The Picture of Dorian Gray enamoured of him. The Roman goddess of love then offers him eternal life with her in the Venusberg, and he accepts; yet, Tannhäuser becomes dissatisfied with life in the Venusberg, and returns to the harsh reality of the mortal world. After participating in a singing contest, Tannhäuser is censured for the sensuality of his art; eventually, he dies searching for repentance and the love of a good woman. About the literary hero, the author Oscar Wilde said, "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust." As in the legend of "Faust", in "The Picture 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",