Aubrey Beardsley’s illustration for Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” appeared in an 1894 publication of the story. In this illustration, an monkey-looking figure with earrings and pointed nails holds a woman who is either unconscious, sleeping, or dead. The detail of big, dangling, chandelier earrings imply either that the monkey was once a woman or that the monkey is now trying to become a woman; both are a terrifying image. The hybrid nature of the beast, adorned with human-like earrings, evokes fears of degeneration and atavism, reflecting Victorian anxieties about humanity’s tenuous separation from its primal origins (Timpano 121).
Beardsley, Aubrey. Beast holding unconscious woman. 1841. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe, Graham's Magazine, 1841, p. 166.
Timpano, Nathan J. “The Curious Case of Aubrey Beardsley’s Poe ‘Illustrations.’” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 2021, pp. 110–41, https://doi.org/10.5325/edgallpoerev.22.1.0110.