Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

English

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Jefferey Gonzalez

Committee Member

Lee Behlman

Committee Member

Laura Nicosia

Abstract

This paper argues that Oscar Wilde uses The Picture of Dorian Gray to transform the Gothic doppelganger from a symbol of moral duality into a site of multiplicity that exposes the instability of identity. Earlier iterations of the double–ranging from mythic traditions to nineteenth-century texts—such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—tend to structure the self through binary opposition. Wilde, however, reconfigures the double as an accumulative and dynamic process. This paper analyzes how Wilde disrupts the rigidity of Victorian binaries and society’s investment in duality through the portrait’s accumulation of the consequences of Dorian’s actions as his identity shifts. By drawing on broader critical frameworks, including those of David Punter, this paper situates Wilde within the Gothic tradition while emphasizing his departure from it. It traces how Dorian’s self-conception emerges through the projections of Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton and how his development through a hedonistic philosophy ultimately leads to a collapse under the pressure of maintaining a coherent identity under the Victorian moral structures. The portrait functions as a material archive of these transformations. Wilde foregrounds multiplicity over duality to challenge the moral and social frameworks that demand a stable and unified self. The novel ultimately presents identity as fluid, performative and fundamentally unstable, shaped as much by cultural surveillance as it is by individual desire.

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