I believe Ernst was influenced by Darwinism in his portrayal of women. There is a very significant quality about Victorian dressing style that Ernst uses to imply that women are acting in an animalistic manner by deceiving men into thinking they are benign, sweet creatures. The exaggerated size of the dresses, on pages 102 & 103 for instance, enlarge women’s size and make them more immense than men. I find the elevated back of the women’s dresses kind of ridiculous: the dress looks like a camel’s back! I think Ernst suggests a connection between the appearance of animals and the behavior of women, women borrow the large appearance of animals to feel more significant and influence men with their seemingly charming looks. I came to this interpretation after looking at the way Ernst replaced body parts of men and women with these of animals, Ernst’s portrayal seemed too flexible and blunt to just mean a reference to animal-like behavior in humans, particularly women. In Page 98, the shape of the reptile is very similar to the shape of the women’s dresses, one almost thinks that the curled part of the woman’s dress on the right is the reptile’s tail, which looks like a fish’s tail, one that a reptile would not have. However, according to Darwinism, reptiles evolved from fish.
The presence of common ancestors between humans and animals allowed artists great flexibility in the way they characterized human behavior; the connection between animals and humans seemed more direct after Darwinism, in my opinion.
