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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 4

Publication Date: April 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.94.12230. Mohammadi, A. (2022). The Seduction of Femininity: A Critical Scrutiny of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Advances in Social Sciences

Research Journal, 9(4). 313-325.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

The Seduction of Femininity: A Critical Scrutiny of Oscar Wilde’s

Salomé

Asst. Prof. Dr. Ali Mohammadi

Asst. Professor, Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University

Faculty of Arts and Sciences, English Language and

Literature Department, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACT

The present inquiry deals with social, cultural and literary construction of femme fatale

image. This portrait has not been simply the subject of literature, but rather, other

artistic genres such as architecture, drawing, painting and moving pictures have also

utilized the concept of femme fatale over the past 200 years. This seductive image of

woman arouses readers’ curiosity to penetrate the notion of woman's body and gender

issues in modern world. Besides, modernity brought with it male consternation,

uneasiness and susceptibility as to the subject of female individuality. The orthodox

theoretical discourses which affiliate female body with something cryptic, vicious and

deplorable are being falsified by virtue of the interminable disputes as for tempting

image of women that legitimize assigning them an inferior status. That being said, the

patriarchal system considers femme fatale as “other” with an unpleasant impression.

This study will scrutinize the dialogues in the play to depict the aforementioned

arguments by having an eye on Victorian perception of woman. What is more, it will

explore diverse social, cultural, political as well as historical circumstances under which

Oscar Wilde authored Salomé. Having employed feminist theory, the current analysis

mirrors another dimension of women’s serious vicissitudes they had to put up with back

then which imperceptibly laid the foundation for reawakening women all around the

world of their natural and basic rights they had been deprived for centuries under

patriarchy.

Keywords: Female seduction, Feminism, Oscar Wilde, Other, Salomé, Sexual dissident,

Victorian era

INTRODUCTION

England was heavily impacted by traditions during the 19th century, but there were also

significant changes in the structures of public life, especially as a result of the Industrial

Revolution. Following the revolution, feminism made its presence known. Feminism as a

divisive idea was developed toward the end of the 19th century and is made up of a network of

interconnected and crossing ideas, challenging problems, and long-standing demands.

Feminism, which was full of unanticipated growth stages, deadlocks, and effect dynamics,

captured the ways in which thoughts, people, and texts boundaries to create various

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 4, April-2022

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intersections. As a result, one of feminism's most complex and wide-ranging influences has

been on literature and literary criticism.

Researchers ultimately began to focus on the fundamental concerns when feminist concepts

like separation, absence, morality, trauma, the position of the body, the nature of desire, and

other crucial challenges in modern science and philosophical questions were taken into

account. Women's writing began as a socio-cultural phenomenon as a result of their discovery

of public spaces, manifesting itself in the formation of literary writings that describe the

environment and cultural activities through the eyes of women. This is to mention that feminist

movements are reflected in literature. Women writers defend women's rights to have free

choice and free fate in their works, presenting society with new styles of behavior along with

fresh ideas.

One of the last phases in the destruction of the classical canons was the emergence of modern

feminist literature in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a literary response to social, political,

and historical upheavals in a globalizing world (if the feminist word "masculinocentric" and

"hegemonic literatures" are used). The reconstruction of the feminine in literature has emerged

as one of the most important avenues for the establishment of a democratic society and the

justification of artistic plurality, not only in the political but in the cultural realm as well.

Around the turn of the 21st century, feminist literary criticism had a significant impact on

literary theory and society. Numerous works by women authors have been discovered and

studied, not only in the context of the best literature in the world but in the literary traditions

of many different nations. Feminist analysis has also been applied to a substantial number of

male and female classical writers from antiquity to the present, leading to new readings of the

classical literary tradition. In light of postmodern notions of the distributed subject, particularly

performative gender identity in literature, late 20th-century feminist theory proposes

nonessentialist artistic initiatives of female subjectivation. Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, is

one of the most significant authors of the 19th century.

In contrast to many other writers who in the 1890s dealt with traditional characters and

themes, Oscar Wilde authored challenging plays in the traditional culture of England;

nonetheless, he was fiercely ridiculed, blamed, and even imprisoned for his conflicting

thoughts, sexual orientation and morals. Even contemporary works on Wilde, despite the

playwright becoming a popular topic of academic study in the last couple of decades, simply

serve to deepen the mystery rather than to shed light on it.

Because the majority of critical essays on Wilde's life rather than his writing were devoted to it

for a considerable amount of time, his literary talents were mostly disregarded. When literary

culture took a new turn in the 1970s, this situation drastically changed. Strong, authoritative,

and discourse-related links emerged as major themes in literary history, culminating in wildly

divergent readings of Wilde. Although some academics view Oscar Wilde as a proto-feminist,

other analytical studies describe him as a misogynist. Reactions to Oscar Wilde's play in relation

to feminism are incredibly fractured.

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Mohammadi, A. (2022). The Seduction of Femininity: A Critical Scrutiny of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(4).

313-325.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.94.12230

Discussion

The Historical Development of Feminism

The issue of how women are portrayed in Wilde's plays will be widely examined in the

subsections that follow this study. Women have struggled for social, political, and economic

equality throughout history because of patriarchal society's tremendous disparity. Even while

modern feminism differs from the First Wave, which was active in the 19th century and

concentrated on issues like property, marriage, education, and parenting, it continues to fight

for equal rights for women in opposition to male viewpoints. From the 19th century to the

present day, there have been four waves in the development of the feminist movement. Women

were still battling for the right to vote and the ability to own property as autonomous

individuals when Second-Wave feminism first began in the middle of the 20th century, but as

this movement developed, it became exclusively for white women in western civilization.

Third-Wave feminism started including women of various races when it was first formed. With

the aid of the Me Too and other campaigns, Fourth-Wave feminism is now primarily a resistance

to violence against women and sexual harassment.

Feminist critics have examined a pervasive binary opposition based on gender that reduces

women to objects that uphold the authority and significance of something that is distinctly

masculine. With her assertion that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,"1 famous

20th-century feminist author, Simon de Beauvoir, maintains that while sex is a biological issue,

gender is culturally learned. Women were always subordinate to males in family life, the

workplace, and even in social interactions outside the house, according to the typical

patriarchal perspective of this socially manufactured image of female sex. Because the man

earns his income and the woman lacks the means to support herself, she is left with little

alternative but to submit to the male. A single woman was not accepted, and she had no right

to cohabitate and procreate with a man without getting married.

To have children, the woman needed to be married. If she did not, she would face severe

punishment. Men may, however, make their own decisions and would not be penalized for

doing so. Additionally, the male was entitled to use the entirety of the woman's heritage. Even

the father had some control over the kids. On the other side, because this door was closed to

them, the woman was unable to have a profession. They were only permitted to work in menial

positions. Women were not accepted to universities and could only get a lower level of

education than men. Having been subjected to this immense degree of injustice, women began

to question their own identities, values, and positions in the last quarter of the century, after

typically adhering to these same traditional ideas and behaviors until the end of the 19th

century. Even the British Parliament has acknowledged the discrimination and inequality that

women face in many spheres of society, and at the same time, literary works featuring female

protagonists have begun to explore these issues from many angles.

Femme Fatale and Its Cultural Formation

Historical events, gender norms, body image discourses, and political initiatives to create sexual

difference all have an impact on how societies perceive evil. The femme fatale image is without

a doubt one of the most prevalent representations of the historical, cultural, and political

relationship built between gender, evil, and body. "Femme fatale" is originally a French term.

1 De Beauvoir. S, (1949, p. 295)