Beardsley’s depiction of gender and sexuality is striking, and his illustrations of the nude human body is always tethering on a perceived recognizability that simultaneously undermines his readers knowingness. Here is the 1907 edition of the title page illustation from Salome. There are figures that "that blur the gender binary" by having traditionally feminine features (breasts, insinuated lips and eye liner), and the masculine features as well, mostly being the penis and an abundance of pubic hair surrounding the groin (186). Machen's uses characters to describe the destabilizing sense of unknowingness in a space you had though to have understood. In The Hill Of Dreams, Lucian comes to the conclusion that “he was an alien and a stranger amongst citizens” because of his seeking after art that “had in it something inhumane” (Machen 215-216). Both artists enhance represent the weird by displaying the familiarity of human nature and natural worlds, and then alienating their audiences from their knowingness.

Works Cited:

Beardsley, Aubrey. Title Page of Salome. 1907. https://archive.org/details/salometragedyino00wildrich/page/n11/mode/2up. Accessed 6 December 2024.

Machen, Arthur. “The Hill of Dreams.” Aurthur Machen Decadent and Occult Works, edited by Dennis Denisoff, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2018, pp. 110-251.

King, Frederick. "4 Collaboration and Conflict: Queer Space in Salome". Queer Books of Late Victorian Print Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024, pp. 175-222. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/10.1515/9781399525961-008