Author: horsegirl59

When I encountered this image during our class’s trout gallery visit, it quite literally stopped me in my tracks. Salammbô is visually stunning in its composition as well as narratively intriguing. It instantly sparked several questions about the circumstances of the print as well as its cultural significance and origin. I was fascinated to learn that this beautiful work is inspired by a book of the same name by famous French novelist Gustav Flaubert. The book tells the story of Salammbo, the daughter of the chief magistrate of Carthage, and the subject of this print. In the novel, Salammbo communes with a python, a symbol of the powerful moon goddess Tanith to gain the courage to steal back a protective mystical veil from the attacking mercenaries. In doing so, she saves the people of Carthage from a violent siege. 

 When I first saw this image, I was shocked by the immediate physical danger that Salammbô seems to be in. The snake is portrayed as very large and almost menacing at first glance, with its jaws poised dangerously close to her face. However, upon closer inspection, I noticed the sensual way in which the python is constricting itself around her as if it is clinging to her curves. Additionally, Salammbô’s facial expression is one of ecstasy and pleasure, which is surprising given the circumstances. Her glance towards the viewer is almost inviting, which evokes ideas of exhibitionism. The shading of the man in the background also suggests that he is unseen by Salammbô, therefore assuming the role of an unsolicited voyeur. Themes such as these were very popular in French salon artwork at the time, and pieces like this were especially appreciated by Victorian male viewers.  

For Victorians, sexuality was meant to be controlled and subjugated in everyday life whenever possible. Women were held to extremely high standards of modesty, and limited to procreative sex with their socially acceptable, lawfully wedded husbands.  They were meant to uphold the image of “the Angel in the House”, pure and uncorrupted by the outside world, unable to lead lives of their own or do anything really without the permission of men. Stories like Salammbo directly contradict these social expectations in a fantastical way. The subject of this striking work of art is daring, powerful, and yes, sexual on her own terms! Unlike Biblical Eve, who was tricked by a snake into succumbing to temptation and causing the fall of man, Salammbô is entwining herself with this python because she believes it will save her people. Therefore, this piece stands in stark contrast to many of the widely held beliefs about women at the time. Salammbô’s sexuality in this print differs from both typical associations with the femme fatale (she is supposedly using it to do moral good) and the prudish and restrictive connotations associated with the real-world Victorian body.  Based on these elements, it makes sense that the Victorians would be both fascinated and intimidated by this work, as it represents both an interesting foreign culture and “indecent” ideas about female sexuality.   

Sources:

Williams, Kate. “The Victorians were no prudes, but women had to play by men’s rules”. The Gaurdian, 23 May 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/23/queen-victoria-sex-nudes-paintings-prudes-women. Accessed 9 April 2025.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Salammbô”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Apr. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Salammbo. Accessed 9 April 2025. 

Throughout “The Yellow Drawing Room”, Miss Vanora Haydon sets a fascinating example of the “new woman” in Victorian society. At multiple points in the short story, she freely expresses her opinions, especially when they are contradictory to the male main character’s beliefs. One glaring example of this is when she states, “you are very naif… you seem just now to me like a nice, egotistical child” (Caird 108) during an argument with Mr. St. Vincent. She is not afraid to express her feelings of intellectual superiority over him, despite gender stereotypes. What’s more, she seems relatively unconcerned with marriage and childbearing compared to the other women in her family, particularly her sisters. This idea, that she might seek other pursuits outside the home, flies in the face of Victorian social conventions surrounding the role of women. Heterosexual marriage and reproduction were considered the only respectable path for women at this time, and Vanora’s unwillingness to prioritize these things could be interpreted as a moral failing.  

The author gives clear evidence of Varona’s aversion to societal expectations of women when she says “My father never constrained me to move in any particular direction because of my sex. He has perhaps spoiled me. I have hitherto had only a joyous sense of drawing in what was outside and radiating out what was within me. When you describe your doctrines, I seem to see the doors of a prison opening out of the sunshine; and strange to say, I feel no divine, unerring instinct prompting me to walk in” (Caird 109). The thought process that Vanora describes here is particularly unique for the Victorian era for a variety of reasons. First, she states that her father has given her a lot of leniencies when it comes to conducting herself, which is rare for a culture that saw women as objects to be controlled rather than full independent people. In this way, her statement that he never constrained her because of her sex AND this sentiment stuck with her into adulthood despite outside influences is rather revolutionary for the time. Furthermore, her outright rejection of the marriage that St. Vincent proposes, and referring to it as “a prison” is the Victorian equivalent of giving the finger to the social hierarchy she was born into.  

