What were Dorian's evil deeds?

Whilst I'd have to agree with the other posters, ie it's never specified what he's been up to for 20 years, there are some things mentioned.

1. Alan Campbell had been Dorian's good friend, perhaps romantically linked, and Dorian knew things about Alan which Alan did not want to be known by anyone else. Hence the blackmail, and Alan's suicide.
2. Adrian, in the opium den, had the same ties to Gray as Campbell. Gray had led Adrian to his opium and booze soaked life.

In the book, Dorian breaks up with Sibyl face to face, having never been 'intimate' with her, but she subsequently does indeed kill herself. When he sees the portrait has changed and not he, he thinks 'oh well why not' and carries on with his other sins.

These are largely that he corrupts other young men, often to thier doom, or loss os family / career / status. Women obviously are also used by him in whatever manner he sees fit, and he does a fair amount of opium.

He then murders Basil and blackmails Alan. Doesn't really matter what he did though, any tiny bad thing can play on a person's mind, which for Dorian is his portrait.

Lastly, he was trying to slash the painting to shreds so that he may no longer be reminded of the state of his soul, but the act kills him instead.

There is no more detail in the book, there doesnt need to be. When we are happy we are always good but when we're good we're not always happy? I certainyly dont live my life that way, if I knew a thing would hurt a person, I wouldn't do it - which is Dorian's real sin.

Wilde (about whom I wrote my thesis in 1974) was deeply ambivalent about his own homosexuality, although oddly enough he was less so after his imprisonment for it. But he lived in a far more unforgiving time; the Victorians were terribly hypocritical about all sex. The novel implies that Basil Hallward lusted after Dorian, and that Dorian had an affair with Allan, who assisted in the dissolution by acid of Hallward's body.
Although this film is consistently highly touted, I have always loathed it. Hurd Hatfield looks enbalmed, rather than beautiful, and the young Angela Lansbury, while a fine actress, is wildly miscast as Sybli. In the novel she is rejected by Dorian cruelly when her performance as Juliet in fromt of his friends fails to measure up to his previous assessment of it.
There is a Dan Curtis (of Dark Shadows fame) version of this, made for TV in the 1970s, at the height of the sexual revolution and before the anti-gay backlash engenderd by AIDS in the 1980s which, though a tad overheated, is far more faithful to Wulde's equally overheated but still rather wonderful novel.

Dorian was a hedonist who enjoyed excess. He was obviously bisexual or gay (he seemed to enjoy men and women) but I would never consider that painting marring worthy and I don't think Wilde thought that way either. He did drugs (Opium), he blackmailed Alan Campbell, he committed murder with Basil, he drove people to suicide (and not just Sibyl) as implied in this version. He just was an all around not-nice-guy.

In the movie, they stated that women that used to seek his company would go silent when he entered the room. One lady left a terrible confession after she died. Remember that at this time, Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned for his affair with a noble's son. At this time, anything other than the "missionary" position would have been frowned on, especially if the woman was married. Today, what we don't bat an eye at would have been considered utter depravity at that time. Hope that helps.

I think the reason many people are struggling with the question,"what are the sins Dorian committed?", are that a lot of people today believe there are no sins; to believe in sins means to pass judgement. Very few people in our society deal with this question openly unless they are willing to be lamb basted as a Christian right-wingers. I guess many people believe that "what feels good to you should be okay with me...unless I'm hurting someone else". This is just part of the reason for the difficulty in understanding this question. If people do want to ask the question about Dorian's sins then the idea that Wilde left the door open for the reader to make up their own mind is brilliant. In the days this novel was written, readers didn't need to be "spoon-fed". The reader was able to use critical thinking skills to come to their own conclusion.

When the book was written in 1890, there were no treatments for syphilis. Yes, it was assumed that someone's evil thoughts would twist the lines of his face and make him look more cynical and bitter; but Dorian Gray was supposedly also guilty of having sex with the lowest prostitutes in London (which would definitely give you syphilis). Untreated syphilis can eventually give you grotesque facial and body sores.

And he was guilty of abusing opium, a drug as addictive as heroin that ruined your looks. If Oscar Wilde had been explicit about these actions, his book would never have been published. So he hinted at them, knowing that his audience of 189 would fully understand them.

One subtle reference made in the book is how Dorian would sneak out of his house at night and head down to Blue Gate Fields - an area of London that was notorious for opium dens and brothels.

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