Art Criticism - The State University of New York

ask for the unreasonable and receive it. Wilde has therefore given her an
incredible amount of power, which Beardsley successfully translates. In her
essay, "Felicien Rops and Aubrey Beardsley: The Naked and the Nude,"4
LindaZatlin argues that Beardsley's treatment of Salome suggests her incorporation
of male power:
They (Beardsley's women) can attempt to cloak themselves in
man's power, to bargain by his rules, and to become equally hard,
as does Salome. She becomes stony-eyed and calculating with the
knowledge that Herod wants to sleep with her (The Stomach
Dance). In this drawing, Herod's lust is emblematized by the drooling
dwarf whose priapus is barely disguised as clothing decoration.
Salome's evanescent success in reversing the rules of power, when
she bargains with Herod for John the Baptist's head as if she were
a man, leaves marks of hardness and cynicism on her face (The
Dancer's Reward; The Climax). Beardsley does not define women
in terms of sinner and saints. Instead, he projects the diverse choices
available to them.5
Salome is aware and in control of her sexuality, shrewdly using it as leverage.
Where the women ofRops and Huysmans are agents of the Devil, Beardsley's
Salome is not. She does not need to foster an alliance with the Devil, as her
sexuality is powerful enough to achieve her goal. Although not explicitly Satanic,
it is implied that she is not in conjunction with dark forces. This does not
mean neither her character nor these images are free from evil. On the contrary,
Salome is the ultimatejemmejatale as she is the rep::esentative of a calculating,
chastely sexual and anti-hysterical evil.
As Zatlin suggests, Salome's sexuality is potent because she uses it
to usurp male power. This may be the true face of evil for the decadent man.
Huysmans and Rops so clearly fear woman and in their inability to face that
fear, they pepper their work with images of woman as the Devil' s plaything. If
she achieves any sexual power, it is through a Satanic pact. They can then exert
power in the sphere where they feel powerless. Their work becomes a sort of
'evil-lite' whereas Beardsley cuts straight to the sublime terror of Salome. Chris
Snodgrass illuminates this idea in "Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy ofthe Grotesque."
"F9r Beardsley, Art's reassurance of order and control is precisely what permits
a "safe" investigation oflife's depraved and chaotic realities, the styli.,tic
chastening of evil and depravity through artistic technique making it possible
to avoid moral degradation without having to resort to the demeaning bromides
of mindless probity."6 In other words, Beardsley does not have to resort
to the sexual debasement of women to talk about evil. His Salome is evil, but
again, she embodies a removed, sterile evil. Further, through this stylized evil,
Beardsley reinforces notions of decadent artificiality and pre-climactic plea-
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Art Criticism