Beauty is Power
Humans have always been drawn to beauty. Of course, beauty standards change all the time. What one culture considers beautiful, another might consider ugly. What our own culture considered beautiful 200 years ago, or even 50, isn’t beautiful to us anymore. But that hasn’t changed the fact that we love to look at beautiful things, and even more than that, we wish to be beautiful ourselves. In our society today, people will go to incredible lengths—makeup, plastic surgery, even harmful things like eating disorders—in order to fit themselves into our culture’s idea of beauty. And once we believe we’ve reached that goal, we’ll do anything to keep it that way, and with our current technology, that is possible. But is this the best thing for us?
A few months ago, I read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde for the first time. This novel plumbs the depths of human depravity and explores a variety of complex themes, but something that stood out to me was the realization that this novel is a cautionary tale—a tale of what being obsessed with beauty can do to a person.
This novel tells the story of a beautiful young man named Dorian Gray. In the beginning of the novel, we meet Dorian because a painter named Basil Hallward is painting a portrait of him, observed by a Lord Henry Wotton. Basil introduces Dorian to Lord Henry, who immediately begins to influence him. Lord Henry compliments his youth and beauty, but warns him that both are fleeting. He claims, “youth is the only thing worth having,” to which Dorian disagrees, and Henry responds that he might not think so now, but time will change that. There is great power in beauty, indeed, “it makes princes of those who have it,” but that power can be lost at any time. Dorian truly recognizes this once his portrait is finished and he can finally look upon it, and in that moment, “the sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation.” Yet at the same time he feels intense delight over his beauty, he also feels intense pain over the reality that it will someday fade. In fact, he even feels mocked by the portrait, because as he grows old and ugly, the picture will stay the same, and so he exclaims that he would give anything to stay young while the picture aged instead. And strangely enough, his wish comes true.
Should Beauty Be Our Highest End?
For Dorian Gray, beauty is the end goal of his life, a goal that he claims he would give anything, even his soul, for. This is a high price, a price that Dorian eventually pays. Throughout the novel, we watch Dorian become more and more morally corrupt. It begins when he heartlessly rejects his fiancee, leading to her suicide, and he continues to experiment with every vice, eventually even murdering someone, while his portrait slowly becomes more and more hideous. However, Dorian is able to escape all blame, because even though he is accused of many things, society dismisses it all, saying, “Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.” His beauty has saved him, at least in this life, although ultimately, he will still face a great demise.
Oscar Wilde firmly believed in the importance of beauty; he belonged to the Aesthetic Movement, a movement emphasizing aesthetic values over social or political themes. They believed that it was more important for art to be beautiful than to have a deeper meaning—it was “art for art’s sake” alone. The very first line of the Preface of the book is “the artist is the creator of beautiful things.” That is his true purpose. Beauty is not only the end goal of Dorian’s life, but of all art.
Does this mean beauty is ultimately a bad thing? No. Beauty is still incredibly important to humanity and we should seek it out and treasure it. Often Christians swing too far in the other direction, rejecting beauty completely as shallow and worthless. Christian art can often favor presenting a message at the expense of beauty. This is not the answer. Beauty is still something we must strive for, because beauty enriches our lives and glorifies God. God himself is an artist, creating humanity and nature and proclaiming it “good” in Genesis. He creates beauty because he is the most beautiful thing in the universe. Because God created us in his image, we are able to create beauty as well, and when we make art inspired by God’s attributes, that is beautiful. Art that showcases forgiveness, patience, love, God’s power, and other such virtues is art that is beautiful and significant.
Ultimately, Dorian resembles the Pharisees in the New Testament. In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus openly condemns them, saying, “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” Dorian was only concerned with his outer beauty, while corruption festered within. We don’t want to be those whitewashed tombs. We want to be as righteous and beautiful on the inside as we are on the outside. That is what we should strive for as our highest end.