ABSTRACT
Of all the myths of decadence that prospered at the European fin de siecle, that of Salome is perhaps the most enduring, rivaled, for the tenacious force of its procreative cultural success, only by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In Salome, Wilde often seemed to depict the princess as a sleekly commanding man-killer, a sense echoed in the 1894 drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, published with Wilde’s play, and now irrevocably attached to it. There are reasons, however, for the persistent success of Wilde’s play beyond its appeal as a tantalizing vehicle for actresses taking up the role of femme fatale. Although nineteenth-century painters generally downplayed nymphet-Salomes in favor of predatory femmes fatales, there are several early twentieth-century images depicting the princess as a childlike ingenue. Wilde’s theatrical rendering helped to establish a sense of the Salome story concerning as childish erotomania, and not only because of his Salome’s demand for the head of John the Baptist.
