Page "The Picture of Dorian Gray" Paragraph 23

This duplicity and indulgence is most evident in Dorian's visit to the opium dens of London.

Wilde conflates the images of the upper class and lower class by having the supposedly upright Dorian visit the impoverished districts of London.

Lord Henry asserts that " crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders ...

I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations ", which suggests that Dorian is both the criminal and the aesthete combined in one man.

This is perhaps linked to Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which Wilde admired.

The division that was witnessed in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, although extreme, is evident in Dorian Gray, who attempts to contain the two divergent parts of his personality.

This is a recurring theme in many Gothic novels.