Bio: Laura Chilcoat is a senior at Western Washington University. She plans on continuing her education by earning a Ph.D. in English literature, specializing in Victorian literature.
Forgiving Salomé
By Laura Chilcoat
The confusing and seemingly contradictory nature of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome has resulted in a great deal of critical analysis trying to discover the “true” nature and meaning of what he regarded as one of his best works. Critics such as Christopher S. Nassaar and Nataly Shaheen have read Salomé “as a symbol of pure evil, Wilde associates her with the vampire, the siren, and the werewolf,” (132). Bram Dijkstra is one of the most notable critics in his definition of the “femme fatale.” In his book on this subject, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture, he has identified Wilde’s Salome as “a very carefully designed dramatization of the struggle between the bestial hunger of woman and the idealistic yearnings of man,” (Dijkstra 396). I do not think that Dijkstra’s identification of Salomé as a sexual beast takes into account the ways Wilde is drawing on, and changing, the Salomé myth. Others such as Chris Snodgrass have disagreed with this reading as well; “In fact, Wilde goes to considerable lengths to turn Huysmans’s ‘monstrous beast’ into a classically tragic victim,” (Wilde’s Salome 183). I agree more with Snodgrass’s reading of Salomé as a tragic figure meant to evoke sympathy, not revulsion. I think that any reading of this play must take into consideration the other stories of Salomé that circulated previously, such as Flaubert’s Herodias, J. C. Heywood’s Salome: A Dramatic Poem, Mallarmé’s Hérodiade, and the original Biblical version. Wilde took inspiration from all of these sources, and used them and his story to place himself firmly in the Decadent tradition. I believe that by looking at the ways Wilde changes previous visions of Salomé, we can see that he is forwarding a sympathetic character in Salomé. In looking at Salome as a tragedy this sympathetic vision is enhanced by reading it in context with previous iconic tragedies such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The drawings done by Aubrey Beardsley that accompany the English version of this play become another element that complicates a thorough reading of Salome. The drawings are enigmatic, and tend to present figures of monstrous overbearing women. Many previous readings of the drawings look at them as only featuring Salomé as monstrous, however the figures in his drawings are so ambiguous that I believe they have been misread and are in fact more accepting of Salomé. Yet before analyzing the art from Salome it is important to first see Salomé as a tragic figure, and examine how Wilde is deviating from his predecessors.
Wilde’s Salome is vastly different from the versions which came before, and his alteration from the actual Biblical story is especially interesting. The story is brought up twice in the Bible, once in Matthew and once in Mark. The version in Mark is somewhat longer, and the story climaxes when :
[The] daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it to thee. And he sware unto her, Whasoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist…And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. (King James Version, Mark 6:22-24, 26)
From this excerpt we can see that Wilde has drastically changed the original to give Salomé a voice. In this Biblical version, Salomé is still a virtually silent figure who comes out to entertain Herod and his friends, and does not even have the agency to ask Herod for something she herself desires. Nor, in fact, does she seem to have any knowledge of John other than that her mother despises him. From these changes already I think we can see that Wilde is creating not a monster but a heroine.
Wilde’s departure from Mallarmé’s poem Hérodiade is just as important and pronounced; Hérodiade does not in fact even enter until the second scene. She sits throughout the poem, in a long series of contemplations with her nurse. While she, like Wilde’s Salomé, considers her virginal status, she does so with finality, “[a] kiss would kill me, woman,/If beauty were not death…” (29), and later she adds “prophesy that is summer,/Before which instinctively woman goes bare,/Sees me in my modesty trembling like a star,/I die! I love the horror of virginity,” (34). From these statements we see a character in almost direct opposition to Wilde’s conception of Salomé. At the beginning of Wilde’s Salome, there is no doubt an emphasis put on her virginity, yet it is not the fear of death by kiss – although that is the end result of her kiss. Nor does she appear “trembling” in her modesty, she is a virgin who like the moon “has never defiled herself,” (Wilde 11). Her virginal status does not come from fear of death or repercussion, but from a desire to keep herself uncorrupted.
Flaubert’s short story Heriodias is radically different from Mallarmé’s Hérodiade, and Wilde’s Salome, yet Wilde does draw interestingly from it. This version has taken Herod as its main character, and Salomé in fact appears in only the last pages. Wilde does take a few features to add to his own, the strained relationship between Herod and Herodias is evident in both texts, and both have Herodias demeaning the ancestry of Herod. Flaubert’s more lush insult is the following:
“But your grandfather was a sweeper in the Temple of Askalon, and the others were just a horde of shepherds, robbers, and caravaneers, vassals of Judah ever since the days of King David! My ancestors have all beaten yours in battle. The first of the Maccabees chased you out of Hebron, and Hyrcanus forced you to be circumcised!” (96).
