The Picture of Dorian Gray and expanded the personal background of the characters. After the initial publication of the magazine edition of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), Wilde expanded the text from 13 to 20 chapters and obscured the homoerotic themes of the story. In the novel version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891), chapters 3, 5, and 15 to 18, inclusive, are new; and chapter 13 of the magazine edition was divided, and became chapters 19 and 20 of the novel edition. In 1895, at his trials, Oscar Wilde said he revised the text of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" because of
The Picture of Dorian Gray theme in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891) is aestheticism and its conceptual relation to living a double life. Throughout the story, the narrative presents aestheticism as an absurd abstraction, which disillusions more than it dignifies the concept of Beauty. Despite Dorian being a hedonist, when Basil accuses him of making a "by-word" of the name of Lord Henry's sister, Dorian curtly replies, "Take care, Basil. You go too far ..."; thus, in Victorian society, public image and social standing do matter to Dorian. Yet, Wilde highlights the protagonist's hedonism: Dorian enjoyed "keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life",