“All crime is vulgar”, writes Wilde, and reality never seems to agree more. When the idea of crime is mentioned there arises this image of shabby men with tattoos standing behind bars. When people discuss crime they do so with the idea that they are done out of a horrible nature, a lack of kindness and sympathy, of a need to survive in filthy streets, by the poor, uneducated populations. Both Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment takes a path contrary to this, instead turning an eye onto the puzzling few who are neither poor, badly educated, neglected, or in need, who are what our society prizes and raises as elites in the palm of their hand, but who nevertheless slips into the abyss of criminality.

Our two protagonists are composed of similar traits and mentalities, regrouped and rearranged. A pinch of doubt, a dream to chase, a choice they both make. But first, an introduction. Dorian Gray, British aristocrat, young, beautiful, and pure of mind, who goes on to cause the death of a poor actress, her brother, and a doctor, and commit the murder of his friend and artist Basil Hallward. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, student, studying law in St. Petersburg, murderer of pawnbroker Alyona and her sister Lizaveta… They both are what we expect to be the most rational, the groups most susceptible to and capable of kindness, yet away from these merits they waver for reasons that we see as insignificant, even arbitrary in their own rights. One commits the act seeking a non-existent proof of greatness, the other chasing after the shadow of someone else’s ideals. To portray such irrationality, and yet to inspire in the reader a sense of understanding and pity instead of disdain or mockery then become the challenge that faces the author.

Wilde and Dostoevsky manage this task handsomely. In the former, the clever use of the picture as the embodiment of the soul separates the crime from the criminal, so that Dorian, even after the horrid choices he makes, still appears in impression as the young innocent boy, ignorant even of time’s cruelties. In the latter, the criminal is made one with the kind man who would give all he has for a family in suffering, and is made to regret the act, feel conflicted in it, to keep from the start a bit of goodwill that grows as the narrative progresses. There is a conflict, not only of class and action, but also of the malices and sincerities of the self.

The portrayal of such conflicts is also interesting to see, as the two authors take astoundingly different approaches to fit the setting of the tale, yet they reach a strikingly similar emotional effect.

In one, striking care to detail is expressed with the simplest things: a minute expression, an action, denials, all in the most understandable language yet such carefully put that it comes out as simply natural. There is in Dostoevsky’s words the troubled sincerity of the suffering poor, stuck in the precarious edge between simple survival and the long climb up the ladder of society, prickled with its manners and formalities. With vigorous attention he paints the fallen, tripping over the exuberance of their manners and prides and high airs as they stumble and fall into the poorest ghettos, looking round in the confusion that all the worth they had been taught was now little and nothing. Clothed in rags, they stand out from the flood of commonality, unstained by simplicity, clinging on to the last bit of high land that is left. In the terror and confusion of a reversed identity they resort to crime, yet in crime they find not the clarity and proof they expect, but instead loneliness and isolation from every aspect of society as they subject themselves to a vulgarity that is beyond materialistic, hated by rich and poor, others and self alike. In the end, Raskolnikov confesses. Less so out of fear of punishment or out of desperation, but to escape from the scrutiny of his own mind towards the vulgarity branded upon him. In punishment he finds forgiveness and renewal. Wilde states that “there was a purification in punishment”. This purification Raskolnikov was eventually able to find and realize.

Yet in the other, there is an overflow of imageries and paradoxes, each word embroidered with the gold and silver flowers of aristocratic eloquence. The Picture of Dorian Gray is to Wilde as the Basil believes the portrait is to him, a mirror not just of Dorian’s soul and countenance but also of the writer nestling behind the walls of words and castles of pages. In Lord Harry Wilde’s ideologies speak, yet with an edge of renewed unconcern, speaking so that others would act and he may look on. Dorian Gray is a conflict of ideology with life, trying to escape into the painted perfection of Lord Harry’s sensory world only to sink into the endless circle of discontent. He seems a cloud, that wanders from gemstones to ties, from flowers to textiles in search of joy, yet in the end he is but a balloon, each venture inflating him with fame until he bursts and falls back to earth in pieces and shambles. Because of his innocence he hastes to catch up to Lord Harry’s beautiful ideal, and in his haste he trips across the line, dragging that ideal into reality. But Dorian could not seek the purification of punishment. Due to a childish wish, he sins and the portrait is punished. By the separation of crime and punishment, the burden of the crime does not vanish, but accumulates in the picture. He could not stop, and why should he? No matter how many crimes he commits he would still be young and innocent. Suffering belongs to the soul, and his soul no longer troubled him. Without consequence he continues, and yet the consequences that he escaped from pile around him to block him from the renewal he seeks. When he tries to dig his way through, they fall down upon him and he is crushed by its accumulated weight. The Picture of Dorian Gray is an exquisitely bound fable, but in the end its message is simple. Each crime will indeed have a punishment, and to have that punishment delayed is oft not a blessing but a curse.

Raskolnikov and Dorian started off at the same crossroads. Raskolnikov begins in suffering and rises to renewal. Dorian on the Dias of prosperity and falls into corruption. Both are of the genre that our society hates most. Yet in reading their stories there is no hate, no scorn, no liking. There is but peaceful realization and a sense of acceptance. To leave the reader a pool of peace and serenity with an enticing story, such is the fascination of these two tales.