•Victorian shift in focus from Latin to Greek

•Aesthetes reestablished the Greek concept of hedonism (derived from Greek word for pleasure)

•Pursuit of pleasure and beauty is the purpose of life

•Passion, excess, sensuality

•Rejected Christian values in favour of pagan Greeks

•Individual desire over social norm

Hedonism in DG

•Dorian’s life demonstrates a “new Hedonism” due to the influence of Lord Henry

•Lord Henry: “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul” (Pg 28)

•Soul and senses intertwined. The experience of beauty (love, art, dance, music) is necessary to enrich and heal the mind and soul.

The mind and soul are necessary to regulate, moderate and guide sensual experience.

•Dorian masters the former but neglects the latter? (The novel does carry a moral regarding excess)

Dorian Gray can be read as a cautionary tale: a warning against excess.

Dorian places excessive value on his youth and beauty and lives in pursuit of sensual pleasure. His attempt to turn his life into art destroys his soul, and eventually causes him to commit suicide.

Sibyl Vane, on the other hand, lives art: she is ‘all heroines in one’ and Dorian loves her because of this. When she experiences love as a reality, she can no longer live in the false world of art. She loses the ability to act. Her attempt to remove all art from her life results in her suicide.