Mabel Dearmer’s Decadent Way

The term Decadent, as it is popularly used by modern literary critics, carries rather unsavoury associations: the dissipated poet’s indulgence in absinthe and opium, the tawdriness of the music hall, exploitative and illicit sexual relations – all somehow epitomized by Aubrey Beardsley’s visual representations of iniquitous dwarves and dangerous courtesans. Yet any reader of The Yellow Book recognizes that the journal’s contents are distinguished by their diversity, and Beardsley can hardly be used to define the work of his fellow contributors. Stories by Ella D’Arcy and Charlotte Mew are characterized by their narrators’ preoccupation with social obligations to the poor