The picture of dorian grey

The Role of Women in the Picture of Dorian Grey
“The picture of Dorian Grey”, a book by Oscar Wilde exposes aspects about people everyday lives. Oscar Wilde describes in it, Dorian Grey’s desires,temptations, and sins as well as his relation with the other two important characters, Basil and Lord Henry, who through dialogues, long days and nights spended, develop the whole plot of thisconsidered unmoral novel of the Victorian area because revels controversial issues at that epoch. One aspect to be considered controversial in this novel is women’s role in society, which is explored byWilde as an attempt to show how woman was seen by Victorian men. Feminism literary theory states that an analysis of representation of women in male –authored texts is the first stage which investigateswomen’s role in male writing. According to this, Woman has different representations in Oscar Wilde masterpiece.
The misogyny view of Lord Henry towards women constitutes the first representation ofwoman in the picture of Dorian Grey. Lord Henry Through the book regards women as charming but does not in fact take women seriously or regard them as intellectual equals. As it is showed in thefollowing quote "My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as menrepresent the triumph of mind over morals."(Ch. 4). Lord Henry considers also that women are slaves it can be appreciated when Dorian tells Henry about the quarrel he had with Sybil and that he had notbeen cruel to Sybil. Henry replies in the following way, "I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We haveemancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated" (ch. 8). In the picture of Dorian Grey, Wilde tries to show the misogyny view of man towards...