# Salomé — Against the Grain character guide

> Salomé in Against the Grain by J.-K. Huysmans.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0005-iii

## Snapshot

The biblical dancer whose image, painted by Moreau, fixes Des Esseintes' taste for the femme fatale and the ancient, blood-soaked East.

## Who they are

Salomé exists for Des Esseintes not as a woman but as a painted and written obsession, a figure of jewelled depravity who lets him escape the dullness of his own century. She belongs to the same appetite that draws him to Baudelaire and to the Latin decadents: beauty inseparable from cruelty, desire inseparable from ruin. She matters because she shows how his reading and looking are not idle but a form of self-definition, the tastes by which he builds a life against the grain.

## In the story

### [Against the Grain](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/chapters/against-the-grain)

The subject of Moreau's painting, symbolizing decadence and sensuality.

### [Chapter V](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/chapters/v)

Depicted in Moreau's painting as a solemn, hypnotic figure performing a wanton dance before Herod.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/salome
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters