Rose O'Neill's Sweet Monsters : an exploration in motherhood and romantic love in early 20th century America

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America Rose O'Neill, artist, illustrator, and author, achieve unp'arallel success. She was a self-taught artist, although her informal training was surprisingly academic in nature, who was able to change her style at will to match the needs of various publishers. Today O'Neill is best known as the creator of the Kewpie, adorable, illustrated figures that quickly turned into a merchandizing empire. Biographers and others have heavily emphasized the importance of the Kewpie as well as O'Neill's vivacious personality. However, the Kewpie is only part of O'Neill's oeuvre and the text concerning her personality often neglect a critical lens through which its construction can be seen. In this paper I detail O'Neill's artistic development and her oeuvre. I then examine O'Neill's private works, the Sweet Monsters, in which she explored major social issues and concerns specifically those concerning the Women's Movement of this period. As a Suffragette O'Neill was well acquainted with the arguments surrounding women's rights and she explored these arguments visually within her Sweet Monsters. I analyze two sets of drawings; one focuses on motherhood and creation and another that depicts romantic love and female sexuality. Through these images I argue that O'Neill can be understood as inverting and/or combining various traditional visual narratives to create new and yet familiar images of motherhood, creation, love, and female sexuality.