An Introduction to The Yellow Book

The Yellow Book gathered works by numerous writers, poets, and artists from around the world into a quarterly publication for close to three years. It featured many contributors who were passionate about the Aestheticism movement and sexuality within it. I will be using Olive Custance's The White Statue, a poem from volume 11 published October 1896 and Aubrey Beardsley's The Mysterious Rose Garden, a drawing from volume 4 published January 1895 to discuss the impact of Aestheticism and sexuality on The Yellow Book. Within the years The Yellow Book was publishing there were numerous scandals, reviews and commentary that helped it rise to notary. This created a conflicted relationship between The Yellow Book and the public at larger but for those who looked for challenging new ideas through art it was the ideal publication. This is how Custance and Beardsley were able to explore their art comfortable, knowing that there was an audience and a desire for their controversial works.

Situating The Yellow Book with Contributors

    During the fin de siècle Aestheticism became the primary discourse for artists involved with literature, fine art, music and other arts. The idea of “l'art pour l'art”, or 'art for art's sake' was reigning and this reflected in the publishing expeditions such as The Yellow Book. The pages of the book were filled with poetry, essays, art and literature that pushed boundaries and abandoned the ideas of moral judgment through art. Instead, contributors wanted to display the strange, the unheard of and the controversial simply because art needed to exist independently of morality. Artist were tired of being silenced for the sake of the church and religion and the Aesthetic movement opened the doors to uncontrolled exploration of whatever felt like creating. Due to Oscar Wilde's arrest with a yellow book, which the media claimed was The Yellow Book (Ledger 5), there was a controversial connection made between the Aestheticism and sexuality in relation to it.

     While it has been proven that Wilde was carrying a different book, the idea of sexuality and Aestheticism within The Yellow Book is not unfounded. In fact, with the help of Custance and Beardsley The Yellow Book was able to explore both cultural contexts and push past the barrier of the fin de siècle to create everlasting material. Their works became unique ventures into the Aesthetic movement as they did not use sexuality as a tool for their art but rather sexuality became a very core part of their art. With The Yellow Book providing space, the Aesthetic movement providing means, Custance and Beardsley were able to explore sexuality through poetry and drawings in a way that could not have been possible previously. It also paved the way more more works in which fluid and overt sexuality could be created. Had it not been for works like The White Statue and The Mysterious Rose Garden religious censorship within fine art could have persevered and still been the dominant social ideology.     

The Charming Olive Custance

Olive Custance was known for a long time simply as the wife of Lord Alfred Douglas (Whitney 1), however in recent years there has been a push to recognize her poetic successes. Her contributions to The Yellow Book were met with reviews of admirable childishness (Whitney 2) and the specific contribution of The White Statue has been noted for sentiment and rhyme (Autumn Tint). Custance's work is intertwined with sexuality, the poem in question discussing romance and sexualized contact like kissing. Custance toed the line of aesthete and New Women with her works (Parker 224) and was difficult to categorize for a long time because of this but, the fluidity of sexuality and gender as portrayed through her writing Her work marks a change in writing, the way she played with sexuality through the Aesthetic lens allowed her to re-define constructs of heterosexuality and gender. The relationship between Custance and Douglas allowed her to explore the typically reversed role of muse and writer (Parker 221), he embodied the 'Fairy Prince' and she the 'Page'.

The White Statue: Redefining Sexuality in Poetry

The White Statue was written before Custance and Douglas had met in 1901 (Whitney 3) however this subversion of gender roles and sexuality in her writing was ever-present. Though it is not entirely known who The White Statue is about Custance wrote it around the time she was actively interacting with John Gray (Whitney 6) who was the inspiration for Dorian in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The poem puts a figure on display, showing Custance's use of muse, literally as a statue to be worshiped and to show desire (Pulham 166). Commonly this method of putting a muse on a pedestal to be admired and commented on was used by men. Statues themselves played the role of homoerotic desire in poems by others such as Wilde, Swinburner and Pater. Representing an androgynous desirable person in perfect marble form (Pulham 169), never stating gender but always being lusted after. Custance uses this same male homoerotic gaze to worship the muse of The White Statue, actively challenging the gendered expectations of writing. By refusing to state the gender of the statue as well as the viewer there is a subversion to the expected use of the statue in poetry. The White Statue depicts the ideal sexual fluidity much like how she defied gender norms in her own life, she did so on paper as well. It should also be noted that Custance used this method throughout her career, utilizing the marble statue to express sexuality many times (Pulham 165).

