Dorian Gray

It was in the early Middle Ages that the first encounter with English Imperialism could be found in Ireland. England and Ireland would come to share a common culture and language with island Gaelic. James Anderson wrote in his article Imperialism and nationalism: The Home Rule struggle and border creating in Ireland, 1885-1925 that “ignoring imperialism has bolstered conventional mainstream accounts of partition and conflict based on ‘internal’ or purely local causes which produce over-simplified stories . . . . ”(page939) What this means is that Historians are not looking at an event from every angle. Suggesting an approach like this is saying that Ireland is responsible for the decisions the English made. Yet neither can it be said the English occupied Ireland just because they could. In Anderson’s interpretation, it was both English imperialism and Ireland’s own internal stimuli that manipulated history. For Anderson this superficial encounter leaves no variables that could determine good or ill intent on the part of the English.

In Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, we follow the young Dorian Gray as Lord Henry Wotton first introduces him to a new way of being. Lord Henry believes that the only way of being is to understand that beauty is the only worthwhile trait of life. Wilde writes “, Lord Henry looked at him . . . There was something in his face that made one trust him at once . . . There was something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating . . . But he felt afraid of him, and was ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left to a stranger to reveal him to himself?”(page18-23) To Dorian, having just met Lord Henry, these words are life altering. Scholars have made the argument that Lord ...

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...he case for interactions, like the one between Ireland and England, is that the evil never reveals itself before it is too late to do anything about it. Except clean up the mess. On the spectrum that Garrard supplies the well-intentioned act is the more evil. The victim does not see the assailant coming. Once the act itself is completed the victim is left uncertain if the injury they sustained was accidental or deliberate.

Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde characterized evil as pervasive and cruel. Yet each author had his own specific interpretation. For Stoker, evil was tangible. A person could see it with their eyes and touch it with their hands. Wilde saw evil as illusory, any act, no matter how innocuous ran the risk of becoming something outside anyone’s control. Garrard’s regards “evil acts are ones which produce an enormous amount of disvalue in