The women’s movement was escalating during the 1890s.

‘ depictions of women clearly reveal Beardsley’s sympathy for women who decided to cut through the net of social mores that restricted them.’ Beardsley replays their relationship and his own feminist attitude in his drawings of women. It is no surprise, then, as evidenced by his letters, that Aubrey grew up regarding Mabel as his closest friend and intellectual equal and that his view of women was largely formed by the time they spent together as youngsters. At home they would create that staple of Victorian children, a puppet theatre, and act in plays, songs and charades for which Aubrey drew playbills. Aubrey drew the two of them boating, wading in a creek and walking in a park-his sister proportionally taller and proprietarily holding his hand. Reunited at home, the children’s activities together resumed. Of his fourteen letters home between Christmas 1879 and October 1880, a dozen inquired about Mabel or sent his love, and two were written directly to his sister, relating things he did at Hamilton Lodge. At the age of seven Aubrey had his first tubercular haemorrhage and was sent to the more salubrious climate of Hurstpierpoint, where he attended four terms at Hamilton Lodge school.

While she went to various people’s homes to give piano lessons, the sister and brother, only a year apart in age, were in each other’s company daily. Most likely, their connection initially formed when their mother, Ellen, was forced by family circumstances to work. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) and his sister Mabel (1871-1916) were close as children, a relationship that lasted until he died.

Aubrey beardsley lysistrata