The Yellow Book created quite the scandalous name for itself from its promiscuous images of un-attended women and masquerades, to the defamation of  Beardsley, former art editor, being guilty by association to Oscar Wilde, who was arrested for homosexuality. Being the center for Fin de Siecle studies, The Yellow Book has periodically published 13 volumes from the years 1894-1897, indulging its artwork and literature with avant garde practices (Lasner 4). 


         For my exhibit in Situating The Yellow Book Image, Text and Context, I will be examining David Cameron's "Vanity" (The Yellow Book Vol. 13) and Evelyn Sharp’s “The Other Anna” (The Yellow Book Vol. 13) in the cultural context of 1890’s women, class, and art. Evelyn Sharp was a women suffragist and feminist that sought out women’s equality and the right to vote (Devine 22). She has published several short stories in The Yellow Book and 4 novels, often concluding that her heroine should be able to rescue themselves from lonely towers instead of waiting for princes (Angela 10). “The Other Anna” is a fictional short story that focuses on women’s representation throughout The Yellow Book and the 1890’s as the women’s roles were being altered due to the New Woman movement. D. Y. Cameron was a popular artist at the time of The Yellow Book’s release as his work ranged from landscaping, oil and water paintings that were auctioned off from £40-£200, roughly $5,266-$26,333 in today’s currency (Rinder 55). My chosen image, a portrait created in 1896 by pencil and then photo engraved into The Yellow Book, was an experimental sketch since Cameron’s primary work is not on people and displayed the vividness of a women’s potential for vanity.   

           My cultural context, 1890’s women, class, and art  had gained its recognition through the women’s right movement and art nouveau,where some critics argue Beardsley first introduced art nouveau in his illustrations for Wilde’s play Salome (Teaching Art Nouveau 5). Reception was generally negatively received as multiple critics argued their distaste in  the Yellow Book as accepting only rejected artwork prototypes ("Bad Art in The Yellow Book" 2) which explained its degeneracy, including its lack of taste, and being painfully grotesque("Rev. of The Yellow Book 13" ). 

            This is significant in understanding The Yellow Book because they actively accepted and sought out pieces of work that contributed to women, in order to express that avant-garde and art nouveau notion of the New Women. For many New Woman writers it was transgressed that The Yellow Book was the place to publish decadent stories as it was a magazine for liberating female writers, a notion that was not so popular at the time (Buzwell 15). Women were often being depicted as esteemed workers, who challenged the ideology that women could do just as much as men. However, with the concept of the New Woman still relatively making its way into headlines, women were still argumentatively categorized based on their career choices, clothing and language. 

Bourke, writer of Working Class Culture in Britain, 1890-1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity, writes through the experiences of Elizabeth, a woman who grew up during this time period expressed that her clothing was far more important and put under scrutiny from her teachers than compared to her scholarship to the high school (50). In this way, a women’s clothing out-weight far more than her education as shown in “The Other Anna” and “Vanity” where both women had to present themselves in a sophisticated way through their clothing. However, The Yellow Book challenges this normative ideal of the class based women and in their illustrations and narratives, presents them as experimental figures who did not have to abide to the rules of society if they so wished.

In “The Other Anna” Sharp female protagonist named Anna, is adorned with servants, fine jewels and apparel, who is seemingly bored with her lifestyle. An artist, named Askett, mistaken’s her to be a model, which she excitingly accepts, as the two develop a ritual of meeting every week for her features to be drawn. Askett feels no attraction towards Anna because he has prior established ideals of models being desperate and indecent. This causes Anna to create stories about the other women, also named Anna, who lives in her home and describes her to be the perfect women. This eventually causes Askett to fall in love with this other Anna and with a marriage proposal visit's her home. Only to discover the other Anna never existed as was only the original's Anna description of herself (The Yellow Book 13). The ending is left open-ended allowing for the reader to decide whether Askett and Anna get married or Anna is left rejected from her immature prank. Understanding Sharp’s personal character and strong beliefs for equality helps to better situate her motive for, “The Other Anna” and how she wanted Anna to be able to escape the form of her normative bourgeois company and enter the world of the working class. Hence, why she became a model instead of living her non-eventful life at home being served upon by her servants. 

Historically, women were not just classified based on their clothing to determine their status in society but also their occupation. DeVault writes that women’s traditional options for jobs included: clerical, sales, needle trades, and teaching and if need be, those who were scandalous enough to become burlesque dancers, models, or entertainers. The latter types of occupations were considered for the lower class as they were described to be, “loose women in tights” (8), which ironically, women can now only dream to have these careers and make over $50, 000 a year (O' Leary 3). Askett's disapproval for models similarly represents the voice of the 1890’s conservative society and how Anna’s pursuit in modeling was promiscuous, if not immoral, as it translated to selling oneself in a way of their physical appearance.  

Sharp challenges the normative idea of women through her character Anna. By giving her the adventure that many women in the 1890's may have felt, wanting to escape the scrutiny of clothing and potent grace, Anna is able to experience what it felt like to be in a lower class occupation and generally feel happy about it. In the same way, D.Y. Cameron displays the women in his picture to be wearing a lower cut dress that reveals her breasts, an image that would have caused uproar in the public view. Through women representation, The Yellow Book is able to depict their own images of ‘deviant’ females through their front covers of women reading, prostitutes, actresses, masqueraders, and un-courted women dancing (B. J. 5). By embracing women's bodies and personalities as unique characteristics, ex. models,  rather then all women having to abide by one uniformly option, ex. the housewife, The Yellow Book enhanced Women's potential for equality in the public view, even if they were against it. 

According to Roberts, author of A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working Class Women 1890-1940, women often went to finish their schooling, find a job and await for their marriage proposal, in which they would have to quit everything prior to and raise a family (64). However, The Yellow Book incorporates a freedom where women could be represented in anyway they wished and not necessarily have to do what was socially expected of them. Such was the case for Anna when she made her own career choice and the un-certainty if she marries Askett for love or not at all. Cameron's “Vanity” also shows a women's freedom of choice through her spontaneous clothing.


         Both "Vanity" and "The Other Anna" include the symbolization of a ‘mirror’ as  The Yellow Book is able to take the normative of women holding value only through their physical appearance and turn it around as a sense of empowerment instead. For instance, although women were held of value based on beauty, “Vanity” and “The Other Anna” indicate that they will take this ideology but on their own terms and use it as a means for empowerment, hence becoming a model or by wearing a revealing, deep cut dress.