Watched men and phallus-wielding women: Aubrey Beardsley's reception of Juvenal's Sixth Satire.

This article examines Aubrey Beardsley’s 1896 illustrations for Juvenal’s Sixth Satire, highlighting how Beardsley’s artwork engages in an “uncooperative reading” that subverts the satire’s misogynistic voice by portraying dominant, phallus-wielding women and vulnerable, watched men. Rather than simply illustrating the text, Beardsley challenges traditional gender and sexual power structures, destabilizing the assumed equivalence between masculinity, the phallus, and authority, and instead emphasizing the performative and fragile nature of these identities. The study situates Beardsley’s work within both classical reception and late nineteenth-century art history, noting his use of classical themes to critique Victorian sexual norms and to explore homoeroticism, the gaze, and gender fluidity. Through his illustrations, Beardsley reimagines Juvenal’s satire as a grotesque, decadent fantasy where women are defiant subjects rather than passive objects, thereby complicating interpretations of both the ancient text and its cultural legacy.