Is 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' a "story with a moral?"

Here's an idea, OP: Read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. It's Oscar Wilde, so it's hardly a complicated book to read. Jesus.

Someone hold me back.

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I don't think so Tim.

It's a tough one, because in the Preface he explicitly says that there is no such thing as a 'moral or an 'immoral' book, only good and bad books. However, I would say that there is quite an explicit moral in the story - Dorian Gray does end up getting punished for his egotism, vanity, unhealthy obsession with youthfulness, and his decadence and profligacy. Basically the society that Dorian and Lord Henry live in is revealed as an empty sham - even when Dorian does a 'good act', the portrait still gets worse because he only did something good out of hypocrisy and for the novelty of it. So yeah, there is a definite sense that no matter how good you are at covering up your sins and appearing 'good' to the outside world, in the end your soul (represented in the novel by the painting) will become rotten through and through and bear the consequences of your actions.

I was just thinking about this. I suppose one could argue that the moral of the story is subjective to the reader. I mean, one reader could argue that there is a moral of the story in that Dorian' soul is destroyed etc etc. Although another reader could argue that Dorian got a fair deal - he may have given up his soul but he got to experience things no average human would have been able to withstand.

So, yeah, you could say there is a moral within the story, but it's subjective to the reader. When you read the preface when Wilde says there are only good or bad books...well it's open to interpretation. It's entirely plausible that there isn't a moral, and Wilde's aim was to simply write a good book, and it's the reader who looks for the moral.