Wilde has taken this extensive abuse, and refined it to the following three sentences: “My daughter and I come of a royal race. As for thee, thy father was a camel driver! He was a thief and a robber to boot!” (32-33). However, Wilde took more than just insults from Flaubert, he also “borrowed” and altered two valuable thematic devices. The more subtle of the two was an angel that physically appears to the executioner in Flaubert. Instead of having the angel appear for all to see as in Flaubert’s work, Wilde uses the fluttering of wings to conjure fear and foreboding in those who are sensitive to omens. The most important theme that Wilde took and expanded was a focus on celestial omens. Flaubert only mentioned astrological readings twice as foreshadowing death – Wilde turned this into an over-arching theme that also reflected earthly emotions. While Wilde was indeed influenced by Flaubert’s interpretation of this Biblical story, he changed and restructured much more than he took.
The version of Salome that Wilde seems to have been most influenced by is also the one that differs the most in plot. J.C. Heywood’s dramatic poem Salome is a story about the death of Salomé, but it takes place much later than the beheading of John the Baptist. Salomé has returned to Jerusalem after much time, and has converted to Christianity and greatly regrets the death of the prophet. In this story she gives her life to save her Roman lover. Before Wilde’s Salome, this is the only story in which Salomé dies; while both deaths of Salomé involve the life of her lover that is where the comparison ends. However, I think that Wilde took this idea of the romantic death of Salomé as the inspiration for his own story. By making Salomé in love with Iokanaan, and having her die almost immediately after his beheading Wilde is removing the chance for redemption that Heywood’s Salomé got.
The language in Wilde’s Salome is also reminiscent of Heywood’s Salome. Not only did they both revert to Biblical pronouns of “thee” and “thou;” but the descriptions in both are lush and flowery. Heywood’s description of Salome is: “Salome, then, was calm, nor gay, nor sad./ The lilies of her neck and brow and chin/ Could not o’ercome the roses fast entrenched/ Upon the tranquil summit of each cheek.” (36). Wilde’s description of Salomé also uses floral language: “How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.” (3). In Wilde’s Salome we have the culmination of the Decadent obsession with Salomé. Wilde built his story upon previous conceptions, but still changed much more than he ever took. In creating Salome Wilde gave Salomé a unique and active individual soul that was absent in previous manifestations of her. By looking at these versions we can begin to see the way that Wilde was creating not the ultimate “femme fatale” but rather a realistic person full of life and love.
From Salomé’s first entrance in Wilde’s play there is an agency and activity that is absent in previous visions of her. She has left the party, which she is almost entirely missing from in the Bible, to go out into the fresh air of the balcony, “I will not stay, I cannot stay…It is strange that the husband of my mother looks at me like that. I know not what it means. Of a truth I know it too well,” (10). From this first encounter with Salomé we can see that she acts on her own wishes, not those of another, and we can also see that she has undesired wisdom of sexuality. Throughout the whole play Salomé exercises her agency in everything she does; all of her actions express her own desires. This is not a Salomé who would go to her mother asking what she ought to demand of Herod. I think that in this way we are seeing Wilde giving power back to women, he even said “I cannot conceive of a Salomé who is unconscious of what she does, a Salomé who is but a silent and passive instrument,” (qtd. Snodgrass, Wilde’s Salome 184-185). I do not believe that Wilde gave Salomé back her voice and actions in order to punish her for using this same voice.
While one of the major changes Wilde performed on the Salomé myth is Salomé’s death at the end of the play, I believe he did this to cement the play as a tragedy. Critics such as Bram Dijkstra have read the ending of Salomé somewhat differently: “The play works up to a conclusion in which the masculine mind is led[…]to an understanding of the need for woman’s immediate physical destruction[…]As such the work climaxes in a categorical renunciation of any communication between male and female, and, in effect, becomes a call to gynecide,” (396). I think that this reading does not at all take into account the sympathy that is given to Salomé throughout the whole of the play. Salomé is not even seen as monstrous until the end of the play, where she demands the head of Iokanaan and then kisses his mouth. It is in fact the kiss that has been called out as the most morbid moment of the play, and perhaps it is, but Wilde is using this moment to do more than upset the bourgeois middle class.
