From all the Victorian texts that I’ve read thus far for this class, I felt as if Beardsley’s drawings for Oscar Wilde’s Salomé were unlike any other. Perhaps it is because our class material was mainly focused on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s sensuous imagery and vividly-etched out woodcuts, but Beardsley’s sporadic and fluid art nouveau lines were incredibly shocking in comparison. In some retrospects, I believe that Wilde had chosen the perfect artist to match his nonconformist take on gender roles and to help capture his daring vision of bringing these biblical characters to life. While I particularly enjoyed examining all the symbolism Beardsley incorporated within his imagery, such as all the phallic-like candles or grotesque like aesthetic, it was his illustration, “The Eyes of Herod”, that I think perfectly encapsulated his work. The namesake Salome is portrayed with striking shapes and angles, composed higher above in the illustration than Herrod, and thus offering her a sort of agency. But it is her face and expression which distinguishes her from the more demure and docile depictions in previous incarnations, instead depicted as an erotic, powerful seductress. As Wilde himself couldn’t include much sexual content of that nature in his text due to censorship laws at the time regarding biblical characters, I felt as if Beardsley’s work clearly evoked much of the eroticism and homoerotic content that Wilde’s work was implying. The male gaze is particularly dominant in his work, as Kisha mentioned in her presentation, but at the same time I believe that Beardsley’s work was incredibly progressive and new. Although Wilde wasn’t all too favourable of his illustrations, I think that this artist-writer pairing is wonderfully linked to show how images are capable of expanding upon the meaning of the original text.