The character of Salome is derived from the Bible, and she was originally a young princess who had been written in a few strokes in the Gospels, because at the banquet Herod promised to sacrifice any price for her dance, and at the behest of her mother, in order to avenge her mother's personal vendetta against Saint John, Salome asked Herod to cut off the head of Saint John and give it to her.
But in Wilde's writing, she is not so obedient to her evil mother, and in Wilde's constructed story, Salome wants the head of the saint John because she is in love with John.
Falling in love with someone and asking for his head sounds like a very appalling thing. But this reason also makes Salome's unique aesthetic.
Princess Salome is undoubtedly beautiful, and in the work Wilde spends a great deal of time writing about a young Syrian officer who loves Princess Salome, and through his mouth we can imagine Princess Salome, who in his eyes is so lovely, pale face like "a white rose reflected in a silver mirror", and when she hides her face behind a fan, "the little white hand trembles, like a pigeon that flaps back to its nest, and like a white butterfly that flutters back to its nest." They look like a pair of white butterflies. When Princess Salome came to him, he looked at him "like a lost pigeon... A daffodil blooming in the wind... A silvery white flower. ”
The Syrian officer's vision of Princess Salome has such a fragile beauty, and such beauty must be attached to the character of obedience, or it will be easily broken and unsustainable. So when Salome boldly revealed his heart to Saint John and expressed his fervent love for John's body, he could not accept such a beautiful princess who did not conform to his imagination and "no longer pure", and chose to commit suicide.
Wilde wrote every of Salome's bold and naked confessions to John, his praise for his body, very beautiful:
He's so pinned! Like a slender ivory sculpture, a silver portrait. I'm sure he's a man of ice and purity, chaste like the moon. He was like a silver moonlight. His flesh must be as cold as ivory... I really wanted to get a little closer to see him.
I'm fascinated by your body, John! Your body is as white as the lilies planted in the fields that the cutters have never patronized. Your body is as white as the snow on the Jewish Mountains, melting and flowing into the valley. The roses in the garden of the Arabian Queen are not as white as your body. The morning sun stepping on the footsteps of the leaves, the breath of the moon lying in the arms of the sea... There is nothing in this world that is as white as your body. Allow me to touch your body.
With Salome's monologue and the imagery she uses in her rhetoric, we can see her love for the pure, and Salome fell in love with John because of his holiness and distinctiveness. John, however, regarded her mother as a product of her filth for her crimes and rejected her.
But although, as John said, Salome grew up in an ugly environment, her heart longed for purity even more, just as Salome said when she looked at the moon before she saw John:
"It's good to see the moon, she's like a little coin, like a silver-white flower, this ice and jade moon... I'm sure she's still a virgin, because she has a virgin beauty... Yes, she was a virgin, never defiled by anyone, and like other goddesses, she never let a man touch her. ”
But she thought she was pure, but in the eyes of her loved ones, she was just as filthy.
Salome had always hated her stepfather the most, King Herod, and she had always avoided his lewd eyes:
"I don't want to stay there anymore, I can't stay anymore." Why does His Majesty keep staring at me with the pair of rat eyes under his throbbing eyelids? It's strange that my mother's husband is looking at me like that, and I don't know what that means, or I know it all too well."
She knew in her heart that Herod was obsessed with her and calculated, but in exchange for power, she promised Herod to dance for him, and after the dance, she persistently and frantically asked Herod for John's head, and kissed him mercilessly after getting John's bloody head.
And this horrific and crazy act also completely made her disliked by Herod and sentenced to death.
Salome pursues what she regards as holy and beautiful with almost crazy, strange and sinful behavior, and is martyred with her to death, she is the embodiment of truly tragic beauty, a warrior who rebels against the expectations and gazes of all men, and in the most seemingly evil way, fulfills her hopeless, extreme, painful love, and completes her purity.