SOURCE: "Salome: The Decadent Ideal," in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, September, 1981, pp. 344-52.

In the following essay, Jones and Kingsley focus on Huysmans's descriptions in Against the Grain of paintings by Gustave Moreau in which the biblical figure of Salome is depicted as the epitome of Decadence.

The Salome story has undergone many changes in its retellings over the centuries. In the Biblical versions, Salome is not even named and is presented as an innocent, if not unwilling, instrument of her mother's revenge against John the Baptist. In the following centuries, the dancing daughter became known as Salome and assumed more importance in the story as attempts were made to assign motivation to her. The Salome figure reappeared sporadically in art and literature for several centuries but emerged as an obsessive motif for artists and writers only in the late nineteenth century. She became a favorite...