Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is set in Victorian England in the nineteenth century, and the novel focuses on the lives of the characters named Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward and Henry Wotton. Basil Hallward is an artist and the novel begins in his studio where he is painting a portrait of Dorian Gray. Basil introduces Dorian to his friend Henry Wotton whose bad influence on Dorian results in tragedy. Dorian is a handsome man but he is vain and unintelligent, and Henry exploits these weaknesses in Dorian and uses him as a specimen for experimenting with his warped ideologies. Henry seduces Dorian with his speech and he gives Dorian bad advice and misguides him, and Dorian very foolishly takes Henry’s bad advice and follows his wrong instructions, which ruins his life and also ruins the lives of characters such as Basil and Sybil, the girl whom Dorian was going to marry.
The novel explores the themes of friendship and love, and the character of Henry and his bad influence on Dorian teaches a lesson about choosing friends carefully and associating with the right people, and how bad friends can ruin the lives of individuals.