    The statue itself reacts to lighting, both being tinted by “mauve-silver twilight” (Custance 91) and loved more that “scarlet-skirted dawn” (Custance 91). By placing the statue in times in which the light is ever-changing and resist categorization it reflects the same way that Custance refuses to be define the identity and gender of the statue and the statue's beholder. Both of the mentioned times of dawn and twilight show a certain in-between, “transitional temporal spaces that express and reflect the sexual duality of the statues and the sexual ambiguity of the speakers' desires” (Pulham 170). A lack of static definition for these times, knowing that twilight and dawn can have any number of colours and appearances reflects a fluid, ever-changing and undefinable sexuality. The androgyny of both viewer and statue defines the unknown of portrayal of sexuality, reflecting Custance's own experiences with sexuality. Her desire to move effortlessly between masculine and feminine, never defining her sexuality is shown in this piece as well as others.

Redefining Sexuality in Poetry

    Custance's work showed a deliberate change in how sexuality and gender were presented within literature seeing as she actively challenged ideas of heteronormativity in her writing long before it was common. She marks a change in how sexuality was written within poetry, teetering in the fin de siècle Aestheticism while helping push for a more complex eroticism in writing (Parker 221). This is likely why despite her being published in The Yellow Book and writing numerous works in the appropriate era she struggled with recognition as a poet of the Aesthetic movement. Custance redefined sexuality in writing and used sexuality in such a way that it went beyond what other Aesthetics were doing (Parker 223).

The Grotesque Aubrey Vincent Beardsley

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was a leading figure within the Aesthetic movement, his black ink drawings provided a visual companion, appearing in works by Thomas Malory, Oscar Wilde and Olive Custance (Mix 44). His art experienced a fair amount of criticism being referred to as vulgar, grotesque, eccentric, and perverse. Beardsley work was saturated with the ideals of Aestheticism, the art he created was not meant to have a morality but to show the grotesque (Mix 52). Beardsley had only a brief amount of time to make a mark on the art world and he certainly managed it, despite his failing health he had six incredibly successful years of work (Mix 54). His unique style allowed him to explore sexuality with little regard to the expectations of the public.

The Mysterious Rose Garden: Defying Religion

With The Mysterious Rose Garden Beardsley's love for grotesque and sexually deviant art is clear. It follows his preferred style of Japaneseque black and white ink drawing It depicts a naked woman being whispered to by an androgynous clothed figure which suggests immoral acts to come (Symons 32) with a dramatic rose garden background.. This can easily be seen as religious iconography, Mary standing with a genderless being trying to lead her astray. With that knowledge it becomes clear that Mary is being whispered to by an angel (Weintraub 476) which shows her being tempted by the sinful behaviour they suggest. Much like Custance's The White Statue the image creates a homoerotic gaze upon the two figures together, the naked woman with the ambiguity of the gender of the lantern-bearer suggests a sexual undertone. The angel is presented “as a handsome, demonic seducer than guardian angel” (Weintraub 476). The Mysterious Rose Garden had intense reviews of The Yellow Book with one commenting that Beardsley “sought to re-establish his reputation for disturbing souls by delivering such an outrage” (“The Yellow Book” 1). Beardsley happily played with the concept of the Virgin being deflowered with roses falling to the ground at her feet and the angel seeming sinister with burned edges on their robes (Weintraub 477).

      Beardsley turned Mary's Annunciation into a moment that oozes sexuality, since the angel uses her innocence to their advantage and she stands in a way that suggests that she is not scare or discomforted (Weintraub 477). This brings a certain perversity to the garden, an otherworldly being taking advantage of an innocent. Whether this is to show a sympathy towards Mary is unknown. She is clearly being persuaded by a being with more power than her, someone who could convince her to go against her judgment. Mary would likely feel required to listen when it comes to the words of an angel, even if they suggested sin. Beardsley had a decidedly complex relationship with the idea of morality and godliness therefore the need to represent such a critical religious scene in a way that disregards the church and its' hold on the arts. This is reflected repeatedly throughout the pages of The Yellow Book where Beardsley's unique drawings so often appeared.

Charming and Grotesque: Beardsley and Custance 

    Both Custance's The White Statue and Beardsley's The Mysterious Rose Garden display such a risque, overt and ambiguous sexuality that The Yellow Book had to be classified as indecent. Many of the contributors toyed with these lines, as was common with Aesthetics. However, Custance and Beardsley's disregard for religion, gender roles and heteronormativity was clear. Through the Aestheticism movement they were able to create art that defied the moral norms, and because of this they created some of the most influential and long-lasting pieces. Custance's The White Statue provides early exploration of gender and sexuality (Parker 221) that was reinforced in many of her works following and helped move into a new era of writing. Beardsley's The Mysterious Rose Garden pushed past moral barriers to create something lewd, overtly sexual and grotesque. While Custance's work shows a direct defiance with sexuality and gender through gender play, Beardsley's work shows a direct defiance to morality and religion through overt sexuality within his drawings. Together Custance and Beardsley provided The Yellow Book with exquisite content that has helped it last to this day and become a celebrated piece of the Yellow Nineties.

Images in this online exhibit are either in the public domain or being used under fair dealing for the purpose of research and are provided solely for the purposes of research, private study, or education.