Name:-Mayank Kumar Jha

UID: - 181416

FYBA

Subject: - English Literature

Subject Code: - A.ENG.02.01

CIA 2

Salome: Constraints of Patriarchy.

An attempt to analyze or even describe Oscar Wilde’s lyrical drama

Salome is a source of colloquy amongst the critics. In the layman’s eyes,

Wilde’s play is labeled as a 'derivative' or a mere imitation. For others

however, it is precisely this fusion of different sources which gives a

'modern' depth to the drama. Seeking justification for Wilde’s 'originality' in

his innovative use of inspirations is, I believe, misdirected. His sources

mainly stem from the school of Symbolism and Linguistics, with the help of

which, he presents the fear that men had about an independent woman in

a satirical manner.

His drama portrays Salome as an overblown caricature of the common

stereotypes of female behavior. She is governed by emotion instead of

reason; she uses her sexuality to manipulate the ‘pride’ of men while

shielding herself with a cloak of virginity. She is shown to hold her virginity

as a symbol of faith.

“SALOMÉ: -How good it is to see the moon! She is like a little piece of

money, a silver flower. She is cold and chaste. I am sure she is a virgin.

She has the beauty of a virgin. Yes, she is a virgin. She has never defiled

herself. She has never abandoned herself to men, like the other

goddesses.” (Wilde, 6)

This would appear misogynistic, if not for the fact that Wilde depicts Herod

in the same manner. Herod’s obsession with Salome makes him illogical;

his desires for her causes him to agree to an act he knows in his heart to

be wrong. Wilde implies that succumbing to one’s desires is not a feminine

trait, but a human one.

Moreover, Wilde mocks male fear of manipulative sexuality by making it not

merely emasculating, but literally deadly. When Salome ignores the Syrian,

in her obsessive fit over Iokanaan, he kills himself out of grief.

“SALOMÉ: -I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan.

THE YOUNG SYRIAN: -Ah!

[He kills himself and falls between Salomé and Iokanaan.]

 THE PAGE OF HERODIAS: -The young Syrian has slain himself...Well I

knew that the moon was seeking a dead thing, but I knew not that it was he

whom she sought. Ah! Why did I not hide him from the moon? If I had

hidden him in a cavern she would not have seen him.” (Wilde, 12)

Salome is willful and narcissistic, but the reader’s first impression of her is

nuanced by the image of a young woman escaping from a world that she

experiences as oppressive and harassed, despite its privileges.

“SALOMÉ: -I will not stay. I cannot stay. Why does the Tetrarch look at me

all the while with his mole's eyes under his shaking eyelids? It is strange

that the husband of my mother looks at me like that. I know not what it

means. In truth, yes, I know it.” (Wilde, 5)

In this moment of absconding, Wilde represents sexual seductiveness as

liberating and as restrictive. Her acknowledgement of the lingering male

gaze becomes an inspiration for Salome to use her sexual power to free

herself of the historic servitude which was the reality of women in the

ancient world. Sex is a commodity that allows her to make choices in a

dominating era of patriarchy.

In one of his few accounted interviews, Wilde reportedly told Gomez

Carillo, “I cannot perceive of a Salome, who is unconscious of what she

does, a Salome who is but a silent and passive instrument.” (qtd. in M.

Bennett, 51)

“SALOMÉ: -How sweet the air is here! I can breathe here! Within there are

Jews from Jerusalem who are tearing each other in pieces over their

foolish ceremonies, and barbarians who drink and drink, and spill their wine

on the pavement, and Greeks from Smyrna with painted eyes and painted

cheeks, and frizzed hair curled in twisted coils, and silent, subtle Egyptians,

with long nails of jade and russet cloaks, and Romans brutal and coarse,

with their uncouth jargon. Ah! How I loathe the Romans! They are rough

and common, and they give themselves the airs of noble lords.” (Wilde, 5)

This monologue defines Salome’s gendered situation, as she rails against

the religious contexts which confine her as a woman: Jews, Egyptians,

Greeks, and Romans. Salome’s feminine ‘currency’ is banished from this

group of religious domains, and thus she takes hold of a masculine desire

to spend this precious commodity.

Renowned critic Michael Y. Bennett says,” Salome is not a passive

instrument in the hands of symbols, precisely because she becomes a

symbol. Salome does not need to look to the symbol for external

meaning.”(51)
Salome’s encounter with Iokanaan is a turning point in the drama. This is

because Salome, who has been exposed to the constant gaze of men

since the start of the play, has turned her gaze towards a man.

