The Picture of Dorian Gray Summary of novel: Dorian Gray, the beautiful, talented, charming young man, has managed to capture the hearts of both men and women alike during nineteenth-century England. His incredible purity has attracted Lord Henry Wotton, who vies for his attention with Basil Hallward, a trusting and gentle artist. Basil, having poured his soul into a wonderful portrait of Dorian, resents the recent closeness between Lord Henry and the boy. The portrait …showed first 75 words of 757 total…

…showed last 75 words of 757 total…society. “For a season, he [Dorian] inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the Darwinism’s movement in Germany…” (Wilde, 93). Dorian’s comfort in Opium bars take the place of man’s finding solace in God. The Picture of Dorian Gray embraces the cruelty between men, the denial of ones conscience, and daily life in a time when the flood of new ideas and styles threatened to crack the foundation upon which man had found comfort.