Oscar Wilde Sexuality
In Salome, Oscar Wilde conveys a hazardous connection concerning view and erotic cravings that cause death. The drama portrays an evening in a noble courtyard which Herod, the Tetrarch of Judea, and his wife, Herodias, have a banquet gathering for a few Jewish officials. Herodias’s daughter Salome goes to the terrace during the party, where she entices the stare of other men in the play, while she also develops attraction to the clairvoyant, Iokanaan. Her erotic craving for Iokanaan primes his decapitation, a performance that takes her erotic satisfaction and her lips end up on the lips of his detached head. Also, Herod comes to desire his step-daughter Salome, and, after coaxing her to dance a very sexual objective dance, he is repulsed
…show more content…
When reading the Judith Walkowitz’s “Dangerous Sexualities”, there was a contrast to transgender. There was an excerpt stating “Krafft-Ebing constructed an ascending scale of female sexual inversion, from the woman who does not portray her “anomaly by external appearance,” to the woman who has “strong preference for male garments,” to those who play a masculine role, to the most degenerative form of homosexuality: the woman who is female in genital organs only, but whose thought, sentiment, action, even external appearance are those of a man.” (396). This case study relieved that dressing in male garments had a positive effect with the women’s association as being male even though they possessed the genitals of a women. Salome uses this same pattern of behavior as a delusion to her own beauty, she believes that she is so sought after that she portrays who she is based upon this gratification that she receives from other characters and assimilates herself within the realm of her own misapprehension. This association with being desirable put her on a pedestal in her own mind in which she became attracted to Iokanaan that does not associate her with being sought-after. This was a danger because she put unrealistic conditions on everyone that she met and when they did not feel the same way she did, it ended up being Iokanaan’s demise as well as her own. This was a part of “Dangerous Sexualities”, that individuals and society do not agree with certain women’s thought and actions about themselves that will lead to problems within the system, as well as sexuality and society as a
When reading the Judith Walkowitz’s “Dangerous Sexualities”, there was a contrast to transgender. There was an excerpt stating “Krafft-Ebing constructed an ascending scale of female sexual inversion, from the woman who does not portray her “anomaly by external appearance,” to the woman who has “strong preference for male garments,” to those who play a masculine role, to the most degenerative form of homosexuality: the woman who is female in genital organs only, but whose thought, sentiment, action, even external appearance are those of a man.” (396). This case study relieved that dressing in male garments had a positive effect with the women’s association as being male even though they possessed the genitals of a women. Salome uses this same pattern of behavior as a delusion to her own beauty, she believes that she is so sought after that she portrays who she is based upon this gratification that she receives from other characters and assimilates herself within the realm of her own misapprehension. This association with being desirable put her on a pedestal in her own mind in which she became attracted to Iokanaan that does not associate her with being sought-after. This was a danger because she put unrealistic conditions on everyone that she met and when they did not feel the same way she did, it ended up being Iokanaan’s demise as well as her own. This was a part of “Dangerous Sexualities”, that individuals and society do not agree with certain women’s thought and actions about themselves that will lead to problems within the system, as well as sexuality and society as a