Wilde used the Gothic convention of domestic secrecy to reflect the real-world anxieties of the late-Victorian homosexual 'closet.'

Gothic literature has always been obsessed with locked rooms and dark secrets. Wilde took this trope and mapped it onto the double lives of gay men in Victorian London. The hidden portrait is the ultimate closet. It holds the truth that society demanded be kept secret, revealing a broader pattern of male secrecy in modern society.