Aubrey Beardsley’s The Lady with the Monkey was one of six illustrations created for Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin, published in a limited edition of 50 copies by Leonard Smithers in 1898 (Museum, Victoria and Albert). Beardsley’s artwork reflects the novel’s themes of sexual exploration, particularly through the exotic and sexually uninhibited woman. The illustration highlights the paradox of women as both sensual and dangerous, a concept that both fascinated and terrified a romantic audience which as Fletcher notes, “for the Romantics, woman as emblem was unreadable: the paradox of her nature could not be readily rationalized” (157). In this piece, a bare-chested woman wearing a turban holds a monkey amidst an ornately adorned room emphasizing Beardsley’s exploration of the exotic, the unknown, and the dangerous woman.
Works Cited
Museum, Victoria and Albert. “The Lady with the Monkey: Beardsley: V&A Explore the Collections.” Victoria and Albert Museum: Explore the Collections. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O685536/the-lady-with-the-monkey-pri…;
Beardsley, Aubrey. “The Lady with the Monkey, 1898 - Aubrey Beardsley.” www.wikiart.org, January 1, 1898. https://www.wikiart.org/en/aubrey-beardsley/the-lady-with-the-monkey.&n…;
Fletcher, Ian. “A Grammar of Monsters: Beardsley’s Obsessive Images and Their Sources.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol. 30, no. 2, 1987, pp. 141–63.