COVE

Aubrey Beardsley’s “The Mysterious Rose Garden” encapsulates qualities of the ‘weird’ - “a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present (Lovecraft qtd. in Luckhurst 1043) - put into art. The illustration portrays an ethereal encounter in a mystical rose garden, where an Eve-like, nude, female  figure is visited by a fairy-like presence. The visitor’s winged feet, floating hair, and billowing cloak give an impression of weightlessness, suggesting she defies our world’s limitations.Beardsley’s portrayal of her levitating crossed with her ethereal beauty, shapes her as a majestic yet mystifying figure.

The two female figures appear to be mirror images of one another, suggesting a contemplative, symbolic, or fantastical interaction between them. The garden itself makes for a transitional area where imagination, or the unknown, and reality collide. Beardsley’s ability to depict the inexplicable is directly depicted in this piece, as he renders an intangible and otherworldly moment in visual form. The result is haunting, beautiful, and unsettling all at the same time.

Works Cited

Beardsley, Aubrey. “The Mysterious Rose Garden.” The Yellow Book, vol. 4, Jan. 1895.

Luckhurst, Roger. “The Weird: A Dis/Orientation.” Textual Practice, vol. 31, no. 6, 2017, pp. 1041–61. Taylor & Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1358690.