Lord Henry Wotton

With the friend like Lord Henry who needs enemies? We mean that this friend is worse than the evilest enemy. He is a representative of London’s high society and immoral views on life. The only thing which is valuable for him is the beauty. That is why we recognize him as the main thing which spoiled Dorian.

This hedonistic, selfish aristocrat has the whole world at his fingertips, and if he will have a chance to do something good he would rather die than do it. According to his own words he was born for a pleasure. If something distracts him from having it, he simply destroys a person.

What is more, his own friends are not important for Henry too. For example, Basil is one of his best friends since university. When he disappears for months, Henry didn’t even bat an eyelash. Do you want to know why? Because he was tired of Basil, that he hasn’t painted anything good for a long time. Which means – he didn’t bring any pleasure to Lord Henry. Moreover, he supposed that Basil is laying dead somewhere under the bridge.

Lord Henry is a representative of everything we consider to be wrong. He is fascinating but at the same time poisonous. His theories are looking good and wrong at the same time; they charmed Dorian a lot. That is why Dorian didn’t wait for long to go to the dark side, and to show his own. What is the most interesting, Lord is a very static character in this book? We don’t see any changing at all, even all his theories that were proved to be naive didn’t open Lord’s eyes on what he is doing.

He is as coolly composed, unshakable, and possessed of the same dry wit in the final pages of the novel as he is upon his introduction.