“SALOMÉ: -Iokanaan, I am amorous of thy body! Thy body is white like the

lilies of a field that the mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white like the

snows that lie on the mountains, like the snows that lie on the mountains of

Judea, and come down into the valleys. The roses in the garden of the

Queen of Arabia are not so white as thy body. Neither the roses in the

garden of the Queen of Arabia, the perfumed garden of spices of the

Queen of Arabia, nor the feet of the dawn when they light on the leaves,

nor the breast of the moon when she lies on the breast of the sea. There is

nothing in the world so white as thy body. Let me touch thy body.” (Wilde,

11)

In Jill Dolan’s language, Iokanaan is her “affectional preference”. In this

choice, Salome’s sexuality in the play represents her ’agency’ as she

attempts to transcend a gender regime that has dominated her.

(qtd. in Cregan, 152)

Salome or the representation would also appear to embody in her person,

the world of nature as opposed to the world of civil society. She is the
embodiment of irrational emotions as opposed to Iokanaan’s reason and

restraint. She is the physical, the body standing against the ‘logos’, the

word of Iokanaan.

All of these characteristics make Salome a ‘threat’ as the emotions and the

body, are destructive forces in Wilde’s eyes, forces which must be

controlled and then ‘exterminated’ so as to represent the triumph of the

masculine.

Salome staring at the decapitated head of Iokanaan, the symbolic

embodiment of both the masculine mind and voice, stands as the most

threatening moment to the patriarchy. She is demanding to be like a man in

control of her emotions. She has almost broken free of the male gaze that

haunts her.

“SALOMÉ: -Lift up thine eyelids, Iokanaan! Wherefore dost thou not look at

me? Art thou afraid of me, Iokanaan, that thou wilt not look at me?” (Wilde,

30)

And that is why the narrative could not be justifiably concluded at that point.

Salome cannot be allowed to hold the head, the masculine voice, kiss it

and claim it as her own.

When Herod states at the end of the drama, “Kill that Woman” (Wilde, 32)

we know that we have been led to the logical endpoint of the patriarchal

mindset. “She must no longer be mentioned by a name, or referred in any

way as a Princess or even a daughter. Instead she must be rendered as a

monstrous sign of the times, as a 'woman,' so as to permit her

execution.”(Richmond-Garza, 33, 34)

Salome is a character who defies the Victorian female ideology of being

portrayed as an ‘Angel in the House.’(Patmore) She uses her feminine

‘guiles' to attack the foundations of patriarchal culture. But the patriarchy

has never recognized woman as 'real.’ They have always been compelled

to read the woman as a variety of self-projected fantasies. Herod can kill

Salome, the individual woman, but he is destined to be unable to kill the

dance of the gender that drives history and can only allow the rise of a new

representation of woman, based on the needs of the next generation.

In her book, The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes writes, “Salome can be seen

as one of the earliest works of our modernity.” (qtd. in C. Bennett, 319) The

flame lit by Wilde’s Salome is carried forward as Salome reincarnates in the

poetry of Yeats and in the 1905 opera by Richard Strauss.Ghosts like

Salome demand an attention to their position and justice for what they have
lost. Salome garners strength through her passing away and achieves

justice by means of a new era of feminist ideology.

 Word Count:- 1525 words

 Excluding In-text Quotations:- 1079 words

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Wilde Oscar, Salome, Edited by Joslyn T. Pine, Dover Thrift

Edition(unabridged replication), Dover Publications, Mineola, New

York, 2002

2. BENNETT, CHAD. "OSCAR WILDE'S SALOME: DÃCOR, DES

CORPS, DESIRE." ELH, John Hopkins University Press, vol. 77, no.

2, 2010, pp. 297-323. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40664634.

3. CREGAN, DAVID, “Reclaiming the Body and the Spirit in Oscar

Wilde’s Salomé.”Firenze University Press, 2015[online] Fupress.net.

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-sijis/article/view/16341/15290

4. Richmond-GarzaElizabeth. : “The Double Life of Salome: Sexuality,

Nationalism and Self-Translation in Oscar Wilde”, Refiguring Oscar

Wilde’s Salome, edited by Bennett Michael Y., Brill Publications,

Leiden, Netherlands, 2011, pp. 1-53.

5. Dierkes-Thrun, Petra. Salome's Modernity. U of Michigan P, 2011.

JSTOR, doi:10.3998/mpub.1979616.