The ending of the play, I believe is actually making a subtle reference to one of the most iconic love tragedies in British history – Romeo and Juliet. Repeatedly throughout the play Salomé tells Iokanaan “[s]uffer me to kiss thy mouth,” (24, 25, 26) and “I will kiss thy mouth,” (24, 26, 64). When comparing this to the final act of Romeo and Juliet what immediately jumps out is Juliet’s “I will kiss thy lips,” (V:III:176). Wilde was very well-versed in Shakespeare, and I do not believe it possible that in his own, and only, tragedy he would so closely mimic this line accidentally. As this line occurs right before Juliet kisses her dead lover, Wilde is accomplishing two distinct things in his own play. He is asking the audience to take the same consideration and sympathy for Salomé as they did for Juliet; and he is commenting on the “forgivable” morbidity of love.
Wilde then took this idea of morbid love farther by having Salomé’s kiss appear to sexually satisfy Salomé, however he was still drawing on the romantic aspect by having Salomé revert to her original adorations of Iokanaan’s body. Again we have Wilde mimicking Shakespeare, after kissing the deceased Romeo’s lips Juliet comments, “[thy] lips are warm,” (V:iii:180). Salomé also makes a comment on her departed lover’s lips, “[there] was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood?...Nay; but perchance it was the taste of love,” (66). Both comments bring forward the recent death of the male lover, although Wilde forefronts the active role Salomé played in Iokanaan’s death. In Salomé’s comment on the bitter taste of her lover’s lips, Wilde is clearly exceeding the morbidity of Romeo and Juliet. While I do believe that he intends to assert the natural and tragic love of Salomé, I think he is also making a larger comment on love. He is making his heroine more gruesome to indicate the nature of tragic love stories as being inherently “morbid.”
Wilde was also bringing forward the youth of Salomé at the end of this play by showing her vacillating confusion of Iokanaan’s death. Once she has his head she seems unable to combine her idea of the man that she had loved with this now lifeless visage; “But wherefore dost thou not look at me, Iokanaan?...And thy tongue, that was like a red snake darting poison, it moves no more, it speaks no words, Iokanaan, that scarlet viper that spat its venom upon me. It is strange, is it not? How is it that the red viper stirs no longer?” (64). Salomé then continues trying to incorporate how she can still love this now dead man. She reverts to all of the language of love that she had used earlier; again idolizing his body, hair, and of course lips. In this long monologue she tries to come to terms with why this man could not love her, and why they had to be separated by death. This youthful, almost innocent, confusion about the mysteries of death is completely absent from the drawing Aubrey Beardsley made to accompany this play.
It would be easy to comment that Wilde was not thoroughly pleased with Beardsley’s drawings, and then promptly write them off as irrelevant. Yet, I think that the play can not be completely understood without them, and Wilde did in fact enjoy the first drawing that Beardsley created, “J’ai Baisé ta Bouche Iokanaan.” In this first drawing we still have the elements present that critics have been so confused by – a monstrous overbearing woman leering at the decapitated Iokanaan. Elliot L. Gilbert reads all of the drawings as being relevant to the play as they both portray “the demonic and perverse sexuality that is one of the chief elements of Wilde’s drama” (Gilbert 138). As I do not believe that perversity is the main element in Salome, I think instead that Wilde was drawn to the fantastic elements in this first drawing. The floating Salomé creates an illusion, drawing attention to the mythic components of this story. Also the monstrous elements that Beardsley was highlighting only add to a reading of this play as a criticism of reading tragic love stories without considering their “morbid” tendencies.
While I do not want to ignore any of these drawings, Beardsley himself did note that three of them were in fact irrelevant (Gilbert 134). In fact, on the dismissal of “Enter Herodias” Beardsley wrote this: “Because one figure was undressed/This little drawing was suppressed/It was unkind, but never mind/Perhaps it all was for the best,” (qtd. Schweik 25). Beardsley was upset at having his work rejected, so he replaced three “offensive” drawings with three random pictures he had at his disposal. In looking at the text, I believe these three drawings to be “The Black Cape,” “Salome on Settle,” and “The Toilette of Salome – I.” I believe these are the three “random” drawings because they not only lack any sort of lascivious content, but they are the three least related to the actual text. Instead of looking at these, I want to focus my attention on “The Peacock Skirt” which is one of the most well-known drawings from this play.
While all of Beardsley’s drawings for Salome are ambiguous, “The Peacock
Skirt” seems to be exceptionally so. Chris Snodgrass’s interpretations of this
drawing are the most intriguing, and I think can be extended to an analysis of
the drawing in favor of a “nicer” Salomé. The two figures in this drawing have been
usually identified as Salome and Iokanaan. However, Snodgrass builds on other
assertions that, “this scene actually depicts Salome’s encounter with
Narraboth, the Young Syrian, Captain of the Guard, in which Salome cajoles and
seduces the Syrian,” (Urge to Outrage, 86). Snodgrass also points out the
strong gaze between the two figures in the drawing. The plot revolves around
Iokanaan never returning Salomé’s gaze, so it does not make any contextual
sense for this drawing to feature Salomé and Iokanaan locked in a fierce gaze.
