Life- cruel, inhospitable, and more powerful than Wilde had ever supposed- would gain the upper hand. Aestheticism’s first martyr at the hands of life was not Dorian Gray. It was Oscar Wilde himself.

Wilde, Oscar, and Nicholas Frankel. “General Introduction.” The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2011. 33. Print.