A Troubling Beauty: Salome by Oscar Wilde - Essay Example

A Troubling Beauty: Wilde’s Salome Oscar Wilde’s Salome features a femme fatale in its role. The one act play focuses on the conflicts betweenSalome, Herod, Herodias, and Jokanaan. Upon hearing that Salome has requested the head of Jokanaan on a sliver platter in return for her dance, Herod states that : It is true; I have looked at you all this evening. Your beauty troubled me. Your beauty has grievously troubled me, and I have looked at you too much. But I will look at you no more. Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks (32). These lines come during the final climax of the play, and a close, textual reading of them will reveal the theme of possessing through one’s vision which run’s throughout the play. To begin with, Salome’s beauty cannot be denied. As king of the land, Herod is the most powerful person in the play, yet he finds himself unable to look away from her. As his wife’s daughter, Salome is in a position where she can say whatever she wishes to Herod without fear of repercussions. This is why she is able to be in a position for Herod to be looking at her the entire night without him taking it upon himself to do anything about it. She realizes this, and this is part for the reason that her beauty is troubling: “her value is measurable exclusively as an object of exchange, between men“ (Becker-Leckrone). Though Herod might be viewing her as an object, such as one would look at a painting or other beautiful object, she is in a different position because she realizes that she is beautiful and can use that to her advantage. When Herod states “and I have looked at you too much,” he has come to the realization that she too is fully aware of her beauty and is able to use it to her advantage. It is not merely that it is inappropriate that he has been looking at her too much because he is in the position of being Salome’s mother’s husband, but because she has been able to use it to her advantage and has manipulated Herod, the most powerful person in the land. Throughout the play, close attention is given to moments in which other characters are viewing each other. Salome sees Jokanaan and wishes to posses him: “I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan“ (15); Herod sees Salome and wishes to posses her. However, just viewing and desiring these people is not enough to truly posses them. Jokanaan is openly spiteful towards Salome, “Back, daughter of Sodom! Touch me not. Profane not the temple of the Lord God” (14), and even denounces Salome’s mother. Salome also chooses to be openly disdainful towards Herod. Once he realizes how she has been manipulating him throughout the night, he makes a decision: “I will look at you no more.” By looking at her no more, he is forcing her to relinquish the power she held over him. This is what Salome doesn’t realize; by merely having the head of Jokanaan, she does not posses him in any way. To show this, Jokanaan’s eyes are closed, even in death he is refusing to look at her, denying her of being about to posses him. When Herod does look upon Salome one final time, it is to see Salome kiss the mouth of the severed head of Jokanaan. It is at this point that he realizes the full extent of her manipulations, and he realizes that there was simply no way for him to ever posses her; at this point the declares that she is to be killed. Both Salome and Jokanaan are killed because they refuse to be possessed by the looks of others. Once Herod declares that he will no longer be looking at Salome, he makes the broad declaration that “Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.” From this statement Herod makes it sound as though it is not possible to view anything, an object or a person, and not desire to posses it. This does not necessarily mean to personally posses it and hold it on one’s hands, but to be mentally dominant over something, knowing everything about it and being able to know what an object or person will do. Also inherent in this statement it the idea that Herod considers people and objects as the same thing; as the king he is in a position of power over everyone else. He is able to treat everyone as objects, so there is no reason to consider them to be anything else. He seems to come to the realization, though, that one cannot be in full possession of people or objects, and because of this, he will no longer look at either one and be wanting to posses it. He seems to think that if one cannot posses something, then it is better to completely banish the thought of it from one’s mind. The last two lines of this statement are perhaps the most interesting: “Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.” First, the most obvious thing about this statement is that anyone who looks in a mirror will be looking at themselves. So before Herod finishes the statement, it sounds as though he is declaring that people should only look at themselves. This would make sense in response to these other statements, considering what has happened that night as a result of Herod looking at Salome and Salome looking at Jokanaan. Obviously looking at ourselves would be one way from keeping us from desiring another person or object. However, Herod rather turns the audience’s expectations on its head by stating that “mirrors do but show us masks.” To Herod, a mirror will show us a mask as opposed to ourselves. This says quite a few things about the way that Herod thinks. One way to consider this statement is to consider that masks are objects as well. If Herod were to have dehumanized everyone by considering them objects because he is in a position of power over them, then it would only be a matter of time before he too considered himself to be an object. This is because he would have no way in his own head to be able to communicate with another person, and after so long of not communicating with people, only objects, he would forget how to act as a person because everything around him is an object. At this point the would then become an object to himself as well; it would seem to be inevitable that this would happen. There is more to be gathered from this statement. If one were to be able to look in a mirror and see oneself, we would be able to assume that we can be in possession of ourselves. According to Herod, this would not be true as well and we would be unable to be in possession of ourselves. One possible interpretation of this would be to say that because we are being looked at, we are being turned into an object. These other people will have their opinions of us, and we will not be able to change that. As such, even though we can decide ourselves what kind of people we want to be, we cannot change what other people think of us. In this way we are unable to completely own ourselves as people, thus we can only look at masks in the mirror. Another way to interpret the line would be to state that it is because we put on masks ourselves, that we hide ourselves from people, other people can’t posses us. We wear these masks to keep other people out, and it is these masks that we see when we look in the mirror, for in order to be able to keep other people out, we have to be wearing these masks all the time. There is no way to take these masks off at any time; there is always something hidden, as though we have to hide a part of ourselves away from ourselves in order to fully hide from others. All of these are interesting possibilities. From such a brief lines, there are all sorts of possibilities and ideas to be explored, which is all part of why this play still has meaning for so many people: “Why does she persist as a provocative femme fatale, even, if not especially, by ‘feminists and deconstructive’ readers” (Becker-Leckrone). There are many different sides to these characters we meet in Salome, and for this reason it is an enduring story and not just about a beautiful woman. Works Cited Becker-Leckerone, Megan, “Salome©: The Fetishization of a Textual Corpus.” New Literary History 26.2 (1995) 239-260, available from http://proxy.tamu-commerce.edu:8074/journals/new_literary_history/v026/26.2becker-leckrone.html Wilde, Oscar, Salome, from The Importance of Being Earnest and other plays. New York, Signet Classic, 1985. Read More