@cobalt-jade I did click on the link and looked at the essay, but the pictures won't be everyone's cup of tea.

Is it possible for you to share some of the text on here, because I did find it very interesting!  It fills in part of the early 20th century culture & its related beliefs/ideas.

Here's the summary:

Ever wonder why The Lady of the Green Kirtle — also known as The Green Witch — seems to have little sprigs of greenery decorating her gown and hair in Pauline Baynes’ illustrations of her?

It's because of the plant Artemisia absinthium, a bushy perennial shrub also known as wormwood, which when combined with anise and fennel creates the bright green, mind-numbing, alcoholic beverage known as absinthe.

Popular in fin-de-siècle France, especially Paris, absinthe was immortalized forever in the impressionist paintings of Manet, van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec.The drink and the feelings engendered in the drinker began to be called The Green Fairy, The Absinthe Fairy, The Green Muse, or even The Green Witch. "She" was said to befuddle the senses and lead the drinker into madness and ruin. In paintings and advertisements she was depicted as a wanton, wicked woman who was dressed in green, often with blonde or red hair. Sometimes she had green skin. Often she was surrounded by artemisia leaves or wearing a crown of artemisia leaves.

I’ve yet to read, in my admittedly shallow, research on Lewis that he took the template of The Green Fairy and used it for his more infamous Lady of the Green Kirtle. But Pauline Baynes, Lewis’ trusted illustrator, certainly did, going by the witch’s anodyne face and flowing gown with its scattered artemisia leaflets… leaflets which are nowhere in the text of The Silver Chair. Lewis had full approval over Baynes’ depictions, so it’s likely he understood, as a child of the early 20th century,  the visual reference to absinthe and let it stay.