Introduction
Dorian’s tragic journey in Wilde’s novel presents a number of perspectives about aesthetics, and all are seen through the unique lens of Victorian culture. What dominates, however, is one disturbing duality; the elite are enabled to enjoy beauty and pleasure as they choose, and the lower classes supply the pleasure. The ultimate tragedy is then that aesthetics and hedonism become synonymous to that elite. Dorian is redeemed at the conclusion through necessary self-sacrifice, but this only emphasizes the horrific mistake he has made under the influence of Wotton. As the following supports, Wilde’s true statement about aestheticism is how easily the valid and ennobling pursuit of beauty gives way to self-indulgence, when in reality the authentic awareness of aesthetic truth and hedonism are violently opposed pursuits.

Discussion
Nothing better presents the confusion of aesthetics with pleasure-seeking than the early interaction between Basil and Wotton, as it is important both men play so influential a role in Dorian’s own, and fatal, perverting of aesthetics. In a sense, Wotton is the Frankenstein to Dorian’s monster, setting the stage for the distortion of aesthetic truth Dorian will embrace. Wotton’s entire philosophy is based on validating beauty as only a source of pleasure, which relies on his cynical dismissal of the truth of moral feeling: “‘Conscience and cowardice are really the same things’” (Wilde 5). For his part, Basil is “trying”; an artist, he seeks what is deeper, or the connection between aesthetic beauty and truth that affirms the integrity of the beautiful: “‘The harmony of soul and body—how much that is!’” (8). He is near to understanding that the self cannot outweigh the aesthetic, yet he also amplifies Wotton’s distorted perceptions through condemning any aesthetic distinction as a curse: “‘We shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly’” (3). Both then seduce Dorian into accepting the fatal distortion.

The hero’s doom is then virtually destined, and because he embraces the distortion with no real sense of the realities of aesthetics and hedonism as its antithesis. He recounts first seeing Sybil as driven by Wotton’s philosophy: “‘The search for beauty being the real secret of life’” (35). In the same passage, however, he blatantly confuses the excitement of encountering sin with beauty. Dorian’s honest regard for Sybil is then too fragile to withstand Wotton’s corrupting influence. The Wotton ideology, becoming Dorian’s, translates the innate worth of the aesthetically good into what gives pleasure to the self, and only for the elite: “‘Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich’” (57). There can be no greater perversion, or reversal of meaning, of real beauty. Famously, Dorian’s ultimate understanding of the error comes far too late, and simply because the young man chooses to believe in the untruth of Wotton. Basil is guilty as well, as the artist who gives Dorian a sense of himself as so perfect, pleasure is his right, and the value of the aesthetically beautiful as intrinsically noble is lost.

Conclusion
The Victorian setting aside, Wilde’s novel is a parable, and one with an important message. Appreciation of the aesthetic, in plain terms, far too often devolves into senses of ownership of it, or the beautiful as in place only to serve the hedonistic interests of the self. This is nothing but extreme human hubris, and the tragedy of Dorian’s life is not that he is beautiful or even weak; it is that he falls under Wotton’s influence, and discards the truth that the aesthetic is destroyed when its meaning is only turned to serve hedonistic ends. Ultimately, then, the fundamental message of The Picture of Dorian Gray is how easily the honest, ennobling appreciation of beauty is perverted to self-indulgence, when in reality genuine appreciation of aesthetics and hedonism are violently opposed pursuits.