‘Beneath the splendour of the throne’: the Victorian Decadent Theodora and Her Successors

What is it about?

Theodora’s reputation as a decadent femme fatale had already been established by historical writers of the eighteenth-century. From this starting point, diverse nineteenth-century portrayals developed, reflecting a fresh interest in the sixth- century Byzantine Empress who had worked as a circus performer and prostitute before acceding to the imperial throne as the wife of Justinian I. As the Victorian period moved to a close, writers and artists revived Theodora as a risqué figure to fascinate their own age by her transgressions. The Victorian dramas and fictions discussed in the chapter sensationalised Theodora. At the same time, they showed her to be vulnerable to male manipulation despite her supposed cruelty and apparent power over men. Writers also identified Theodora with the grave symbolism and splendour of her representation in mosaic, placed opposite to Justinian’s, within the sixth-century church of San Vitale in Ravenna. Later artists and writers responded in their turn to this complex Victorian Theodora. A powerful blending of morbid, erotic and charismatic attributes connected the Victorian Theodora to her twentieth and twenty-first century successors as depicted in film, theatre, art and fiction. These versions reiterated the idea of Theodora’s relative powerlessness in the Byzantine world. They suggested how Theodora should be seen as the product of patriarchal oppression whose material or textual presence could be used to challenge the status quo explicitly.

Featured Image

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Victorian representations of Theodora and their more recent adoptions and adaptations highlight contradictions within perceptions of decadence. The re-creations of Theodora included in the chapter allow for condemnation of her perceived immorality but also provide escapism from accepted mores and even the possibility that current values may be overturned. This provides an opportunity to consider how far contemporary use of the term ‘decadent’ to describe an individual, or a society, is permeated with similar contradictions.