The Picture and Dorian Gray

“Split personality?seems to become a popular theme for the Victorian writers as that in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. . One possible reason is that, after the rise of the individualism, Englishmen are attached to privacy, so they recluse themselves. Little by little, they separate their lives into private and public life as Wemmick does in The Great Expectations. In Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, we can also see …

…of sin,?the “ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls?(109). Finally, the picture is also a reflection of Dorian’s self-loathing. In this way, the picture becomes the doppelganger of Dorian—his alter-ego. When Dorian remains young and looks pure all the time, the picture reflects the inside of Dorian, who in fact is a cruel murderer. When Dorian dies senile, the picture of his looks pure to reflect Dorian’s repentance.