Art Criticism - The State University of New York

one ofthe few known practitioners of the Black Mass in Paris. Following his
curiosity further, under the auspice that it will inform his work, Durtal asks
Mme. Chantelouve to arrange with the Canon for an attendance at the mass. In
this way, she enters the novel as a spiritual femme fatale, able to facilitate his
introduction to a subversive religion: acting as De Rais's Joan of Arc. Again,
Huysmans ties woman to evil but now adds a sexual component, which will
allow him to levy greater moral judgment against her. He heightens the mystery
and terror surrounding this event in a way similar to his extra-sensual portrayal
of Durtal's pre-coital desires. Predictably, Durtal finds the Mass horrific in its
actuality and he flees with Mme. Chantelouve to the street, whence she entices
him into a bar. She takes a private room and pleads with him for sex: "'1 want
you,' she said, and she took him treacherously and obliged him to desire her.
She disrobed, threw her skirts on the floor, opened wide the abominable couch.
A look of swooning ecstasy was in her eyes and a smile of joy on her lips.
Suddenly, when he was able to escape, he shuddered, for he perceived that the
bed was strewn with fragments of hosts. 'Oh, you fill me with horror! Dress and
let's get out of here.' The fetidness of the room nauseated him. Then too, he
was not absolutely convinced of Transubstantiation, he did not believe very
firmly that the savior resided in that soiled bread, but in spite of himself, the
sacrilege he had involuntarily participated in saddened him." Huysmans judges
her moral character by way of her arousal at the Mass and through Durtal's
sadness in being "involuntarily" involved. This only serves to reinforce her
moral turpitude. He, in effect, lets Durtal off the hook, while convincing the
reader of his disgust in her sexual and religious perversion. Despite his inclinations
toward the rarefied, Durtal is strong enough to resist both spiritual death
and (although he succumbs after the Mass to her sexual perversion) sexual
death as he then cuts all ties to Mme. Chantelouve. Her positioning as an agent
of the Devil makes her a spiritual killer by way of sexual seduction. It would not
suffice to place her as a purely spiritual seducer, for the femme fatale is inextricably
wound up in sex, as again, she is mother and lover. A similar theme is
addressed in Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of Oscar Wilde's Salome. He
imbues his femme fatale with considerably more power than Huysmans.
Beardsley's Salome occupies not only a different place of power, but functions
in a different relation to evil and to climax while escaping moral judgment as
well.
Salome, like Mme. Chantelouve, uses sex to spiritually seduce. However,
she has a great deal more power. Salome never has to actually give herself
sexually to her stepfather Herod. Instead, she uses her sexuality as a bargaining
tool for the head of John the Baptist who was spiritually strong enough to
withstand her advances. In response to Herod's insistence that she dance for
him in return for anything in the kingdom, Salome requests John's head. Acutely
aware of herself and the extent to which Herod desires her body, Salome can
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