I agree with Snodgrass’s interpretations up to this point; however he then
begins to assert that Salomé is the monstrous figure on the left, and the Young
Syrian is the passive figure on the right.
Assigning gender
in any Beardsley drawing is exceedingly difficult, but I believe that there is
an argument for Salomé taking the passive feminine role in “The Peacock Skirt.”
Snodgrass also makes arguments for the fluidity of gender between these two
figures:
We are left with a figure that slides across our neat ontological categories […] What we have to this point is a confrontation between two self-contradictory figures. While one may seem aggressive and intense, and the other restrained and passive, both at first glance appear to be female and elegant […] We are made to confront the probability that nothing is “pure,” clear, unalloyed, unequivocal. (Urge to Outrage 88).
With this in mind, I think the claim that Narraboth is the looming figure on the left, and Salomé is the figure on the right can be defended. If this scene does depict Salomé asking Narraboth for a favor, it makes more sense for her coyness in language to be mimicked in her coyness of pose. She is trying to make Narraboth bend to her will not by orders, but by flirtation: “Thou wilt do this thing for me, Narraboth, and to-morrow when I pass in my litter beneath the gateway of the idol-sellers I will let fall for thee a little flower.” (16). While using this language to try and seduce Narraboth, Salomé would not be aggressively towering over him – but rather allowing him to tower over her. Also, at this point in the play Narraboth is still overcome with looking at Salomé. I think that this points to the overbearing, looming figure to be the sexually aggressive Narraboth; and the smaller more coquettish figure to be the flirting yet aloof Salomé. By reading the drawing in this manner we can see that overall the vision of Salomé that is being created is not one of a monstrous beast. The drawing can then be seen as in concordance with the text of the play. While I do not know if this kind of reading can be done to all of the drawings that accompany the play, I believe I have provided a solid basis for reading them as sympathetic towards Salomé
While Salomé may be seen as exhibiting morbid love fantasies, she is in fact a tragic character. In looking at the previous Salomé stories, we can see all of the changes that Wilde was making on this story. His changes did not work to create a monstrous over-sexed woman who needed and deserved to be killed at the end of the play. Rather he made Salomé into a person who had agency and voice, and who died tragically for a love that was seen as gruesome by those around her. I think that analyzing Salome in this way opens up two more themes of Wilde’s work into question. By reading Salomé as a tragic figure who was unduly punished for “morbid” love, I think that we have a stronger foundation for reading this play as a homosexual text. I also think that the gender politics that are troublesome in many of the other works of Wilde deserve to be analyzed through a more sympathetic lens.
Works Cited
Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Flaubert, Gustave. “Herodias.” Three Tales. Trans. Robert Baldick. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. 89-124.
Gilbert, Elliot L. “’Tumult of Images’: Wilde, Beardsley, and Salome.” Victorian Studies: A Journal of the Humanities, Arts and Sciences. 26.2 (1983). 133-159. Ebscohost. Wilson Library, Bellingham, WA. 28 April 2009. <http://www.ebscohost.com>
Heywood, J.C. Salome: A Dramatic Poem. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867.
King James Version. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 1978.
Mallarmé, Stéphane. “Hérodiade.” Collected Poems. Trans. Henry Weinfield, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 25-35.
Nassaar, Christopher S. and Nataly Shaheen. “Wilde’s SALOME.” The Explicator. 59.3 (2001). 132-134. Ebscohost. Wilson Library, Bellingham, WA. 27 Ebscohost. Wilson Library, Bellingham, WA. 27 April 2009. <http://www.ebscohost.com>
Schweik, Robert. “Congruous Incongruities: The Wilde-Beardsley ‘Collaboration’.” English Literature in Transition: 1880-1920. 37.1 (1994). 9-26.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Ed. J.A. Bryant, Jr. New York: New American Library, 1964.
Snodgrass, Chris. “The Urge to Outrage: The Rhetoric of Scandal.” The Dandy of the Grotesque. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 41-98.
--. “Wilde’s Salome: Turning ‘The Monstrous Beast’ into a Tragic Hero.” Oscar Wilde: The Man, His Writings, and His World. Ed. Robert N. Keane. New York: AMS Press, Inc. 2003. 181-196.
Wilde, Oscar. Salome. Trans. Lord Alfred Douglas. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967.