as some critics might interpret; rather, the novel’s ending is a simple admonition to all who swim like Dorian between the extremes of puritanism and hedonism.

Oscar Wilde once wrote in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be–in other ages, perhaps.” With these three names he perfectly captures the moral of The Picture of Dorian Gray: that even in a spiritual sense, security and freedom come at the expense of one another. The object of any soul in crisis is not to become like Basil and barricade one’s goodness from the world, nor like Harry and tumble recklessly in the shifting currents of one’s desires, but instead to assume for oneself this title of Dorian Gray and live for both the senses and the soul, nurturing each by a life rich and full, noble and good.

Had that first generation of readers been looking for morality rather than immorality in this gem of a novel, perhaps they might have come up with a similar answer.