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Until the 1980s, The Picture of Dorian Gray was generally considered to be a deeply flawed novel. To some critics, it was simply badly written.' To others, it was hopelessly confused, reflecting Wilde's uncertainty and irresolution.2 To still others, it was negligible or, at best, second-rate because it was merely an expression of the 1890s, in which case it was historically important but otherwise unworthy of critical attention.' Within the last two decades, however, many readers have called Dorian Gray a great book.'' Indeed, its most recent critics have treated the novel as if it were neither the product of Wilde's confusion nor merely a period piece. Its irresolution is taken to be an expression of Wilde's understanding of the human condition. And Dorian Gray's broader philosophical concerns are assumed to be those of a moralist who is fully aware of the failure of Victorian (or, in fact, any conventional) morality and is exploring the consequences of its demise.
Interpreting rather than evaluating the novel, most recent critics have seen Dorian Gray as in some sense a running debate between two of its major characters, Henry Wotton and Basil Hallward, and, furthermore, a debate carried out in the mind of Dorian Gray. In the past, many readers concluded that this opposition represented a plain choice between right and wrong: "conscience and temptation," "good and evil," "positive and negative moral influences," or "love" and "egoism."' Although this opposition was usually seen as a battle symbolically waged by Henry and Basil, it was sometimes taken to be a conflict between warring psychological faculties ("conscience" vs. "libido" or "intelligence" vs. "sensibility") and, for some critics, as Regenia Gagnier has noted, a projection of the war in Wilde's own psyche.6 The consensus among these critics was either that, in Wilde's judgment, Dorian Gray chooses wrongly and pays the ultimate price for his serious moral error, thus confirming the existence of cosmic justice, or that Dorian never really makes up his mind, thus reflecting Wilde's "warring energies"his "schizophrenia" or, less grandly, his "identity crisis" or, less pathologically, his "immaturity."
Nearly thirty years ago, however, Houston A. Baker made the interesting point that in "The Critic as Artist" Wilde calls not for a choice between "conscience and instinct," but for a...