By writing this dramatic scene, where Vanora passionately defies St. Vincent’s expectations of womanhood in every way and yet he is still attracted to her, Caird is making a comment about the contradictory nature of Victorian society. Vanora is completely undeterred by male expectations, and she does not appear to be catering to the male gaze in the way that her sisters do. However, part of her is still intrigued by him, even though she believes he would “turn all homes into prisons” (Caird 109). In this way, Vanora’s character is more than one-dimensional feminist hero, because she portrays the emotional complexity involved in defying a system you were born to conform to.  

Throughout The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins uses a lot of flowery, over the top language to describe simple interactions between Walter Hartright and Laura Fairlie. These interactions, exclusively described from Walter’s perspective, convincingly portray the pent up sexual and romantic tension between the two. In Victorian society, English men and women were forbidden from discussing topics such as sex and desire openly, because they were considered extremely taboo. According to an excerpt from Sex, Scandal, and the Novel “sexual unspeakability does not function simply as a collection of prohibitions for Victorian writers. Rather, it affords them abundant opportunities to develop an elaborate discourse – richly ambiguous, subtly coded, prolix and polyvalent – that we now recognize and designate by the very term literary” (Cohen 3). Essentially, the strict nature of Victorian society as it relates to sexuality caused Victorian authors to develop their own covert methods for describing sexual desire and passion. Many of Walter’s passages are devoted to romanticizing his relationship with Laura, especially when describing their early interactions when they were merely student and teacher. When lamenting about his feelings for her, he writes “Yes my hardly-earned self-control was completely lost to me as if I had never possessed it; lost to me, as it is lost every day to other men, in other critical situations, where women are concerned” (Collins 66). With this statement, Walter is acknowledging an age-old sentiment that women are “temptations” to men, and that the trap of womanly wiles must be avoided for it can be disastrous in certain situations. He continues “I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again-why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembers in no other women before- why I saw her, and heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, and touched any other woman’s before” (Collins 66). It is evident in the way that Hartright carefully chooses his words so as not to so much as approach vulgarity when describing his attraction to Laura, that he is trying to be the perfect British gentlemen. For example, when he mentions the thrill of touching her, he immediately clarifies that they only made physical contact through the chaste gesture of shaking hands. Because Walter is prevented from acting on his feelings due to his position and the expectations of polite Victorian society, he is relegated to waxing poetic about his painful experience of falling for Laura.  

In the opening pages of Collin’s The Woman in White, Mr. Walter Hartwright comes face to face with the titular character, a strange woman wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night. Based on Victorian-era social strictures applied to women at the time, it was considered improper for a young woman to be out late at night unaccompanied. Men and women were often relegated to “separate spheres”, with the Victorian woman “protected and enshrined within the home, her role to create a place of peace where man could take refuge from the difficulties of modern life” (Norton Anthology 992).
Collins demonstrates the strict nature of English society at the time of his novel by highlighting Hartwright’s utter shock at the woman’s appearance. Commenting on the encounter, he writes “I was far too startled by the suddenness with which this extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of night and in that lonely place…” (24). This sentence clearly articulates how uncomfortable the woman in white’s presence has made him, not only because of her mystique but also by virtue of the situation. Because Hartwright considers himself to be a “gentleman” by Victorian social standards, he goes to great lengths to make clear that nothing untoward occurred between the two when they were alone so late at night. Even the woman herself is clearly anxious to be percieved improperly, saying “You don’t suspect me of doing anything wrong, do you?” and “Why do you suspect me of doing wrong?” (25) with little prompting from Hartwright himself.

Although he finds the interaction out of the ordinary, Hartwright quickly defends her honor, saying “the grossest of mankind could not have misconstrued her motive in speaking, even at that suspiciously late hour and in that suspiciously lonely place” (24). Even under strange and dream-like circumstances, Hartwright’s rhetoric stays strictly within the confines of proper English social standards. In writing his narrator this way, Collins is demonstrating that much of the novel’s most interesting revelations are to be found in the subtext.