Salome

The first part of Salomé stages a confrontation between the princess and Jokanaan, establishing the relationship between power and desire. While Jokanaan is imprisoned and seemingly without power, his ability to resist desire for Salomé makes him more powerful than her, while she becomes subservient to him due to her infatuation. The Young Syrian is also controlled by his desire for Salomé, which eventually destroys him. Through this interaction, Wilde suggests that Salomé’s later actions are motivated by her need to have power over Jokanaan, since she cannot exert control over him via his sexual appetite as she can with other men.

Salomé is initially established as a character who exerts control by denying men who desire her. When she first comes out onto the terrace and sees the moon, she praises the moon for having “a virgin's beauty,” and remarks, “she has never defiled herself. She has never abandoned herself to men, like the other goddesses” (11). Salomé’s description of the moon associates chastity with beauty, while condemning women who give up control to men. The depiction of the moon as cold, visible and yet untouchable, parallels the kind of power that Salomé wields over both Herod and the Young Syrian, denying them the opportunity to see her beauty until she needs something. Yet, she is in turn controlled by her desire to see Jokanaan, who is hidden in the dark cistern. The lack of visual contact fosters desire, forcing Salomé to give up some of her power by promising to smile at the Young Syrian. In order to persuade him to open the cistern, she promises first that “I will let fall for you a little flower, a little green flower” (15). But when he continues to deny her wish, she adds “I will look at you, Narraboth, it may be I will smile at you” (16). By offering to fulfill some of the Young Syrian’s desire for her, Salomé is able to exert power over him, but she must allow herself to be perceived as an object of lust in order to do so, establishing The Danger of the Gaze.

Once Salomé is able to see Jokanaan, the power dynamic is reversed, as the princess becomes subservient to the prisoner due to her unfulfilled desire for his body. Salomé’s first impression of Jokanaan is his coldness and chastity, similar to her description of the moon. She exclaims “I am sure he is chaste as the moon is. He is like a moonbeam, like a shaft of silver. His flesh must be cool like ivory” (19). The quality that first attracts Salomé to Jokanaan is, ironically, his lack of sexual desire. After she begins to desire him, Salomé is placed in a subservient position, begging him to speak to her and requesting “tell me what I must do” (20). As she describes each part of his body, she asks for permission to touch him, which he repeatedly denies. Jokanaan also removes himself from her view, telling her “I will not look at thee, thou art accursed, Salomé, thou art accursed” (25) before voluntarily returning to his cistern prison. While he is a prisoner, he is the one who chooses to return to the prison, giving him, rather than Salomé, agency in the scene. Because he has no desire for Salomé, she has no way to exert control over him, and so he instead becomes the one who holds power.

Wilde indicates that Jokanaan’s power originates in his rejection of worldly and material concerns in favor of spiritual matters, aligning him with the theme of Sight and Comprehending God. Jokanaan entirely rejects any sign of worldly power and his preaching acknowledges his own total humility before God. Yet his poverty and submission to God simultaneously give him power over those like Salomé, who are entirely consumed by their bodily desires. When Jokanaan first speaks, he does so to prophetically declare his own weakness: “after me shall come another mightier than I. I am not worthy so much as to unloose the latchet of his shoes” (5). Herod’s soldiers allude to his humble and impoverished lifestyle before his imprisonment, describing how he came “from the desert where he fed on locusts and wild honey. He was clothed in camel’s hair, and round his loins he had a leathern belt. He was very terrible to look upon. A great multitude used to follow him. He even had disciples” (7). This statement conveys the subversive contrast between Jokanaan’s modesty and lowly circumstances and the magnificent power he is able to wield over others. Even Herod seems to recognize the power inherent in Jokanaan’s spirituality, refusing to have him executed even though he has repeatedly insulted the queen. However, Salomé seems not to understand Jokanaan’s spiritual messages, becoming so chained to her material and bodily appetites that she misunderstands his prophecies. When Jokanaan tells her to go and live in the desert in humility to seek out the Son of Man, meaning Christ, Salomé replies, “who is he, the Son of Man? Is he as beautiful as thou art, Jokanaan?” (20). This misunderstanding exemplifies Salomé’s problem: she values physical beauty over divine virtue, loving Jokanaan for his body rather than for the spiritual truths he reveals. By setting up this contrast between the worldly and the spiritual, Wilde foreshadows how the sexual power of Salomé and the political power of Herod will never be sufficient to control Jokanaan or the Messiah he predicts will come.