Art Criticism - The State University of New York

The Femme Fatale as seen in the work of J .K. Huysmans,
FeUcien Rops and Aubrey Beardsley
Sarah Bielski
Decadence is, as its root word implies, a time-based notion. Its dialectic
is fulfilled only through a cycle of decline and regeneration. As a means of
expressing their interest in decline, decadent artists needed a fixed symbol to
represent the cycle, and upon which to pivot their ideas mid-stream. This
symbol was a hugely eroticized woman. She was seen most frequently as the
femme fatale found in the work of J.K. Huysmans, Felicien Rops and Aubrey
Beardsley, among others. As a way of examining the varied and complex ways
these artists used the symbol of woman, it is essential to see her in the larger
context of the decadent movement. The obvious and pervasive sexism in these
works cannot be ignored from a contemporary post-Feminist standpoint. While
this sexism deserves mention, it is a separate examination and will be touched
on here only to compare the degree to which it exists in each artist.
All three artists employ the archetype of the femme fatale, most frequently
seen in decadent works as a sexual or spiritual killer. If she is the latter,
as seen in Huysmans and Beardsley, she uses her sexuality asa means of
spiritual temptation. She is inextricably linked with sex and can be seen, by
virtue of Freudian psychology, to represent male fear of a sexual·or spiritual
castration and the subsequent loss of potency and power. This could mean a
syphilitic death from a prostitute or the loss of one's soul to the Devil. Dr.
Donald Kuspit noted that woman is such a complicated decadent symbol
because she is both mother and lover. She gives life and therefore is resented
for the inevitable decay of that life. Further, sexual satisfaction with that who
brought life fueled the moral dilemma of sex with one's mother. She is resented
for this situation andconsidered sexually threatening as she has [he power, by
. her very nature, to make man feel an incestual moral torque. Bodily desire for
'woman' amidst fear of disease was of almost obsessive interest to Rops, while
Huysmans and Beardsley focused on spiritual death through sexual temptation.
In both cases, the operative emotion is fear. Obsessed with their physical
decline and the larger moral decline of a 'fin de siecle' culture, the decadents
held woman responsible for their ennui and dissatisfaction. The result is appropriately
decadent: these artists rarify woman until she becomes an
essentialized symbolic sounding board for their fear and resentment of her
sexuality.
Whether denigrated or relati vely empowered by these artists, woman
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Art Criticism